Having happily agreed to post a Friday Fillip for Simon Fodden, I unexpectedly and blithely extended my May vacation thereby dropping the proverbial ball! Sorry, Simon! Hence, this Tuesday Friday Fillip … Fun with Wills!

If you haven’t already come across the unusual will of Charles Vance Millar, a lawyer, who must have been a pretty funny guy, read this. His 1926 will opens with the clause:

“This Will is necessarily uncommon and capricious because I have no dependents or near relations and no duty rests upon me to leave any property at my death and what I do leave is proof of my folly in gathering and retaining more than I required in my lifetime.”

Some of the clauses are very funny! Read more in this post by Paul Trudelle at the Toronto Estate Law Blog.

"Millar’s will set off significant litigation, with proceedings arising in relation to most of the clauses."

I love a clever headline. Sadly, I'm better at enjoying them than I am at creating them but every now and then, genius strikes me and you can bet I want to headline it! Largely, though, it has worked in my favour that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) frowns on the pithy headline. The trade off? B-O-R-I-N-G!! I post every day to our law firm's internal blog and what's even more challenging than creating a clever title for a post is creating a clever title that is also clearly descriptive of the content. Mostly, the headlines run to the latter.

I saw a post today at Boing Boing that reflects my conflicting feelings about the sound advice that supports informative and descriptive headlines over witty ones. All well and good, but gee, I sure get a kick out of the headlines that make me smile or even laugh out loud!

Read Newspapers Search for Web Headline Magic (linked to from Boing Boing) at Cnet.

A blidget is a widget that will take your blog content and make it into a widget that can be used anywhere to display your sites content.

Simply enter your site's url, give your blidget some style with the layout, theme color and title etc and then publish your Blidget. If you aren't already registered with widgetbox, you'll be asked to register before your Blidget will be published. Once published, you can promote your blidget on your site with a button or just leave it at widgetbox for people to grab.

Check it out at Widgetbox.

Here's what a Slaw Blidget might look like …

[Ed. note: thumbnail removed and full size image added]

Found via etc.

Environment Canada – Climate Data Online

It's been a while since I've needed to use this wonderful web tool. It's one of those sites that I would expect most legal researchers to know about but there are surely some who don't. It's a gem and I don't think it's been highlighted on Slaw before.

Use the "customized search" option to further narrow your search. You can even select a park or a location by longitude and latitude.

It was -25 and clear during the hour that I was born.

Duncan W. Glaholt of Glaholt LLP has published a review of Kirsh's Index to Canadian Construction Law Literature by Harvey J. Kirsh (Construction Law Letter, Volume 23, No.2, page 11). The book is scheduled to be available from Carswell at the end of this month.

Some excerpts:

There is no other national construction law bibliography at this point, here or elsewhere.

Not only is the Kirsh index devoted to our practice area, but has the rarest of all attributes in books of its type: it is something that you can actually use in your day-to-day practice.

Not only is Harvey Kirsh the foremost construction law editor in the country, he has led several of our construction law organizations, not the least of which is the Canadian College of Construction Lawyers.

The Kirsh index is organized into almost 200 separate subject matter headings, encompassing the work of over as many individual authors, many of them with dozens of excellent publications to their credit. Importantly, the Kirsh index references privately published conference papers as well as more traditional publications. Non-lawyers who have published relevant articles are also represented, which is another service available in no other publication that I am presently aware of. I was pleasantly surprised to see 39 separate full-length books cited, representing an intensity of scholarly activity in this area of law that is often overlooked.

In his review, Mr. Gaholt describes how he searched for similar information on the Web but was unable to find any comprehensive Internet resources. He discusses the long recognized specific need for such a bibliography by the industry not only in Canada but as documented in other parts of the world.

I thought this title was worth bringing to your attention because it appears to be unique and will be most welcomed by construction law lawyers. My construction law lawyers are eager to get their hands on it!

The N.Y.U. Journal of International Law and Politics is very pleased to announce the publication of the 1st edition of of its Guide to Foreign and International Legal Citation (296 pages, PDF).

With a nod to Sabrina Pacifici at beSpacific.

Since I posted this, I see that Michel-Adrien Sheppard has also posted about this on his Library Boy Blog and he has provided some comments.

Even though Canada is a bilingual country, few people in this law office are fluent in French and it just so happens that I've recently had a handful of lawyers desperately needing French documents translated. None of these lawyers were aware of there being translators available online. One lawyer had a 60 page pdf document and when I told him it would take only minutes to translate it using Altavista’s Babelfish, he didn't believe me. He ran back to his office to email the document to me only after giving me strict instructions NOT to run it through the translator until he got back. He wanted to see this for himself! I hadn't used Babelfish for a long time and had never used it for anything more than 7 pages of text, so I thoroughly delighted in the look on the lawyer's face when the entire document appeared, translated, in less than a minute! He was flabbergasted and, quite frankly, so was I. I just didn't let it show. I was even more delighted when later I walked by to hear this same very animated lawyer telling another lawyer about this "magic" I'd shown him. As I understand it, he had previously been muddling through French documents with his own limited understanding and using a French/English dictionary. No wonder he was so excited!

