Collect and Curate Content with Read It Later Apps

How do you save online content for later retrieval? Do you bookmark the webpage or article that you plan to visit or read again? Bookmarks are good tools for maintaining a directory of frequently accessed websites within your browser, but when you bookmark a page, you are simply creating an anchor, a digital marker for each site you visit on a regular basis. This can be a useful tool indeed, but it offers no value-added features such as tagging, note-taking, or highlighting. Instead, try using a "read it later" app or browser extension such as Pocket, Instapaper, or GoogleKeep. All three offer additional features that browser bookmarks do not. For a good review of three of the most popular apps, see this article in PC World.

In addition to Pocket and Instapaper referenced above, PC World also mentions Facebook Save, a read it later tool built right into the popular social media platform, which allows you store content, discovered via your Facebook newsfeed, for access at a later date. All of these tools are useful, and each has features that provide an advantage over the others. Compare what each has to offer, and decide for yourself which application works best for you!

Free Westlaw CLE from the Legal Tech Institute

The Legal Tech Institute at the Harris County Law Library is hosting a free Westlaw CLE this week. To register, visit the Course Calendar on the Legal Tech Institute website.

Join us on Thursday, February 16, 12:00pm to 1:00pm for a Vendor Visit from our Westlaw representative who will discuss Legislative and Statutory Resources available for free on the Law Library’s Westlaw computers. Texas attorneys can earn 1.0 hour CLE credit.

You can also watch past CLEs anytime on the Legal Tech Institute On-demand Learning webpage. CLE credit is available in Texas for viewing the video up to a year after the live event.

Latest & Greatest – Davis’s Texas Estate Planning Forms 2017

By Mickey R. Davis

Published by O’Connor’s

KFT 1340 .A65 D38

The Harris County Law Library is pleased to have a new addition to its collection of books from that trusted and reliable publisher, O’Connor’s: Davis’s Texas Estate Planning Forms 2017. This new resource, designed to assist in the drafting of wills and the providing of estate planning services to clients, contains a myriad of forms that can be adapted to fit your client’s situation. There is an entire chapter devoted to advanced directives and powers of attorney and an extensive sampling of various types of wills based upon marital status and the need for tax planning. You can also find provisions and clauses for specific testamentary gifts, administrative issues, and the payment of expenses and debts. There are also examples of simple wills that are good for those whose estates are a bit simpler and require little or no additional estate planning. Moreover, there is a chapter dedicated to trusts, including irrevocable gift trusts, irrevocable life insurance trusts, and charitable trusts . Like the library’s other Texas resources from O’Connor’s, the forms contained in this book can be found on O’Connor’s Online here at the law library.

Geography and the Law Exhibit at the Harris County Law Library

This month, the Law Library is exploring Geography and The Law, a new exhibit on display until February 28th. Learn how a treasure map and a Google Earth satellite image played a role in two recent court decisions and how a Story Map is impacting access to justice. 

The following cases are featured in the exhibit.

United States of America v. Paciano Lizarraga-Tirado, 789 F. 3d 1107 (2015)

After a Border Patrol agent recorded the GPS coordinates of a defendant’s arrest using a handheld device, the evidence was questioned as hearsay. The panel of judges in this case disagreed. Google Earth satellite images, like photographs, make no assertion, even when the software identifies a specific location on that image with a tack and GPS coordinates. Tack-coordinate pairs are auto-generated and require no human intervention. As such, images labeled in this way are not hearsay.

Smith v. The Abandoned Vessel, 610 F. Supp. 3d 868 (2009)

Plaintiff Nathan Smith, a self-described treasure hunter, sought title, under the law of finds, to a legendary sunken ship in Refugio County, Texas. To locate the ship, Smith consulted an 1851 county map along with GPS data and satellite images from Google Earth. He cobbled together his own sort of treasure map and felt certain that he had found the long-lost vessel. Unfortunately, his spurious claims and questionable geographic and scientific evidence failed to persuade the court. The case was dismissed.

National African American History Month: Justice Thurgood Marshall Digital Exhibit

In 1925, the historian, Carter G. Woodson, called for a week-long celebration to recognize the contributions of African Americans in the development of our country. Negro History Week was celebrated for the first time 1926 and expanded to a full month in 1976, the year of our nation's sesquicentennial. President Gerald R. Ford urged Americans to "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."

Many notable African Americans have played a role in shaping the law and achieving civil rights. With this exhibit, we honor perhaps the most influential African American lawyer in U.S. history and the first African American to rise to the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court -- Justice Thurgood Marshall.   

An exhibit commemorating the extraordinary life of Justice Marshall, will be on display in the Law Library lobby throughout the month, and a digital exhibit, the subject of today's Tech Tuesday blog post, is available on the Law Library's website. For additional digital resources celebrating African American history and the remarkable life of Justice Thurgood Marshall, please visit the following sites:

Biography.com -- Thurgood Marshall: A Justice for All (VIDEO)

Thurgood Marshall Center for Service and Heritage

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture