The Chronicle of Higher Education: "The American tradition is to enshrine economic activity as a central element of "the pursuit of happiness." In reality, however, economic activity is largely concerned with the relief of unhappiness. At the subsistence level of economic activity that has prevailed through most of human history, people must work to eat and to be clothed and housed, not so that they can enjoy the happiness that these goods can bring but so that they can avoid the pain of hunger, cold, and exposure to the elements.In developed economies, most of us can assuage these fundamental sources of unhappiness. But whether because of drives inherent in our nature or because of the constant efforts of advertisers and others, we seem destined to remain unhappy with our economic lot. Despite the burgeoning literature on happiness, and the contributions of prominent economists such as Richard Easterlin, Richard Layard, and Andrew Oswald, the general response of the mainstream English-language literature in economics has been to shrug and leave questions of this kind to psychologists and marketers. However, there is some interesting discussion going on in Europe, and a couple of recently translated works might help to stir the debate."

LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips: The Little Red Book of Wine Law: A Case of Legal Issues - Heather A. Phillips recommends this slim volume as it provides an engaging and accessible introduction to American wine law and history that will broaden the reader's appreciation of the wine industry. Though short and non-technical, this book is suitable for a surprising number of library collections.

LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips - Just and Unjust Warriors: the moral and legal status of soldiers - Heather A. Phillips describes how though a series of eleven well-written and closely reasoned original essays this book question the treatments of many of the foundations of classical just war theory, such as a non-volunteer army, the use of private contractors as soldiers, the harmlessness of those not actively engaged in combat, the symmetry of combatants, proportionality and extreme emergency.

ACLU Blog of Rights: "Coinciding with the start of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the fully revised and updated fourth edition of The Rights of Women was released this week. The latest release in the ACLU Handbook Series, The Rights of Women is a comprehensive guide that explains in detail the rights that women and girls have under U.S. law, and how these laws can be used in the continuing struggle to achieve full gender equality. One chapter is dedicated to the issue of violence against women, including sexual assault."

• Preface
  
• Table of Contents
  
• Sample Chapter

• Cultural Challenges in Cross Border Mediation, by Vikrant Singh Negi
• Persuading Judges in Writing: Tips for Lawyers (And how technology can help), by Troy Simpson
• Competitive Intelligence on a Shoestring, by Susan Armstrong and Sabrina I. Pacifici
• E-Discovery Update: Discovery of Employee-Owned Computer Equipment, by Conrad J. Jacoby
• The Government Domain: Journalists and Government Information: SLA-DGI/GODORT Joint Meeting, by Peggy Garvin
• FOIA Facts - FOIA Litigation: When A Loss Isn't Always A Loss, by Scott A. Hodes
• LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips - Nation of Secrets and Presidential Secrecy and the Law
• CongressLine by GalleryWatch.com: Lobbying and Ethics Rules, by Paul Jenks
• After Hours: Recommended Reading, by Kathy Biehl
• Rule the Web, by Julia Wotipka
• Commentary: Congress Looks Again at FISA, by Beth Wellington

"About the Book - "Have fun and learn about the Supreme Court! It's a coloring book with a surprising educational twist. This 32-page coloring book features expertly rendered illustrations depicting significant Supreme Court Justices of the United States to color in--including all current sitting Justices. The U.S. Supreme Court Coloring and Activity Book is perfect for the children of lawyers and judges, or for teachers looking for a new resource for Law Day or Constitution Day."

Ethnologue: "An encyclopedic reference work cataloging all of the world’s 6,912 known living languages." [This web edition of the Ethnologue contains all the content of the print edition and may be cited as: Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.]

As noted by Editor & Publisher, Richard Weiner' recent book, The Skinny About Best Boys, Dollies, Green Rooms, Leads, and Other Media Lingo: The Language of the Media "is not only a media dictionary, but a history book as well, one that Weiner hopes will be as fascinating to lay readers as it is for the seasoned professionals within the fields he covers."

'State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,' by James Risen - Spies and Spymasters, Review by Walter Isaacson.

Editor & Publisher reviews a new book by a group of 20 Dallas News photojournalists and reporters that chronicles the devastating impact of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

New York Times, 100 Notable Books of the Year

From the New York Times, a review of the new book on Justice Harry A. Blackmun by Linda Greenhouse.
Related references:

Syndicating Web Sites with RSS Feeds For Dummies, by Ellen Finkelstein.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, this commentary, available free: Hollywood Profits v. Technological Progress: "Commenting on a case that pits entertainment companies against peer-to-peer program developers, which is scheduled for argument in the Supreme Court next week, Doron Ben-Atar, a professor of history at Fordham University, writes that it is impossible to contain the abuse of technology without undermining the free flow of knowledge."

As a follow-up to my January 19 posting, Washington Post Examines Data Aggregator ChoicePoint, again from the Post, an online interview with Robert O'Harrow Jr., author of No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society.

Weblogs and Libraries, by Professor Laurel A. Clyde

Google Hacks, 2nd Edition, Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching, by Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest, December 2004.

New on LLRX.com for December 27, 2004:

"An essential book for anyone who writes reports, articles, books, letters or memoranda, The Economist Style Guide will enlighten, educate and amuse."