Of course, we all know that the translations done through Altavista’s Babelfish, Google Language Tools or any of the many other web translators are very literal and less than ideal, but they still do a good enough job to provide context and usually that has been enough.

I know that many French cases are translated into English and I only use the translators for those when I've exhausted all other options. Now here's my question for you. Is there something else I should be using instead of online translators when nobody here is fluent in the language of the document in question? Is there a particular translating tool that people generally prefer? Any tips or tricks?

What I found in this last translation exercise is that Google Language Tools could not manage the large files I needed to translate but Altavista’s Babelfish had no apparent limits. It translated that complete 60 page document in a snap! Google, on the other hand, cut off translating after a relatively small number of characters.

Altavista’s Babelfish and Google Language Tools are limited in language options. For languages not handled by those translating tools (I often need Hungarian and Danish translations, for example), I use FaganFinder's Translation Wizard, which even offers translations from and to Swahili, Arabic and Urdu, and more. Those I haven't needed but I kind of hope I do someday.

The lawyer I was working with who was so gaga over the web translators I showed him wanted to know more so I showed him how to translate whole web pages in Google. I also showed him the translator on my Google Toolbar that allows me to hover over a word and see the translated terms in the language of my choosing. I set that up for some lawyers who are studying Spanish and Italian and they're pretty stoked about it. If you don't know about it and if you've downloaded the most recent version of the Google Toolbar, go to "manage your toolbar" and add and configure the translation button for your toolbar.

Another option is to use a translation “bookmarklet” on your links bar. Go to Joe Maller: Translation Bookmarklets (Favelets) or Google's Translation Buttons and select the bookmarklets you want.

This May 2005 article by Philipp Lenssen, Google Translator: The Universal Language, about the way Google Translator works was interesting to me.

I'm no expert on this topic and I look forward to the comments of those who have more experience than I. Teach me.

Rory Litwin at Library Juice directs the following to academic librarians:

We tell our students to go to our databases for articles that are “scholarly and reliable,” but we don’t often tell them that most of the articles they will find there, in addition to being scholarly and reliable, are not really intended for an undergraduate audience. These journal articles are mostly narrowly defined studies intended for an audience of scholars who are advancing their fields at the highest levels of learning. Our students can’t even understand the titles of half of these articles.

Often our undergrads need to read articles that present more of an overview of a topic, something that gives them a little bit of depth about it, a bit of background, and in some areas a bit of a picture of the scholarly discourse. Books are usually better than doing this than journal articles, but electronic resources are preferred and tend to be more promoted . There are some articles in scholarly journals here and there that offer a broader treatment of a topic but they are not always easy to find, especially for undergrads left to their own devices.

He proposes a solution. Read the whole post at Library Juice and watch for comments to the post as well. I'm not an academic librarian but I'm interested in this and I wonder what the librarians who work more with students think of Rory Litwin's commentary.

Find materials from Beyond the OPAC : future directions for Web-based catalogues, a seminar organized by the Australian Committee on Cataloguing (ACOC) and held September 18, 2006 in Perth, Australia.

Elisabeth Osmeloski, managing editor at Search Engine Watch , writes in Part I of a two part article:

Does information really want to be free? If so, how can traditional information publishers and aggregators deal with shifting value propositions and revenue models of premium content and survive in the era of free web content?

She comments on a report from the fall conference of the Association of Information and Dissemination Centers (ASIDIC.org) which …

faces multiple challenges as its members struggle to adapt traditional information retrieval methods and legacy systems to the new business models arising with emerging technology.

Over the course of the two-day conference, an attendee mentioned that they thought the fear of change in the industry came from Stewart Brand's often-quoted statement "information wants to be free." Understandably, such a statement would be intimidating to a long established industry that has based its entire existence on the model of selling information.

In the article, the "long-tail concept" is referred to along with this about librarians …

Information discovery and accessibility is the key to producing a long tail.

To further the argument for improved information discovery, Katherine Mossman (Library Journal, July 2006) points out that in the long tail model librarians and libraries play a key role:

• Libraries act as almost limitless inventory collections
• Librarians act as search filters
• Collection management by librarians is a constant work in progress
• Statistics (usage) is a critical factor
• Institutions must be able to measure the ROI on content purchases and continue to make the right choices for their constituents

Part II of this article by Todd Malicoat, an internet marketing consultant for Stuntdubl.com can be found here.

