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Google Reader

Do you hear a lot about blogs but you aren’t sure how to find ones that
interest you? Do you know of plenty of blogs that you like to read, but need
help organizing them for easy access?

Google Reader https://www.google.com/reader is just one
of many blog aggregators. You can set up an account that will gather all of the
blogs you like in one place and feed you their most recent posts. You can search
for blogs by subject, or type in specific blog addresses to add them to your
list. Blogs are a good way to stay current with what’s happening in areas of the
law that interest you.

WS

There's a Congressional App for That

Interested in following Congress on your mobile device?  There's a Congressional App for That is a recent post from In Custodia Legis: The Law Librarians of Congress blog.  In this post, Law Library of Congress reference librarian Christine Sellers has compiled a list of apps for various devices that can be used to follow Congress.  

 AVF 

ExecutedToday.com

Although the site may sound a bit lurid, ExecutedToday (www.executedtoday.com) is an excellent web site for criminal justice and history buffs alike.  Written with great detail and care, along with excellent hyperlinks, each entry tells of an execution that took place on that date in history, some from very long ago, some much more recently. For example, the post for June 15 concerns Margaret Jones, the first person executed for witchcraft in Boston; it includes several excerpts from official coverage of the trial, as well as woodcuts and links to videos.

 SGW

Blogs For Fun

Blogs can be useful for keeping up with current events, but they can also be a source of entertainment.  Here are two great legal humor blogs:

Legal Antics- "Chronicling legal humor--because lets face it--lawyers take themselves far too seriously and the law is damn funny if you look at it through the right lens."  Blog post categories include Criminal Outtakes, Laugh out Loud Legal News, Overheard in a Law Office, Funny Transcripts, and many others.

Lowering the Bar- Blog post categories include Brilliant Arguments, Fool for a Client, and Lawsuits (ridiculous) among others.

Check out these blogs for a little diversion. 

AVF

THOMAS Off of THOMAS

THOMAS off of THOMAS is a recent post from the Law Librarians of Congress blog, In Custodia Legis.  In this post, Senior Legal Information Analyst, Andrew Weber, points to other legislative resources that expand on the legislative information that THOMAS provides including,  GovTrack.us,  OpenCongress.org, and The New York Times Inside Congress.  To learn more about sites that provide current federal legislative information, check out Weber's post.  If you don't already subscribe to In Custodia Legis, we recommend you subscribe!

AVF 

THOMAS Enhancements

More improvements have been made to THOMAS, the Law Library of Congress webpage.  In case you didn't know GPO Access is being phased out and replaced with FDsys (Federal Digital System).  All items in THOMAS that linked to GPO Access are now linked correctly to FDsys.  Other search and usability enhancements have been made as well.  For more, check out In Custodia Legis, the Law Librarians of Congress blog.

 AVF

Bloglines is shutting down! But wait - there IS good news!

Our August 17, 2010 post was about RSS feeds and how to use them; we pointed to Bloglines as a good feed aggregator.  Unfortunately, Bloglines recently announced that it will no longer be operating effective October 1, 2010.  Other blog aggregators are stepping in for Blogliners who now need another system.  Chief among them is Google.  The Google Reader is free and easy to use (probably even easier than Bloglines was!).  To transfer your feeds from Bloglines to Google Reader, just follow these simple steps:

- first, set up a Google account

- go to your Bloglines and click "export" (at the bottom of the feeds column)

- save the exported file to your desktop

- go to Google Reader (click on "more" at the Google search screen, pick "reader")

- after signing in, click on "manage subscriptions" (bottom left)

- click "import" and upload the file you just saved

- you'll get a screen listing of all your feeds; if you want to keep them all, just click "back to Google Reader".  Your blog feeds will be under "subscriptions" in the same order as before.

 If you want to use a different aggregator, check with one of the librarians for help.  Enjoy your blog feeds!

SGW