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Archive for May, 2008

The Friday Fillip

Information overload. Yeah, yeah. But infogreed at the same time, right? The Globe didn’t arrive outside my hotel room this morning and that stressed me; the wireless connection I was using in the room decided to lock me out, adding another stress. But when I managed to get online I had three hundred and change new posts in my RSS reader and an annoying number of emails…

What is a datafella to do? Well, filter is one pretty good answer. Filter and aggregate. This is what Steve “StemLegal” Matthews always advises. But I never seem to have/take the time to . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Why Librarianship?

I was chatting recently with a friend and fellow librarian, and mentioned that my 16-year-old niece is considering librarianship as a career alternative. “Really?” my friend replied “I don’t know that I would encourage that –- in fact, I’m not sure I would go into it myself now. Is librarianship still relevant?”

That conversation, coupled with the invitation to contribute to SLAW, has given me a chance to really think about the relevance of librarianship. Is there a future for the profession?

According to the New York Times, librarians have never been cooler. Friends in the know at UWO . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information

Welcome the .me Generation

Montenegro’s new top-level country-code domain — .me — is coming available in stages, so if you’re interested in acquiring something nicely narcissistic in the way of URLs, you’ll need to be on the alert. Phase 4, the period when anyone, whether or not in Montenegro and whether or not with a registered trademark, can apply for a domain, begins on June 6. The goodies get given out on a first-come first-served basis.

[via Rouse & Co. International] . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous, Technology

CALL 2008: Darlene Fichter on Practical Applications of Web 2.0 Technology

One of the highlights of this year’s CALL conference was the presentation by Darlene Fichter on Web 2.0 which kicked off our conference program Monday morning. I was privileged to introduce Darlene, who is Coordinator of the Data Library Services at the University of Saskatchewan and Advisor on Emerging Technologies, as well as consultant and project manager on various website, portal, library and intranet projects. Her talk was delightful. These slides which she posted to Slideshare for us only partially capture her lively presentation.

I love those gophers! During her presentation Darlene identified that . . . [more]

Posted in: Education & Training: CLE/PD, Legal Information, Technology

Is Your Website Invisible?

It might just be if no-one can find it using the conventional search engines. That’s why it’s great to see Mark Kuiack’s PracticeLink page contain a great article by Sharon Nelson on Search Engine Optimization techniques, designed to educate lawyers.

Everyone responsible for a law firm website should be looking at this closely. For the non-legal community, Wikipedia is still a useful source. . . . [more]

Posted in: Technology

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement Resources

Following up on Simon’s post last week and a supplementary comment by David Fraser concerning that international agreement on Anti-counterfeiting under negotiation that would permit ex parte searches for allegedly infringing materials. This raises the spectre of customs and border enforcement authorities searching laptops, ipods and other electronic devices.

All of the relevant technical discussion has been usefully gathered here.

I think the answer is to just give up travelling. . . . [more]

Posted in: Substantive Law

From Dayton to Bharat

Today’s Dayton Business Journal describes a shake-up involving our friends at Lexis, as Reed Elsevier continues its process of moving jobs from Ohio to India.

The plans are to move a quarter of the jobs over the next few years. It’s been a forty year linkage between Dayton and legal research since the Ohio Bar started the work on automating legal information.

In a presentation given in Toronto late last year, former Reed Elsevier plc officer Sanjay Viswanathan gave a presentation that showed the LexisNexis parent company restructuring through 2010. The presentation shows the company will shift 900 jobs

. . . [more]
Posted in: Legal Information: Libraries & Research, Legal Information: Publishing

RSS Tutorial for Law Librarians

Jason Eiseman, Computer Automation Librarian at Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt, an Oregon law firm, has produced a three part tutorial for law librarians on using RSS. The tuts run as Flash movies with sound. The introduction runs 6 minutes, using an aggregator 13 minutes and advanced RSS 16 minutes. Since RSS is still very much a minority taste among legal workers, these tuts might prove quite useful. . . . [more]

Posted in: Education & Training: CLE/PD