Deane at Gadgetopia has an interesting post about intranets . She writes:

There are three types of intranets. They’re very different, and when someone thinks “intranet,” they’re no doubt thinking of one of the three types. Intranets can overlap from one type to another, but they tend to fall along these lines:

1. The collaboration platform
2. The internal Web site
3. The distributed intranet

When discussing an intranet with a client or within your own organization, you need to first figure out what people think when the word “intranet” comes up.

Semantics. Is it a regular issue with you, too? How many lawyer/management/librarian/technology meetings have you been to where the terms in question mean different things to different people and often the different interpretations don't come to light until well into an increasingly confusing discussion? That's when you say, "Hold on here. Let's get something straight"! Terms we struggle with include "knowledge management", "precedent", "work product", "taxonomy", "account", "network" … and the list goes on. This is why legislation usually starts with a list of definitions right off the bat, right? Now I know to make sure we're straight on "intranet", too.

Here is the Wikipedia entry for intranet.
I looked at the Wikipedia entry for semantics and laughed! It looks like "semantics" means different things to different people, too!

You'd think we'd try to avoid making our already confusing English language even more confusing, but no! Someone somewhere is laughing!

When I came in to work this morning, there was a toppling stack of cast-off books, binders, pamphlets, etc. on my desk. Lots of stuff. At a quick glance, none of it looks very promising.

People regularly clean out their offices and anything that looks somewhat informationish ends up on my desk, chair or booktruck, often without any indication of who left it. Sometimes people will "gift me" with books that are completely unrelated to anything remotely associated with law and I can tell by the looks on their faces that they think they're doing me a favour. Most of the time I know they're trying to disguise the truth of the matter, which is that they don't want the "perfectly good" book either but can't bear the other options. There's always the library to take it. They like books, don't they?

As often happens, I was too busy to deal with today's donated stack and I expect the same tomorrow. But, needing my work space, I started shifting "the stack" to the cupboard where I've been putting other material that has been dumped in the library. Oops. The cupboard is full. No room at the inn.

I now have a monster on my hands and will be scheduling some time to deal with it. Sometimes it's hard to get ahead.

Does anyone have any tips and tricks to help manage all the donations, most of which aren't of any value? Should I attempt a book sculpture for the reception area and, in a sense, "give back" to the firm? If you can't inspire me maybe you can make us all laugh!

… or Sorry, Honey, I could have sworn it was bigger in the picture!

Can you visualize somethign that is 192 x 45.6 x 32 mm? Me neither. That's where sizeasy comes in. Just enter the dimensions of something and compare it to other common objects such as a deck of cards, a box of matches, a bottle of wine, etc, so you can see just how big it really is. And you can view it from different angles! Cool! See some examples here.

Now when I'm shopping for gems on eBay, I'll know when that gorgeous Canadian diamond that looks HUGE in the picture is really just a little chip in real life. Then again, since I'm not going to buy it anyway, a girl can dream can't she?

Found at BoingBoing.

Speaking of Boing Boing, I subscribe to the feed. It's a hugely popular site with excellent contributors and it's a great source of "Friday Amusements" that I post on our internal blog. But it's also a good practical resource. They regularly post content that is about Canada and/or legal news.

Coming from a family where almost every man in my life (my Dad, three brothers, and my son) is red/green colour challenged, it’s been something that I consider in almost everything I do. I won’t regale you with stories of disastrous wardrobe choices, fondue fork confusions, farming challenges (Is it still green?), non-option careers (no pilots, electricians, police officers or firefighters in my family) or tales from school (Why did you colour your Mom’s hair green?) but believe me, I have a few stories to tell!

Naturally, colour interpretation has always been of personal interest to me. But I’ll make my case for why it should be of interest to you if it isn’t already.

It has been estimated that anywhere from 7 to 12% of caucasian males are colour blind. Women are rarely colour blind but they pass the gene on to their children.

Many of us are involved with the design and presentation of visuals … all kinds of documentation, website and blog designs, power point presentations, display posters, visual evidence for trials, etc. When you consider the number of colour challenged people out there, odds are that some of the people looking at the visuals we design are colour blind. What does it mean to us if they can’t see our information clearly? What if some people aren’t using your website because they have trouble seeing the links? How does it impact the course of a trial if the judge or some members of the jury can’t properly differentiate the lines on a chart describing how an accident in question took place?

There is a good article on colour blindness, with links and photographic examples, at Wikipedia. I typically bold my links so it's easier for a colour blind person to see them.

