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Daily Archives: June 8, 2017

Harvard Obtains Continued support for the Caselaw Access Project

Et Seq – The blog of the Harvard Law School Library: “Harvard Law School launched the Caselaw Access Project in 2015 to digitize the Harvard Law School Library’s complete collection of U.S. case law and to make the materials in that collection available online for free. We’ve been able to undertake this ambitious project — covering 44,000 volumes — with the support of Ravel Law, a legal research and analytics platform. In the time since and according to a detailed agreement between them, Harvard Law School and Ravel Law together have digitized nearly 40 million pages of published court decisions, and today the work continues to convert those digital images into machine-readable text to allow searching as well as display. This week Ravel was acquired by LexisNexis. LexisNexis has affirmed its commitment to continuing Ravel Law’s support for and fulfillment of the objectives of the Caselaw Access Project, including providing open access to all of the digitized cases. “We embarked on this project knowing that a startup as smart and bold as Ravel Law could be acquired by any number of businesses, including those long involved in commercial legal research. Our agreements were inked with these possibilities in mind, and key benefits and obligations of those agreements will now flow to LexisNexis,” said Jonathan Zittrain, the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School, and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources. “We look forward to completing this project according to its long-planned timetable, and to exploring other opportunities with anyone interested in promoting free and open access to primary legal materials, which in turn promotes the cause of justice.”

TRAC Sues ICE on Withholding Data on Secure Communities Program

“The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) has filed yet another suit in federal court today under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) charging Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with unlawfully withholding records on deportations. The new suit follows one filed on May 9. Both actions concern aspects of ICE’s unusually broad immigration control efforts and… Continue Reading

How to Find Deleted Public Health Assessments for Contaminated Sites

MemoryHole2: “How to Find Deleted Public Health Assessments for Contaminated Sites, June 5, 2017  – Click here to access the missing reports from prior to October 2004 UPDATE [June 8, 2017]: There’s a second source for these documents. Most of them exist in PDF format in the Commerce Department’s National Technical Information Service website. (These… Continue Reading

History of Gardens in America on Exhibit at the Smithsonian

New York Times – “The United States has a rich yet relatively unknown tradition of beautiful gardens, said Cindy Brown, the education and collections manager at the Smithsonian Gardens in “Go to the Washington, D.C. Travel Guide.” href=”http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/washington-dc/overview.html?inline=nyt-geo”>Washington. “Gardens in this country date back to the 17th century and continue to be an attraction today,”… Continue Reading

Internet Archive – Help Us Defend Net Neutrality

Help Us Defend Net Neutrality  – Chris Butler, June 6, 2017. “Please stand with the Internet Archive and over 50 allies in the effort to protect free speech by adding your name in support of net neutrality and writing to your Congressperson today. We have only 40 days left to stop a current FCC proposal that could upend… Continue Reading