Free Culture, by Lawrence Lessig: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity:

Bush Administration Thwarts Access - Excerpt from The Buying of the President 2004 Shows the White House's Propensity for Secrecy [Link]

Strauss' Handbook of Business of Business Information: A Guide for Librarians, Students, and Researchers, by Rita W. Moss. Recommended by Marydee Ojala.

State of the World 2004: Table of Contents.

This new book, Mexican Legal Dictionary and Desk Reference, by prolific author and international/comparative law scholar Professor Jorge Vargas, should be in the library collection of any organization that conducts research on Mexican law. The resource includes "over 3,000 legal terms, definitions, rules and legal principles taken from federal codes, federal statutes, regulations, bilateral treatises and international agreements between the United States and Mexico."

From Steven M. Cohen, Keeping Current, Advanced Internet Strategies to Meet Librarian Patron Needs. This book comprises five chapters, and focuses primarily on web-based current awareness strategies; resources for staying abreast of advances in search engines techniques and learning about new features; reviews of software for monitoring changes on websites; and how best to leverage content from topical and research specific weblogs. The book includes useful screen shots, recommendations for web-based current awareness services (free and fee), as well as discussion of the limitations of these resources.

Assessing Competitive Intelligence Software A Guide to Evaluating CI Technology, by France Bouthillier and Kathleen Shearer Foreword by Chun Wei Choo:

Copyright Issues Present Ongoing Dilemma: To Link or Not To Link?

Robin Good's Mini Guide: Become a News G-d: How to be the first one to know everything about anything - Intelligent Information Agents Come of Age.

Magic Search Words-Health: Strategies and Search Tactics to Discover the Best of the Internet. See the book review here.

Library: An Unquiet History, by Matthew Battles. See the review in Newsday:

Super Searchers on Competitive Intelligence, The Online and Offline Secrets of Top CI Researchers. From the press release:

Business Statistics on the Web: Find Them Fast-At Little or No Cost. "Statistics are a critical component of business and marketing plans, press releases, surveys, economic analyses, presentations, proposals, and more--yet good statistics are notoriously hard to find. In this practical guide, statistics guru Paula Berinstein shows readers how to use the Net to find statistics about companies, markets, and industries, how to organize and present statistics, and how to evaluate them for reliability."

The Accidental Webmaster, by Julie M. Still, reference librarian at Paul Robeson Library, Rutgers University-Camden, Camden, New Jersey.

Naked in Cyberspace, How To Find Personal Information Online, 2nd Edition, reviewed by Stephen Lafferty.

Kudos to Tara Calishain and co-author Rael Dornfest, whose book, Google Hacks, is on the New York Times Paperback Bestseller List!

Business Is Toying With a Web Tool puts the spotlight on an innovative, user friendly open-source tool called a wiki, used to create inter-related web pages. Not new to the scene (the technology was first used in 1995), but perhaps ready to be embraced along the lines of blogging applications, wiki technology offers many interesting possibilities for collaborative knowledge management applications in organizations large and small. Another excellent article on this technology was written by David Mattison, so for those who are interested in this topic, please be sure to add this to your reading list, as well as this article, What's a Wiki?, and this book, The Wiki Way: Collaboration and Sharing on the Internet.

Tara Calishain of Research Buzz fame authored a new book, Google Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools.

From Microdac News, several recommendations for directories and glossaries of search engine terms, including Search Engine Directory (free) and the Search Engine Yearbook ($$).

Here is a recent review of the Librarian's Internet Survival Guide: Strategies for the High-Tech Reference Desk by Irene E. McDermott (reference librarian/systems manager at the San Marino Public Library in California).

Marylaine Block reviews a new book by Mary Minow and Tomas A. Lipinski which focuses on the many legal issues that confront today's libraries, including the Patriot Act, fair use, web filtering, censorship and web site accessibility. The Library's Legal Answer Book is targeted at the public library community, but this work by two expert lawyer/librarian authors, complete with extensive legal citations, will no doubt be of interest to special and law libraries as well.

From Eyeteeth, this interview with professor and author Siva Vaidhyanathan, whose books include The Anarchist in the Library, which details the impact of peer-to-peer networks on the dissemination of information, and Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity.

His comments about libraries and the Patriot Act include the following: "What we’re doing though is making librarians choose among their values. Librarians believe very strongly in recordkeeping and in maintaining archives. It’s part of the historical record; that’s half of what they do. But the other half of what they do is serve and protect their patrons. The federal government has made librarians choose between retaining records that might be useful, for instance in budgetary discussions not to mention historical research, and protecting their patrons, so their patrons don’t feel intimidated by the books they choose to read or by the potential of oversight of the books they choose to read. There are a lot of librarians around the country right now who are taking a very noble and strong stand against this situation, and I think we need to celebrate them and support them in this effort."

Currently available online only in OpenBook format, a free pre-publication version of Who Goes There?: Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy, Stephen T. Kent and Lynette I. Millett, Editors, Committee on Authentication Technologies and Their Privacy Implications, National Research Council. The report provides analysis of and recommends guidelines for the development, implementation and deployment of authentication systems that include passwords, public-key infrastructures (PKI), smartcards and biometrics.

EPIC has published The Privacy Law Sourcebook 2002, is a good choice for researchers who want to have the full text of major privacy laws and directives in one easy to use source, as well as associated links to privacy resources on the web.