There are guidelines available on the web for how to design all kinds of things with the colour challenged people in mind. This goes for brochures, charts, maps, websites, to name a few. Imagine a teacher using pink chalk on a green chalk board. Imagine how hard it must be for a colourblind person to distinguish the various colours on a map. Christmas must just be a sea of brownish tones. Picking strawberries can be a bit challenging. How hard would it be for a colourblind person to see a green/red/brown design on a website? An orange line on green grass marking the boundaries of a sports field? For the farmers in my family it's a challenge to know when a crop is ripe and ready to harvest. They go by texture, taste, scent, timing and consultation.

Here is a good resource for designing for people across the spectrum. This, too, is a good article about colour design for colour challenged people. If you search for information about colour blindness on the web, you’ll find a wealth of information and examples to suit your needs. Here is a great example of how websites must be careful about colour design.

It was wonderful for me to finally be able to really see what all my colour blind family members see and you can do that, too, by using Vischeck.. The first time I ran a picture through Vischeck I cried, it was such a shock. But I quickly got over it. My son doesn’t appear to have suffered any for being colour blind and, in fact, it’s probably made him more gregarious. As a young boy he always had to speak up and say, “Hey! Is this green or red?”, to which we (and his classmates) often ended up saying, “Neither, it’s brown. “

"Porn for book nerds”. VERY effective! The "nonist" writes, “… (14) gorgeous photos, nearly all without visitors and just begging to be entered.”

I’m speechless with library lust! I know some of you will feel the same way. Has anyone had the opportunity to visit any of these libraries or any other such incredible ones?

See 14 photos from Candida Höfer's book, Libraries, at Red-Hot and Filthy Library Smut Get a copy for yourself at Amazon.ca.

Nancy Soonpaa writes:

According to the May 2006 issue of The Bar Examiner, the National Conference of Bar Examiners is looking at the need for and feasibility of testing legal research skills and "is at the first stage in allowing the idea of such an evaluation to germinate . . . our inquiry is expected to last through the next year."

The article indicates that the NCBE folks are working with academic law librarians to investigate the possibilities.

Found at the Legal Writing Prof Blog.

How do Canadian and American bar exams compare in their testing of legal research skills? Do any Slawers know? I'm glad to see that law librarians are involved in the discussions.

Is there anyone out there who ISN'T frustrated with Canada Law Book's O'Brien's Online?

After fielding yet another call from a lawyer who can't get it to work and after having yet more problems with it myself and having learned, through a call to tech support, that the online "help" isn't exactly correct, I requested a training session. Well, that was a laugh a minute in the way that if you didn't laugh, you'd cry! The poor trainer. Almost every possible snafu that can possibly happen with O'Brien's happened within the first 10 minutes of our training session after which we both determined that I don't need training, we all just need an O'Brien's Online that works.

My trainer told me (a bit sheepishly) that all of these problems are on the list for the technical people to fix but anyone who uses O'Brien's Online knows that these issues have been around since the beginning and even though O'Brien's Online is an add-on to the print O'Brien's Forms and Precedents, there is every expectation that it should work.

I have instructed my lawyers to not use O'Brien's Online but to ask me to use it for them until such time that the service improves. I have learned a few work-arounds with it that are just too unintuitive to expect others in the firm to learn. The frustrated one might as well be me, which doesn't mean I have to be quiet about it.

I told my trainer (who was most understanding and apologetic, by the way) that having such a shoddy product really reflects badly on Canada Law Book as a whole. It tells me that Canada Law Book can't do online products where the other major Canadian publishers producing online products can. My trainer encouraged me to make my voice heard by Canada Law Book but by raising the issue here I hope I've stepped that up a level.

Can anyone shed some light on this frustrating problem?

If you are a classification junkie, this will make you salivate: The Collier Classification Scheme for Very Small Objects, a project by Brian Collier.

An attractive, clean and intriguing website design, a very cool classification scheme for things that might have previously been considered "square pegs". An interesting choice of everyday English instead of Latin for the taxonomy. Don't miss the introduction, which I found fascinating.

Check out the database of collected and classified very small objects. Don't you want to collect, classify and contribute one of your own? I'm going to be looking in my library corners for something very small that just screams to be collected and classified.

I've had good intentions about more aggressively trying to get our lawyers using RSS but time has been restrictive and though I keep putting out hooks on our office blog, only one lawyer has taken the bait so far. I have plans for a workshop but that just hasn't happened yet … I'm aiming for the fall when enthusiasm will be higher than usual (I think).

With all this in mind, it was with interest I read Michael Stephens' post at Tame the Web, "TTW Mailbox: Selling RSS to Medical Librarians" (the title is a little misleading) about how one librarian, David Rothman, is turning his "physician-clients" on to RSS. There's no reason why this wouldn't work just as well with lawyers, don't you think?

Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Chancellor Professor of Marketing and Director of the Center for Market Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, has published a very detailed study of business blogging entitled, Behind the Scenes in the Blogosphere.

