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Showing posts from January, 2017

CIA Records Search Tool Now Online

The CIA recently announced that its CREST tool is now available online.   CREST is an electronic database of records that have been declassified under the CIA's 25 year program.   While the CREST tool only contains a subset of the declassified records, previously researchers were required to visit the National Archives in Maryland to search the database, so the online tool greatly increases the availability of these records.   The records include information about topics such as the Berlin Tunnel , Project Stargate , and Secret Writin g.   Users can browse the archive or use the website’s advanced search feature to search the records.   To learn more about CREST, visit the CIA website .  

Spring 2017-Brown Bag Presentation Series

Each semester the law library presents a series of presentations covering legal research topics . These presentations are held at 12 noon (see schedule below for the dates of the presentations). All presentations will take place in Room 4 BLB. We will be offering the following sessions for the Spring 2017 semester : 1. International and Foreign Law Research Tuesday, 1/31, Wednesday, 2/1 Dan Donahue, International and Foreign Law Librarian 2. Researching Texas Agency Regulations Tuesday, 2/7, Wednesday, 2/8 Emily Lawson, Reference and Research Librarian 3. Texas Legislative History Research Wednesday, 2/15, Thursday, 2/16 Robert Clark, Reference and Research Librarian 4. Researching Oil & Gas Law Tuesday, 2/21, Wednesday, 2/22 Chris Dykes, Reference and Research Librarian 5. Resources for Legal Practice Tuesday, 2/28, Wednesday, 3/1 Katy Badeaux, Reference and Research Librarian

Historic Federal Register Issues to be Digitized

The United States Government Publishing Office (GPO) and the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) are partnering to digitize and publish historic issues of the Federal Register . Legal researchers interested in historic issues of the Federal Register may currently access scanned images from the Library of Congress website , but this new project will make those issues searchable using the GPO's online system . As of the date of the date of this post, the GPO and OFR have already made issues of the Federal Register published from 1990 to 1994 available online through this new project.  The project plans to digitize all historic issues going back to the first issue of the Federal Register published in 1936.

White House Social Media Archives Announced

Yesterday the White House announced a series of archival projects related to “the first Social Media presidency.” These include a searchable archive of over 250,000 social media posts from the Obama White House, a comprehensive collection of Obama GIFs, an interactive tool that analyzes White House tweets, and complete archives of the White House’s Twitter, Facebook, and Vine accounts. The Internet Archive will also be making White House social media data available on its website. You can read more about these projects here .  In related news, the Internet Archive recently launched its Trump Archive , an ongoing project that already includes over 520 hours of video related to President-elect Donald Trump.