SharePoint, RSS and Substantive Law
We’re getting ready to launch our SharePoint 2007 portal. At launch, our goal is to have features and functions that will appeal to both searchers and browsers. The portal will be the new desktop and will be the access point for legal, non-legal, business, administrative, client and financial information in the firm.
Some of the content on the portal is organized by practice area. Content for a practice area will include relevant precedents, commonly used research resources, practice area materials (such as meetings agendas and minutes), and relevant business development material.
Of particular interest to me is the ability to organize and display RSS feeds within a practice area page on the portal. Although I haven’t formally canvassed lawyers to develop a list, my impression is that most lawyers are still not subscribing to RSS content. Our library has, of course, identified some content. Is there an easy way of finding more RSS feeds (by practice area) of relevance to Canadian lawyers?
I am not aware of any one source (or a few sources) for RSS feeds by practice group. It is a good idea, though.
Rather than canvas lawyers for lists of RSS feeds, I would be inclined to ask what types of information sources they refer to, and then either find feeds or create feeds from those sources.
Elizabeth: I have been planning for the same thing. Many of the Canadian blogs that are law-related are in technology areas (IP, privacy law), including those listed at Steve Matthew’s Canadian Law Blogs List. There is also Steve’s LegalPubs.ca for feeds from legal publishers but that would likely only be of interest to your librarians and researchers.
See also Steve’s blog on The Top 10 Uses for RSS in Law Firms as a reminder why all of us should be considering this.
My SLAW post on Current Awareness Services for Lawyers lists out some additional RSS feeds including the Conflicts of Laws ones.
The Lawyers Weekly (Canada) has a feed that gives you links to those stories about 1 or 2 days before you get it in print. Law Times as well. And apparently Canadian Lawyer.
We currently integrate Lexis Publisher newspaper stories onto our Intranet (this is allowed for 30 days [or 60 days] by the license agreement). We are planning to get a demo from Lexis of Ozmosys, an aggregator product they are marketing in Canada which might be relevant,
We’re just starting to use Newsgator (with the Social Sites web parts) to display feeds on practice and other SP2007 pages. Because Lexis Publisher can’t (yet?) deliver feeds directly to Newsgator, we’re routing Lexis Publisher content via Ozmosys, who can re-package any of their content as an RSS feed. Librarians and PSL’s will define a package of feeds for the practice, which is displayed as one aggregated feed. PSL’s will be able to review and select from incoming items the relevant ones, in effect creating a new feed, which is then displayed. With Newsgator, users can also subscribe individually to any of these feeds – via Outlook, web client, FeedDemon or Blackberry. Call me if you want details.
Some great ideas. I should point out that, for Canadians, FPInfomart produces RSS feeds for news searches. So, if you create a news search (for example, if you are monitoring news about a client or an industry) it creates a feed. Clicking on news headlines in your aggregator or on a web page, you are then asked for a password to access the full news article. IP authentication is available for intranets (presumably with a proportional licensing fee). For those who don’t have intranets, vendor CanWest also has a hosted page solution.
See:
Intranet RSS Feed
Personal RSS Feeds