Dr. Barnes details what was learned from extensive research into blogging for business, including surveys, email conversations and interviews with hundreds of bloggers. Very interesting reading.

Reference found to this study at Blawg Review.

And while we're on the topic of blogging, take a look at this A to Z of Professional Blogging by Darren Rouse. What an extensive list! I think it will be worthwhile perusing for either beginner or experienced bloggers.

Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman at Search Engine Watch write …

"Online newspapers have often ignored search engines, or viewed them with mistrust, relying on the power of their brands to drive traffic. That attitude is changing dramatically at the New York Times, and with powerful effect … "

Read the whole article at Search Engine Watch.

I've encouraged the lawyers at my firm to read this article. I think it's a well-written, easy to follow (for non-geeks) article that explains concepts that I prefer them to understand. The authors explain how most newspaper websites work and why you can’t often find newspaper articles that are older than 7 to 14 days without using special indices/indexes (which is the correct term these days?). They also explain the importance of “meaningful titles”, which is contrary to how journalists and editors have been trained in the past. Meaningful titles are not just important for anyone wanting their information found on the web but they are also important in the subject lines of emails and blog posts. The article gives some idea of how journalism and the newspaper industry are changing to better mesh with the internet … they have to, don't they?. I, for one, don’t appreciate what The Times is doing in terms of “cloaking content”, particularly if search results aren’t clearly labeled as “cloaked”. Don't you find it frustrating when something that comes up in your search results sounds bang on and then you find you have to register or pay to see it? I like that those results appear but I wish they were better marked so you know the limitations right off the bat. Or am I just spoiled by automatic linking to full text?

I stumbled upon this post and I've been twisting my head back and forth trying to absorb and understand this. I haven't had much time to really sort it out but something tells me it's worth knowing about. While I'm putting this on my personal back-burner, maybe this speaks to someone more immediately and maybe someone will make it clearer to me before I start digging.

Eric Lease Morgan writes:

SRW/U is used for searching indexes (, and to some degree databases as well). It is possible to use it to search just about any list of stuff you have. Books. Journals. Articles. Microforms. Reference sources. Names. Addresses. Telephone numbers. Internet resources. TEI, EAD, and other XML files. Etc.

Please, if this interests you, check out the entire post … What is SRW/U? that I found at the TechEssence Info blog.

Why didn't I know I could do this until now? Did you? If so, why didn't you tell me?!!

I just had an advanced training session with our new WeC learning consultant, Sebastian Stella. He showed me this little trick that I have already posted on our firm's internal blog. It's SWEET and I can't believe I didn't figure this out on my own since I use this right-click feature all the time otherwise.

Okay … here it is …

You can right click on any link within WestlaweCARSWELL and choose to open it in a new window! And you can continue doing this as often as you wish. No having to go back to your search results.

That's it. I'll be using this all the time.

Thanks, Sebastian!

Here is something that I'll tuck away for possible (hopefully NOT) future reference … how to come to terms with and move on after the failure of a technology-based initiative as written by Dorothea Salo who writes at TechEssence.

Read it for yourself at TechEssence.Info. I hope you never need to know this either!

From this site's "about page":

Roy Tennant started TechEssence to address the need for simple, easy to understand information about information technology. He is lucky to be joined by a stellar cast of individuals who contribute their unique perspectives on technology and its appropriate place in library service.

You might want to subscribe to the feed.

There's a new Canadian Law Blog out there … BC Criminal Law Blog … maintained by Stern & Albert.

LibraryThing has opened its doors to organizations such as law firms. A pricing structure has been put in place … $25 per year to 500 books and $50 per year to 5,000 books.

Check out the guidelines at Can Organizations Join LibraryThing? LibraryThing is working on some features that will prevent the collections for organization from negatively impacting the LibraryThing experience for those with personal collections. It also sounds like they will be developing further enhanced features that will be attractive to organizations with small library collections. Sounds interesting.

Considering the cost of feature-rich library software, which is sometimes more than many small firm libraries need and then the not so attractive alternative that some have gone to such as using Microsoft Access to catalogue their collections (rather than spend bundles on costly library software), LibraryThing might just nicely fill that gap.

A few years ago I was in the position of having to choose software for our firm's library catalague and as much as I would liked to have gone with Inmagic, with which I was already familiar, the cost was simply prohibitive for a collection the size of this one. After much looking and testing, we finally settled on Insignia Software and I've been quite happy with it. That it was initially designed for schools was an attractive selling point. The Web OPAC has proved to be very easy for the lawyers to use no matter their level of comfort with technology. Still, I'll be watching LibraryThing.

I wonder what library software others are using in their firm or corporate libraries? I know one other firm in Saskatoon is using Insignia. Is anyone else? It astounds me when I hear that firms are using Microsoft Access. I've used that application before for other things but I do think it's a sad substitute for library software.

