If Google is your go to place on the web, you do not want to miss this weekly workshop full of valuable tips and tricks to put the powers of Google to work for you.  We’ll cover how to:

• Find government information and patents
• Search Google Books and Google Scholar
• Use and customize iGoogle for law
• Limit searches to a website or file format
• Many more useful and easy shortcuts especially helpful to aspiring and practicing lawyers

Already an advanced googler, or at least know a trick or two?  Then come to share your best methods with your colleagues.  The 30-minute workshop is Wednesday, 11/4, 1pm, Room 312.

Looking for thrills that will send a shiver down your spine on this weekend of haunts? The Salem Witch Trials are sure to make the hairs on the back of your neck rise. If you are unable to make the trip to Salem this weekend, check out the books we have at the Law Library about the Salem Witch Trials:

• The Salem witch trials : a day-by-day chronicle of a community under siege by  Marilynne K. Roach [Law Annex BF1575.R63 2002]
• Records of the Salem Witch-hunt, ed. Bernard Rosenthal [Law Ref KFM2478.8.W5 R43 2009]
• The Specter of Salem : remembering the witch trials in nineteenth-century America by Gretchen A. Adam [Law Annex BF1576 .A33 2008 ]
• Salem story : reading the witch trials of 1692 by Bernard Rosenthal [Law Annex BF1576 .A33 2008 ]
• Judge Sewall’s apology : the Salem witch trials and the forming of an American conscience by Richard Francis [Law Annex F67.S525 F73 2006  ]
• The devil in Massachusetts : a modern inquiry into the Salem witch trials by  Marion Lena Starkey. [Law Annex BF1576 .S73 1949   ]

Online archives of the Trials are available at:

• The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcriptions of the Court Records
• Salem Witchcraft Trials 1692

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has officially unveiled the House health care reform bill that is headed to the House floor.  The bill, the Affordable Health Care for America Act — H.R. 3962 — includes a public health insurance option that would be required to negotiate with providers — the top choice of centrist and conservative Democrats.

Coming in at just under $900 billion over ten years, the plan would cover 36 million uninsured Americans.

House Democrats have posted the bill online. A summary can be read here and the full version is here.

The new GAO report Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access examines the questions 1) How do law schools compare with similar professional schools in terms of cost and minority enrollment? (2) What factors, including accreditation, may affect the cost of law school? (3) What factors, including accreditation, may affect minority access to law school?

The short version is that costs have increased since 1994 and, according to law school officials, higher costs are driven by a “more hands-on, resource intensive approach to legal education” and competition for higher rankings, and not ABA accreditation requirements. For more information, including a chart depicting “average” law school debt, read the full report here.

An article in Monday’s New York Times examines the lawsuit filed in federal court by David Boies and Ted Olson in support of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. It also considers the way public opinion impacts the timing and substance of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court.

To see Prof. Wexler’s recent reading from his book, Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars, at the BU Barnes & Noble store, click here. The clip is made available from BUniverse, the media archive of BU Today.

Please join us for a lecture on researching United Nations materials given by Cyril Emery, a member of the UN Reference Team of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library.  The lecture will be held on November 6 at 10:00am in room 1434.

The library now has a small movie collection for law students, available in the Reserve section of the law library.   These movies were selected by the Law Communications & Marketing department from the ABA’s list of “The 25 Greatest Legal Movies“.

Law students may borrow these movies for 24 hours and they may be viewed in the basement student lounge, on your laptop, or at home.

The movies are accompanied by the book Movie Therapy for Law Students, which analyzes many movies with a legal theme and suggests that these movies can help your legal studies, for exam preparation, and even for the bar exam.  Interested in other books about law in the movies?  Try this search of the library catalog for BU owned books on the subject Administration of Justice in Motion Pictures.

If you were unable to attend the Weekly Workshop on Web tools, you can view a copy of the presentation here: Web Tools for Lawyers

Missed last week’s Weekly Workshop?  Attended but need more details on the topics covered?  Whatever your interest, here are links to guides on the topics covered. 

Alerts: Use these tools to set up a recurring search and to receive notices of search results to email or online.

• WestClip (Westlaw)
• Agency Tracker (Westlaw)
• Keycite Alert (Westlaw)
• Alerts (LexisNexis)
• Shepard’s Alert (LexisNexis)

History: These tools allow you to return to searches conducted during prior research sessions and to re-run them as needed. 

• History (LexisNexis)
• Research Trail (Westlaw)

Customization: Both LexisNexis and Westlaw allow you to customize the system to have the research sources you need for a project or practice area.  

• Customizable Westlaw
• Adding Custom Source Tabs to your Menu (LexisNexis)

Remember for assistance and more tips on LexisNexis and Westlaw, see a Reference Librarian for research help.