Thomson Reuters recently announced a rate increase on content outside of Westlaw fixed-rate contracts. Rate increases take effect on January 1, 2019. Customers should have received a letter containing links to details of the changes. Please contact your local rep for updated pricing or more information.

Word is that FDsys will be retired on December 14, 2018.  The “next generation” govinfo.gov, a service of the GPO, will replace it.  Important information about the transition and answers to frequently asked questions can be found here.

Thomson Reuters Corp. announced that it will cut its workforce by 12%, eliminating 3200 jobs by 2020 as part of a plan to streamline business and reduce costs. The company declined to say where the cuts were being made, but said they will “simplify the company in every way that we can,” including reducing the number of offices and locations. They will continue to focus on the legal, tax, and news businesses, and plan to “cross-sell more products to existing customers,” while cutting the number of products sold. The company claims this will make it easier for customers to do business with them.  I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?

Read more about it here.

WIPO Lex is a “global database that provides free of charge access to legal information on intellectual property, such as treaties administered by WIPO, other IP-related treaties, and regulations of some 200 countries.” Search the full text of documents using simple search terms, or search by subject matter, treaty name, or member country. Retrieve the full text of laws (including constitutions), regulations, treaties, and IP literature, arranged in reverse chronological order.  It even includes historical or superseded versions where available. It looks like an impressive collection of IP materials.  Check it out here.

As of December 1, 2018, briefs and appendices filed electronically in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will be available to the public immediately. Previously, briefs were withheld from the public – sometimes for days – pending review by the clerk’s office.

For more information, read the procedures memo here and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s announcement here.

HeinOnline announced the completion and release of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set Phase I.  Phase I includes full indexing of the Serial Set and 40-year (1978-2018) content archive.  This is an ongoing project with a goal of adding as many as four million pages to HeinOnline each year until the archive is complete.

For those not familiar with this resource, the Serial Set began publication in 1817 and contains reports and documents from House and Senate committees on proposed legislation and issues under investigation.

Read more about the HeinOnline project here.

Through an agreement with Twitter, the Library of Congress has collected and preserved an archive of public tweet texts from 2006 to the present.  The Library of Congress recently announced that it will change its collection strategy.  Effective January 1, 2018, they will “acquire tweets on a selective basis.”  The tweets collected and archived will be “thematic and event-based, including events such as elections, or themes of ongoing national interest, e.g. public policy.”

Read more about the changes on the Library of Congress website or in the white paper summarizing the announcement.

Jean O’Grady reports that Practicing Law Institute (PLI) plans to remove their content from Bloomberg Law when the license expires at the end of this year.  PLI will develop and promote their own digital platform PLI Plus.  Read Jean’s insights here.

With the help of machine learning and natural language processing tools, you can now “receive email alerts when articles are added to HeinOnline that are similar to those written by a specific author.”  For more information and instructions on how to create your alert, read the announcement here.

Amazon recently announced Alexa for Business, “a new AWS service that provides every employee with an intelligent assistant to simplify their interactions with the technology around them at work—in conference rooms, at their desks, and around the office.”  Sounds intriguing.  Is there a use for Alexa in your law library?

Read the full press release here.

In case you haven’t heard, ALM announced it will launch a new platform that “unites ALM’s 18 legal brands under the common law.com URL.”  The platform includes familiar publications such as The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel, National Law Journal, and more.  Robert Ambrogi writes that it was built with mobile devices in mind and that subscription options will remain unchanged.  For more details, read the press release here or Robert Ambrogi’s review here.

LexisNexis^® announced an alliance with Uptime Legal Systems to provide Time Matters® and PCLaw® customers “with a hosted remote access option, allowing them to access their law firm matters, contacts, documents, invoices and other practice management functions, anytime, anywhere via a secure online connection.”  Read more about it in the press release.

Internet Archive and OCLC have agreed to synchronize metadata describing their digital books with OCLC’s WorldCat.  “When synchronization work is complete, library patrons will be able to discover the Internet Archive’s collection of 2.5 million digitized monographs through the libraries around the world.”  Read more about it here.

The Law Library of Congress just released a new chatbot.  It walks you through a basic reference interview to help connect you to primary law sources, research guides, and foreign law reports.  Sounds fantastic!  Read more about it at We are Excited to Announce the Release of the Law Library of Congress Chatbot.

LexisNexis announced plans to retire lexis.com over the next 12 months and upgrade U.S. legal professionals to Lexis Advance.  Read the press release here.