I've been doing a lot of research lately on law firm web site design and with all the scooting around the internet I do, I've developed some pretty solid feelings about what I like and don't like regarding aesthetics, functionality, content, features, and so forth. It was with some interest that I perused the list of web sites (American … the international list, which includes Canada, won't be made available until later) that received IMA (Internet Marketing Attorney) Awards for 2006/07.

Personally, I found some of the top-rated sites a little "busy" by my standards but then, reading the comments, it became apparent that Micah U. Buchdahl, who does the reviews, has heard this comment before about the choices. It's a personal thing, I guess. Still, I must say that my favourite contenders were the sites that looked a little cleaner … less cluttered.

While waiting for Canada to be represented in the current review process, take a look at the International Firm Reviews from 2004-05, in which Clark Wilson sits in position #1.

Yesterday I listened to a radio programme, Coast to Coast, cohosted by J. Craig Williams and Robert J. Ambrogi and produced by the Legal Talk Network. In this particular programme the elements of an effective law firm web site was discussed. Experts taking part in the discussion were:

1. Tim Stanley, CEO of the legal Web site company Justia.com and former CEO and co-founder of FindLaw,
2. Pete Boyd, Florida attorney and president of PaperStreet Web Design for attorneys, and
3. Dennis Kennedy, lawyer and legal technology innovator.

There were some very good tips presented in this discussion. One that stood out for me is that it's important to be aware that people are increasingly using the internet instead of the yellow pages to find local products and services. This means that having a strong web presence is becoming all the more important. The participants noted that having a web presence involves more than just having a web site and that law firms need to really pay attention and not just once a year.

I'm ready to face the web site committee now, I think.

With all the buzz about Google Calendar, I skipped my coffee break to give it a spin not expecting to find it very useful given that I rely heavily on my Outlook calendar in conjunction with the rest of Outlook. Still, my only out-of-office access to my Outlook Calendar is through my PDA. I don't yet know if Google Calendar will sync with my PDA.

What particularly appeals to me about Google Calendar even without testing it is the ability to share calendars in a collaborative way. Very 2.0.

I found Matt Cutts review of Google Calendar very helpful and I look forward to digging a little deeper into this new tool.

The built-in keyboard shortcuts look to be handy.

Last week, I sat in on Dennis Kennedy's video webinar, Best Practices for Law Firm Technology Committees. It was worth it.

The information provided was solid, practical and based on Dennis's extensive experience with law firms and technology. Not only was the information useful and well-presented, the vehicle for the video conferencing technology provided by Aspen Conferencing was pretty slick, too. This was an excellent way to get the benefits of a superb presentation that I couldn't have otherwise attended.

Dennis opened with some technology committee horror stories (youch!) and then presented ways to avoid such scenarios. There was a question and answer session at the end of the webinar and I would be surprised if anyone registered didn't feel inspired and appropriately armed to retool their firm's own technology committee into something more effective. The line that replays like a mantra for me is "Preventing surprises is job #1".

With the webinar came a very good 42 page guide to Best Practices for Law Firm Technology Committees. It includes Dennis's fully annoted Top 10 Tips for Technology Committees as well as some of the following articles that are also available on the internet.

• Seven Easy Ways for Law Firms to Throw Away Money on Technology
• The Best is the Enemy of the Good: Making Good Technology Choices
• Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Predictions for 2006: Small Steps for Most Firms, Giant Leaps for a Few Firms
• Rethinking Your Approach to Legal Technology / November 2005
• Placing Your Bet on Client-Driven Technologies

Aspen Conferencing has made the replay of Dennis Kennedy's recent video webinar, Best Practices for Law Firm Technology Committees, available for free viewing here.

Sometimes, particularly at times of significant world events, I go to the Newseum's Today's Front Pages to get a sense of how (or if) the rest of the world is reporting about them. It's very interesting and the technology that allows you to look at so many front pages is way cool, too.

"Today's Front Pages" is an online presentation of one of the Newseum's most popular exhibits. Every morning, more than 400 newspapers from around the world submit their front pages to the Newseum via the Internet … the full selection of each day's front pages is available on newseum.org by 9:30 a.m. daily."

This isn't a tool that allows you to search or look at front pages from other dates and you can only view FRONT pages, all of which doesn't make this a research tool. That said, I still refer to it regularly to get a sense of how the world responds to events. They do keep archived front pages for major world events and you can find those at Archived Front Pages.

Try the map view. I'm disappointed that there are no Saskatchewan newspapers represented. A couple of years ago I contacted the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and provided them with the information they would need to participate, but no luck. I'm going to give it another shot. If your local paper isn't there, encourage it to join, too. Instructions are here.

