Correcting Errors: Wikipedia and the Library of Congress

Errors on Wikipedia are not hard to find and errors in the Library of Congress catalog are, I guess, not unheard of, but I found one of both today and thought I would use the mechanisms for reporting errors in both and see which one was fixed first.

Of course, in Wikipedia, anyone can edit the entries and correct errors. And easily verified errors in objective facts are not as rampant as its detractors may think, especially in the most popular and widely-read articles. What I found was two related articles that contradict each other; the articles were relatively minor and the fact is a small point, but they don't jibe 100%. And since I don't know the correct answer, I posted a talk comment in both to see how long it would take until someone resolved the differences.

I may have heard of Southern Rock group Black Oak Arkansas and their singer James "Jim Dandy" Mangrum before I saw them mentioned on a documentary I watched over the weekend ("Van Halen: The Early Days"; the documentary pointed out that "Jim Dandy" Mangrum was a big influence on David Lee Roth's on-stage persona; I thought this was a good title to test Netflix's streaming movies for the first time - it works pretty good, its turns out, not that I would want to watch a lot of movies streaming to my computer).

The Wikipedia entries for them, of course, overlap considerably but the one for Mangrum says an early incarnation of Black Oak Arkansas:

"moved to New Orleans and recorded a Stax record that went nowhere."

But the entry for Black Oak Arkansas itself says they:

"moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1969 and signed a record deal with Stax Records. Their self-titled debut album, and their only album with Stax, was largely ignored by the populace."

So where was it, New Orleans or Memphis, where they recorded with Stax? Or did they sign the deal with Stax in Memphis but record the album in New Orleans? This may just be sloppy writing and not a contradiction. Either way, I posted a note in the discussion part of each entry asking for clarification.

The error in the Library of Congress catalog is just a typo. I was looking for some Latin America materials - from any country - for a faculty member and found this title:

Li´neas y criterios jurisprudenciales,Sala de lo Penal, 2005 / [coordinador, Ulices del Dios Guzma´n Canjura ; compilador, Mauricio Haim Luna].

With this subject heading:

Ccriminal law --El Salvador --Digests.

Yes, just a typo - with the extra "c" in criminal.

There's a form on the Library of Congress' catalog for reporting errors, so I entered the LCCN number for this record, put in my brief summary of this error, added my e-mail address, and submitted the message. The acknowledgment said it takes five days on average to respond to these error reports, so I'll keep an eye out for a response and see how long it takes. And I'll check back on the two Wikipedia entrees to see if anyone is monitoring changes to them on their watchlist (which include additions to the discussion pages) and will correct the discrepancy between them. Which will be corrected first?

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CALI.Org Kidnapped by Thai Pirates!!!

Well, digitally kidnapped - something called the “Thailand Knowledge Center” is leeching the web page and trying to glom onto the CALI bandwagon:


(Click the above image for a full-size copy of the screen capture.)

When I inquired about this - thinking that maybe it was a new partnership with a Thai law school - CALI editor extraordinaire Deb Quintel told me they had no idea what was going on and that they would look into it.

Just one of many strange things about this page (like the mis-spelled “CALI: The Canter for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction) is the pop-up about web browsers when you first pull it up (this is the Chrome version of the pop-up:


The CALI folks weren’t surprised by the Japanese essay/paper/presentation I found recently with a bunch of citations and references to CALI, American legal education, instructional technology, etc., because CALI Executive Director John Mayer apparently goes over there regularly and talks CALI up to the local legal ed folks there. Should we start working on anime versions of the CALI lessons? -





One of the recent items I noted at CALI.Org - the original, genuine thing, not a cheap, foreign rip-off - is the CALI disc recyling program; sounds good, but my wife and I have our own version of this:

We didn’t make this - a local artist did, but we soon discovered that when exposed to sunlight for any period of time CDs, DVDs, etc, become very brittle so I’m constantly cleaning up and replacing the bits and pieces that crack and shatter and fall in the garden. So a lot of our school’s CALI discs from previous years get used as replacements.

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President Obama: Law Libraries are Cool!

Well, its not a direct quote, and he wasn’t president then, but a posted picture on PunditKitchen has a photo of the President when he was younger, and those definitely are case reporters on the shelves.




Probably taken for the Harvard Law student newspaper or something? Unless its from U. Chicago, when he was a lecturer at the law school there (1992 - 2004, I believe I read recently). Either way, yes, he - and law libraries - are definitely cool.

Ah! It was from his Harvard student days - one of the hits on the first page of results when searching Google image for

obama “law library”

is this one:




from this story in the Boston Globe from January 28, 2007.

