In response to the current influenza outbreak, the library has updated the Pandemic Flu Research Guide to provide access to the sources of both International and U.S. legal authority, Federal and State emergency preparedness and response plans, as well as Secondary Sources and web sites of interest.

We've referenced the most current government reports available on the topic and provide a link to the World Health Organization's H1N1's update page with RSS feed. You can also check out the Top 10 Epidemiology and Flu Blogs from our guide.

On Friday, MIT announced that its faculty has unanimously voted to make their scholarship available for free to the public. Authors will give MIT nonexclusive permission to make their articles available through DSpace@MIT, an open access platform developed by MIT Libraries and HP.  Under the policy, MIT and its faculty authors may use their articles in any way other than to make a profit.  They may also authorize others to use the works under the same terms.  Authors may opt out of the policy on a paper-by-paper basis.

Read more about the policy:

MIT Press Release.

Blog entry from Open Access News, reprinting the resolution.

A voting representative in Congress for the District of Columbia has been proposed and debated throughout the course of this country's history. We've put together a Research Guide with links to the current legislation and Congressional documents available on the District of Columbia Voting Rights Act of 2009. The guide also links to current news coverage, law review articles on the topic and several historical Congressional hearing documents.

In an attempt to mimic reading the Sunday newspaper at your kitchen table, the New York Times has released a new interface for reading the paper on the web.

Take a look at the new prototype here.

Yesterday, in conjunction with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) launched a Legal Education Commons at www.cali.org/lec.  It is designed to be a single searchable & taggable space for teachers of law to share materials and notes they use in teaching.  The initial launch includes access to over 700,000 federal court decisions (from public.resource.org) and 300 original illustrations from its CALI Lessons online tutorials.  All materials uploaded to the Legal Education Commons by faculty and staff at CALI member schools will be done under a Creative Commons Share Alike license, which allows the author to retain the original copyright in the material, but others will be allowed to use it, share it, and make derivative works from it as long as the users make proper attribution and license the derivative under the same (or a compatible) license.  Click here to read the full press release.

Dec. 10 is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today, Washington, D.C., will be designated as the first Human Rights City in the United States. The American Friends Service Committee and the People's Movement for Human Rights Learning will host a celebratory event with local political and civic leaders.

In an attempt to keep up with the financial crisis of 2008, the Law Library has updated their Banking Law Research Guide. We now link to government resources and other law school research guides which have been put together on the crisis.

Fordham Law School's guide is especially noteworthy in its extensive collection of primary source material, including Congressional testimony and reports on the Emergency Economic Stability Act, TARP documents, FDIC programs, the Mortgage Crisis, AIG material and letters, statements and other documents relating to the Auto Industry bailout.

Looking to support the new administration? The 2008 edition of the United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions, commonly referred to as the Plum Book, is now available in PDF format. This publication contains over 200 pages of information on "Federal civil service leadership and support positions in the legislative and executive branches of the Federal Government that may be subject to noncompetitive appointment."

Between the upcoming election and the financial news blanketing the media, you might have missed the "First Monday in October" and the beginning of the new term of the Supreme Court.

If you're monitoring the Court this session, check out the Current Awareness links on our Supreme Court Research Guide.

Did you know that Justice Alito won't be relying on the cert pool this year? Which cases have been denied review already? These questions are covered in two of my favorite resources for monitoring the court -  On the Docket and U.S. Law Week. (Georgetown community only)

A free, searchable database of the September 26 presidential debate has been released by AskSam Systems. The database contains a full-text searchable transcript of the full debate between Republican candidate John McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama. You can search and browse this first debate online, and askSam is planning to make available at this same site electronic versions of upcoming debates.