You might be interested to know that there is a lawyer ratings site on the internet. It's called LawyerRatingz.com. This is a place where clients can post their personal reviews and ratings. If you know any American lawyers, you might want to check to see if they’re listed at lawyerratingz.com.

What’s interesting about this is that while the site rates only American lawyers for now, if it’s successful I would expect a Canadian site to follow.

If you’re familiar with RateMyProfessor.com, you will understand how this works. RateMyProfessor.com was initially only available for American Universities and, based on it’s popularity, was soon expanded to Canadian Universities and post-secondary institutions. In fact, it’s such a popular concept that it soon became available for high schools and elementary schools with RateMyTeachers.ca. These sites have been hotly contested by many institutions and individuals but they remain popular with students and parents. I know that even professors and teachers who don't approve of the sites are likely to be very aware of their own ratings and the ratings of colleagues.

Here’s a true story. A professor I know was so unhappy about his low rating and the unflattering comments posted by students to ratemypfofessor.com that he had the website remove his name from the system. He had not been a particularly popular professor with students long before ratemyprofessor.com came along. I checked ratemyprofessor.com a few years later for his name and it was back but this time his rating was improved and there were more positive than negative comments. My suspicion is that the professor did, in fact, make the effort to improve his teaching and to be more attentive to his students. I think the public ratings ultimately had greater impact than the internal student ratings that are collected after each term.

Do you think clients and potential clients will start using a rating and review site before choosing legal representation? Do you think such a site might generally improve the quality of service that lawyers provide? Do you think that such a lawyer rating site will even fly in the first place? I haven't found a "ratemylibrarian" site yet, have you?

You might already be familiar with Darlene Fichter, but if you're not, I think she's someone you should know about. Since I'm the lone Saskatchewan Slaw contributor for the time being, I think it's high time I promoted some local talent.

Several years ago, I attended an "Introduction to blogging workshop" at which Darlene presented. She is a front-runner in all things to do with libraries and technology. In fact, Darlene was one of Library Journal's 2002 Movers & Shakers: The People Who Are Shaping the Future of Libraries.

Darlene Fichter is Data Library Coordinator at the University of Saskatchewan Library. Since 1991, she has managed dozens of digital library, Internet, intranet, and extranet projects. Darlene is particularly interested in human-computer interaction, collaboration and KM, social software including blog and wikis, online learning, metadata and digital libraries. In addition to speaking at library and IT conferences, she is also the owner of the web design and consulting company Northern Lights Internet Solutions, Ltd. You can read a little more about her at the Special Libraries Assocation. There's a 2002 interview with her available at Ex Libras.

Darlene's website displays her blog content in the left column, hence her blog's title, Blog on the Side. You might want to add it to your feed reader.

Back to the serious business of law libraries. (Are you kidding? Late on a Friday afternoon?)

I'd like to take a few moments to commiserate (not to be mistaken for whining) with other librarians, particularly solos, who bravely bear their burdens alone.

Here's my last couple of days (you've had days like this, too, I know) …

I'm slugging my way through an uncommonly large backlog of information and research requests. I'm thinking that I might almost have it under control by the end of the week if I really work my butt off and sequester myself away. But then I lose my internet connection for half a day. Unfortunately, the backlog continues to grow thanks to email, phones and (by virtue of location and design) the drive-by availability of me. I notice that there is a direct correlation between the number of new requests I get and the duration of internet loss. Hmmmm … note to self … plan out of office excursions during future internet fiascos.

When our library was renovated along with the rest of the office several years ago, it seemed a good idea at the time to be more visible and accessible. Previously I'd been in a corner (and "nobody puts baby in a corner") far, far removed from almost everyone else and since the firm hadn't had anyone providing library services for a few years, I really had to work at getting people to remember to come to me for assistance. You can see how being more "out there" would have been an attractive option at the time. So here I am … in the middle of a thoroughfare where everyone who sees me is reminded of a question they have. I'm now thinking of snagging that empty office across from the library and making it my own so as to minimize some of the "drive-by" activity. You who are planning library renovations, pay heed.

So yes, those are my solo tips for the day …

#1 – Plan out-of-office excursions when the internet goes down.
#2 – Always have an office with a door and some well-respected focus time.

What are your best tips for those who work solo?

Now I'm going to my happy place, which also just so happens to have a "happy hour"! Have a great weekend, everyone!

If I were in the dating market, this would be more intriguing to me than some of the other options out there.

"Basically it's speed-dating, but in a new setting—with books," is how Belgian librarian Eric Van der Straeten describes the "lib-dating" service he created with fellow librarian Danny Theuwis that pairs readers in a comfortable setting—a library. The duo already have played matchmaker to numerous couples and are now training librarians from as many as 300 facilities to set up their own dating service. Theuwis told the AP he places flowers, candles, and wine on each table, and pairs participants for ten-minute segments in which they discuss their favorite authors and books. Those desiring a second date place a note in the favorite book of their hopeful sweetheart.