Its from the same photo shoot, and the caption indicates it was from Harvard. But the phrase “law library” in the article isn’t about the picture:

In the fall of 1989, when Obama returned to campus for his second year, students were protesting the lack of minority law school faculty. They staged sit-ins in the law library, camped outside the office of Dean Robert C. Clark, and carried signs that read "Diversity Now" and "Homogeneity Feeds Hatred." (Emphasis added)

Sit-ins in the law library? They didn’t cover how to handle that when I was in library school. (And couldn’t the smart kids at Harvard law have thought up a slogan more catchy than “Homogeneity Feeds Hatred”?)

Good thing the law library at Harvard has all these great chairs:



(From a great presentation at the 2000 ABA Bricks and Bytes conference by Terry Martin, director of the Harvard Law Library.)

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CALI Lesson: Louisiana Primary Legal Resources

My CALI Lesson Louisiana Primary Legal Resources (membership required, and you have to be logged in to access the lesson), is now on-line at CALI.Org.


The lesson will also be on the forthcoming 2009-2010 CALI DVD-Rom.

This was pretty quick - I turned in my final draft with revisions based on the two reviewers' comment about three weeks ago. But it was the first CALI lesson I wrote directly for the flash interface that CALI now prefers to use for all their lessons. The older lessons converted to the flash format don't look so great, but I took into consideration the layout of the flash lessons' display when I made the graphics for this one and it turned out pretty good.
CALI's Legal Research and Writing advisory group started soliciting state lesson a few years ago. I guess the main appeal for these are to students at law schools in a particular state, or who know they are going to be practicing in a state and want to learn about that state's legal resources. We have enough unique stuff in Louisiana to make for a decent lesson, and I hope students at the four law schools here get some use out of it.

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Is the Obama Administration Browsing Blogs for Policy Ideas?

I was belatedly reading at a discussion on Money Law, about the AIG bailout/bonus brouhaha. One of the comments linked to another blog, ButAsForMe.Com, with a posting about the car rental industry jockeying for TARP money. A clause in some legislation in January that amended TARP apparently makes car rental companies eligible for these loans (and, yes, as many commentators have pointed out, much of these “bailouts” are, as I understand it, loans that will eventually have to be paid back by these companies).

This piece at ButAsForMe.Com, posted on February 25, mainly discusses whether Enterprise Rental actually laid off the 2000 employees they said they did when they went begging for their share of the TARP pie. I didn’t read it until this weekend, but what stood out in my mind was this line:

Enterprise successfully argued you can help Detroit by giving loans to end-users. They said they deserve a bailout because they buy a lot of cars and will help the automakers through their own purchases. By following that flow of logic, everyone in the United States should be eligible for a government backed loan to buy a car. (Emphasis added)

The “[b]y following that flow of logic” line is, I guess, meant to be a bit of reductio ad absurdum, the absurd bit being “government backed loan[s] to buy a car”! Hahaha - how ridiculous!!! Even the Obama administration wouldn’t go THAT far, would they?

The reason that line stood out is I had just watched the Leno/Obama gabfest on our DVR. I had to check the transcript, but this story reminded me of something the President said:

In the meantime, we're taking a lot of steps to, for example, opening up -- open up separate credit lines outside of banks for small businesses so that they can get credit -- because there are a lot of small businesses out here who are just barely hanging on. Their credit lines are starting to be cut.

We're trying to set up a securitized market for student loans and auto loans outside of the banking system. (Emphasis added)

I guess its not so ridiculous because the President said it less than three weeks after the ButAsForMe.Com blogger used this as a theoretical absurdity to argue against allowing any company that has to buy cars as part of its business to use TARP money to do so. So the President says that they’re trying to set up a system under which we can all be eligible for a government backed loan to buy a car: good-bye, auto financing industry, or at least a big chunk of it, right? There goes another large segment of our economy usurped by the feds. But its early in the Obama administration and a lot of what they’re throwing up against the wall is not going to stick.

The moral of this story is: be careful what you blog about, for it might come true. Or don’t be careful if you have a wishlist of government entitlements - the administration may be trolling the blogosphere for ideas they hadn’t thought of already. Government-backed car loans! Ha - that is as absurd as the federal government setting up its own chain of check-cashing payday-loan stores! (Posted March 22, 2009; I’m hoping it becomes an official government proposal by mid-April - those 30% fees at Check-N-Go are killing me! Please, President Obama - cap all payday loans at 1% over prime! That’s fair, right?)

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