A new book on unconferences is being written collaboratively with the use of a wiki. Tentative table of contents:

• Chapter #1 : What in the name of god is an un-conference
• Chapter #2 : Un-conference – The drama without a stage
• Chapter #3 : 10 easy steps to organizing an un-conference
• Chapter #4 : Un-conferences – the various avatars ( Barcamps, Blogcamps, etc)
• Chapter #5 : Open Space Un-Conferences
• Chapter #6 : Un-conferences that really kicked ass
• Chapter #7 : Profiles of prolific un-conferencers
• Chapter #8 : Un-conferences: how they could all go completely wrong ( Humor – where

Following their interesting decision of last year, to forgo the use of wireless technology at Lakehead University, citing the precautionary principle (para 2). Lakehead has recently made another curious decision to outsource the provision of email services at the university to Google. Lakehead cites several advantages over their previous in-house system including server capacity, more reliable delivery, response time and storage capacity. Google itself trumpets the Lakehead partnership as a success story. However, there are critics of the deal who cite the little bugaboo of the U.S. Patriot Act and the possible application of the act in this . . . [more]

Among the lovely big fat books you’ve put aside for your summer reading — on the beach, at the lake, or just in the garden hammock — you might make space for a tome by Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions. It’s a collection of interviews of a wide group of people who know all there is to know about how we interact with computers and how that interaction is increasingly the target of industrial designers. Moggridge developed the first laptop computer; and in the book he talks to something like 40 people who are involved one way or another with . . . [more]

In “Keeping Current Can Be Hard to Do for Law Librarians” (May 30, 2007), Tricia Kasting discusses her efforts to keep current with new developments impacting her work, particularly the uses and impacts of various social software tools in her organization and the new features of subscription databases.

Is there anyone that can’t relate to this? . . . [more]

In his first annual report, the new federal Information Commissioner Robert Marleau concludes that a great many Canadian government agencies show a serious lack of transparency when it comes to access to government documents under the Access to Information Act.

“Despite much progress since 1983, there remain impediments to the full realization of Parliament’s intent as expressed in the Act. Too often, responses to access requests are late, incomplete, or overly-censored. Too often, access is denied to hide wrongdoing, or to protect officials or governments from embarrassment, rather than to serve a legitimate confidentiality requirement. Year after year,

I hope our Connie Crosby doesn’t mind me promoting her new article on this month’s LLRX.com (dated May 29, 2007): Discovering the Latest in Web 2.0 Developments is a wonderful presentation in .pdf which outlines the history of the term and concept, functionality, tips for implementation and, of course, the applications: blogs, RSS, wikis, pod/videocasts, screencasts (I liked that one, Connie), social networking, Second Life… I found the links and references particularly useful and interesting: the “REALLY New Stuff” on p. 31, and various references and web site links on pp. 38-41. Well done again, Connie! . . . [more]

Check out the website for Èducaloi [English version], Quèbec’s legal education in plain language institution. The site is very attractive, with lots of eye-catching leads into the usual bodies of law relevant to most citizens. Something so simple as a site map is handled with style, showing again how good design facilitates good understanding. An almost comparable institution in Ontario would be CLEO (Community Legal Education Ontario), which is aimed more at “low-income and disadvantaged people” than Èducaloi seems to be (and which could do with a complete overhaul of its website).

I only wish one could pronounce . . . [more]

A colleague in the main library here at UVic brought to my attention an interesting article in D-Lib Magazine for May/June 2007 by Lally & Dunford “Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections” . The article discusses a project at the University of Washington to integrate the university library’s digital holdings by inserting links to these resources directly into Wikipedia. As the article states, they UW did this in response to a 2005 OCLC report that states, inter alia, that “only 2% of college and university students begin searching for information at a library website” This strikes me as a . . . [more]

A story in Slate, “Thimerosal on Trial: The theory that vaccines cause autism goes to court,” by Arthur Allen, introduced me to the vaccine court. Actually, it merely used the expression, assuming I’d know what it was, and I had to turn to Wikipedia for clarification. Seems that the U.S. Court of Federal Claims was given that label after the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act created a sort of no-fault system protecting vaccine makers from full tortious liability and directing all lawsuits into that court. At present there are nearly 5000 claims about to be heard on . . . [more]

For those of us who don’t have a BlackBerry and who don’t like to fuss with itsy-bitsy keyboards on regular cell phones, Jott.com is interesting. The idea is simple: you phone in to Jott (on a “1-800” number), tell the voice to whom you want to send a message; speak the message and have it sent to the recipient’s email, fully transcribed and available as a sound recording as well. You can opt to have it sent to the recipient’s phone as a text message instead; and, because transcribing, which is done by a combination of machine and human effort, . . . [more]

 This is a post done via Jott. For those who us don’t have blackberry and we don’t like to fuss with itchy witchy keyboards on regular cell phones Jott.com is interesting the idea is simple, we phone into Jott on 1800 number tell the voice to whom you want to send the message, speak the message and have it sent to the recipients e-mail fully transcribed and available as a sound recording as well. You can opt to have its . . . [more]

For some time now I’ve been dissatisfied with the way that WordPress, the engine that enables us to blog, handles site searching. There was no easy way to make it search for a whole word rather than a portion of a word, and Boolean searching was only possible on the advanced search page. The results of a search were not arranged by relevance but only by date, which was often unhelpful. And only posts were searched, not any other documents on the site.

As a result I’ve substituted Google’s custom site search for the built in WordPress search function. You . . . [more]