Found at Library Journal.

ps: I chuckled at categorizing this under "finding". It is just me or is it a Friday thing?

My first post was about a resource I like out of BC, one that I never see reference to. Moving east, this is one I rely on from Alberta. I never see reference to it either but I think it's a valuable resource.

When asked to find an old (and I mean "old") version of an Alberta Act, I stumbled upon the Alberta Historical Law Collection and I was VERY impressed! It has been developed as part of the Alberta Historical Digitization Project (check out its other interesting offerings) and is produced by the University of Calgary Press with the support of the Alberta Law Foundation.

It includes all of Alberta's Statutes up to 1990, Legislative Assembly Bills, Debates and Journals, the Alberta Gazette and the Ordinances of the Northwest Territories prior to the birth of Alberta.

You can Browse the collection or Search by keyword. Help screens are available for information about the documents and about how to search these pages.

I wish every province had a resource like this! Do tell if there are others out there.

When someone asks you for the Wagon Mound (1) Case, just where do you look? At the BC Courthouse Library Society's Popular Case Name Table, of course!

Someone asked me to get a copy of the Wagon Mound 1 case. That was all they had for me. No proper case name. No citation. “Funny name for a case,” I thought, after I had them repeat it to me about three times. So I did a Google search and I stumbled upon this BC resource that lists the popular names of cases and their corresponding proper names and citations, including parallel citations. VERY COOL! It’s good to give the whole table a quick skim just to get some sense of what’s there. Having done this myself, I learned that there were many times this would have been handy.

My thanks to the BC Courthouse Library Society!

I’ve been giving the newest version of the Google Toolbar a spin and it has some nifty new features that I like.

Having used the Google Toolbar from the time it was introduced, I’ve come to rely heavily on it for quick internet searching but the unexpected bonus that has come with using it turns out to be impressing lawyers and staff! Often they’ll ask me some really simple question (though they don’t know it’s simple) and they’ll watch over my shoulder while I find their answer. Being able to quickly find their answers using the Google Toolbar has given me instant credibility (if there had been any doubt – these are lawyers I’m dealing with, after all, and they tend to doubt everything and everyone) and even more so after they have me install the toolbar on their own computers and give them a little training session. Some of them think, at first, that it’s the Google Toolbar that is the magic but soon enough most of them realize that it’s HOW you use the Google Toolbar that is the real magic, further enhancing my credibility when they find they can’t make it work the same way I can. *tee hee*

• My favourite past Google Toolbar features have been:

• The Lucky button. Mostly this impresses the lawyers who come to my desk and are looking over my shoulder while I find what they want. They can’t believe I can get to a site so fast!

• The Search Canada button. Not a perfect filter but still, very helpful much of the time.

• The Search Within a Site Button. I often find this works better than the site search features available at many web sites.

• The Highlighter and Word Find buttons. These are the main reasons I can barely function without my Google Toolbar and again, another big selling feature for those lawyers who are looking over my shoulder.

• The Pop-Up Blocker.

New features that I really like are:

• The Google Bookmarks button. I love the way this works and it is much better than using Favourites with Internet Explorer. You can tag the web pages that you bookmark and you can use as many tags as you choose. It has a nice, clean look about it, too.

• The Send To button. This is super handy for those of us who do a lot of reference work and even for sending information to myself for safe-keeping. You just highlight the part of the web page that interests you and click the “send to” button choosing either Gmail, Blogger or Text Message.

• The Enhanced Search Box. I think I’ll like this more as I get used to it. As you type, suggested search terms and phrases show up in the drop box below. The recommendations come from your own search history as well as popular Google searches and spelling corrections.

• Custom Buttons. I already use several buttons, some of which are mentioned above but now you can choose (or make) any button that might serve your unique preferences. There are a host of buttons you can choose from a list. I added, for instance, Google Define and Google Scholar but there are already buttons you can select for news, tech, shopping, games, entertainment, etc. I also chose the weather button which was easy to customize for my own location and includes a drop-down forecast which is very handy. One complaint about it, though, is that it displays in Fahrenheit and I can’t find a way to configure it for Celsius. Most of the world uses Celsius, doesn’t it? *harrumph*

The other thing I like about this new Google Toolbar is that it recognizes that there are privacy issues and, with that in mind, when you download the toolbar it defaults to secure settings. If you choose, you can log in or out of your Google Account right from the toolbar. Logging in allows further flexibility and some enhanced features such as being able to view your bookmarks from any updated toolbar on any other computer.

There are other features that might be of interest to you. Check them out here.