Legal Research

Ballad in Plain E is going into hibernation

Posted on May 13, 2009
I guess I knew this day would come, but surprisingly, I’m not sad about it. With lots of exciting but time-consuming things happening in my life lately, and a moderately successful new group blogging endeavour underway, I’m just not committed to this blog the way I used to be…and I’m okay with that...

The value of law library staff: the position, or the person?

Posted on March 26, 2009
Karen over at Library Technician Dialog has just written a great post entitled “A Value Proposition“.  In it she explains something we’ve been thinking a talking about lately: why Winnipeg law firms don’t employ as many library staff as similarly-sized firms in other cities do...

Ada Lovelace Day 2009: Marg Anderson and Darlene Taylor

Posted on March 24, 2009
I’ve been thinking all day about who I might write about for Ada Lovelace Day, the day that celebrates women and technology. I realised that it would only be fitting to write about two women who taught me during my two years doing the Library & Information Technology Program at SAIT...

Working with Vendors

Posted on February 05, 2009

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Office-Office vs. Home-Office (or, a Tale of Two Jobs)

Posted on January 23, 2009
I read with interest Brenda’ latest post at Library Technician Dialog: “Working at Home“. It prompted me to try to verbalise my thoughts on this topic. Since I moved to Winnipeg I’ve been working two jobs: in the morning, I work at a law firm, and in the afternoon, I telecommute from home to my [...

Cool stuff from Gmail Labs

Posted on January 15, 2009
I love Gmail. Really, really love it. I can’t believe there are still people using Hotmail or Yahoo when Gmail is available! So I was excited to see this CNET article about a nifty new tool from Gmail Labs: “Send & Archive Combo Button Economizes Gmail” (hat tip: Steven Cohen)...

My 2008 CLawBies Nominations

Posted on December 12, 2008
The 2008 edition of the Canadian Law Blog Awards (CLawBies) is off to a great start - check out the growing list of blogged nominations at Steve Matthews’ Vancouver Law Librarian Blog. I approach the nominations from the point of view of a law firm library technician...

Non-lawyer legal bloggers

Posted on December 09, 2008
I really enjoyed Laurie Mapp’s latest post over at Halo Secretarial Services. In it, Laurie explains why non-lawyers have an important place in the legal blogosphere: “Non lawyers are important and valuable assets, whether to brick and mortar law firms or virtual practices...

Am I the proverbial 20-something?

Posted on December 01, 2008
It’s a weird feeling to see my generation being described over and over again in the current business and library literature. Net Generation, Gen Y, Millennials, Echo Boom…there are a million names and the birth-year range is up for debate, but generally accepted to be anyone born about 1980 or after...

New BC Courthouse Library catalogue

Posted on November 14, 2008
One of the things I miss most about working in BC is the fantastic BC Courthouse Library system. This week’s news is just one more reason for that. They’ve now got a new name (Courthouse Libraries BC), URL (http://www.courthouselibrary.ca), look, and logo, and along with that, a fresh new interface for their library catalogue...

Words & Phrases compared

Posted on November 05, 2008
Over at Slaw, Gary Rodrigues has a good post comparing the words & phrases offerings of Westlaw and Quicklaw.  Rodrigues notes: “Both services are unique in what they offer. Until one service seeks to match the other in content, both may be needed...

Keeping Found Things Found

Posted on October 22, 2008
At SLA this past June, I attended a session on personal information management (PIM) and made a little note of it here at my blog. Over at Slaw, Joel Alleyne has just posted his review of William Jones’ book, “Keeping Found Things Found“, which was the basis of the PIM session at SLA...

Library as [a fun] place

Posted on October 09, 2008
Mark at the AALL Spectrum Blog wonders whether law libraries are holding fun events in the library, and whether anyone has studied (and presumably reported on) that. My answer to the first question is an emphatic “yes!” At my previous job in a firm library, we tried to hold several fun events every year...

Bloglines just isn?t cutting it anymore.

Posted on October 09, 2008
Steve posted to law.librarians about maybe ditching Bloglines. I’m with him on that. I can’t get Manitoba “new cases” feeds from CanLII, and my Slaw feed hasn’t worked in weeks. So what’ll it be? Google Reader? Anyone got suggestions?

Innis Christie on Sarah Palin, etc.

Posted on September 29, 2008
It’s always neat to learn about the personalities behind the books we spend half our lives filing updates into, shelving, and reshelving. I was fascinated by this Lancaster House interview with Innis Christie, who is an original author of Employment Law in Canada, and the winner of the 2008 U of T Bora Laskin Award...

Who wouldn?t want this job?

Posted on September 19, 2008
Check out the language of this job ad! Amazing to see a non-library (actually, any organization, for that matter) advertise using our language. OK, maybe there are a few too many cliches, but overall, the description paints a very clear picture of the right candidate...

?The explanation that fully answers the question?: worth pushing for

Posted on September 17, 2008
Mega props to Karen at Library Technician Dialog. Her persistence paid off big-time for all of us in Manitoba who deal with this particular legal information vendor. See ya, arbitrarily-added PST!

Trendy home libraries?ugh.

Posted on September 16, 2008
Via Library Link of the Day… Most of the people in this article sound like complete idiots. (Or at least their clients sound like idiots.) I’ll be the first to acknowledge that books can be a lovely visual aspect of a room, but come on. Sure, I haven’t read every book that’s stored in my bookcases, [...

WestlaweCarswell?s Words & Phrases

Posted on September 16, 2008
I note from this month’s WestlaweCarswell eBulletin that Words & Phrases has finally been rolled out. According to the bulletin: Words & Phrases is now available on LawSource!   Words & Phrases provides you with fresh strategies for finding the law online...

Don?t know much about Rob Hyndman?

Posted on September 07, 2008
…but I like how he thinks. On the bright side: Election Party on Oct 14th!

Good article on law firm SEO

Posted on September 03, 2008
Legal web guru (and, okay, my boss) Steve Matthews just published a really good article on law firm SEO over at Slaw. Even if you’re not particularly interested in SEO, this is a great introduction to the concepts of natural/organic vs. paid search...

Ubiquity is awesome!

Posted on August 28, 2008
After reading about Ubiquity in Simon Fodden’s Slaw post yesterday morning, and then watching Aza Raskin’s video, I *had* to download Firefox 3 so that I could try out it out. (Even though some of my favourite add-ons aren’t available in 3...

?Insulting spam messages?really vitriolic ones!?

Posted on August 15, 2008
Dinosaur Comics over at Quantz.com has been really good lately. This one struck a chord, though, because I noticed the same thing a little while ago. Now that we’re completely desensitized to the usual ultra-explicit subject lines in spam, spammers are getting personal...

SLA Legal Division Quarterly:Post-Conference Issue

Posted on August 14, 2008
SLA Legal Division just released summer issue of Legal Division Quarterly, which contains a bunch of session summaries, including a detailed synopsis of “If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Tales from the Dark Side”, written by Tracy Leming. (At the conference, I caught only the tail-end of it...

LTAIG: gone (for now), but never forgotten

Posted on August 12, 2008
Some sad news: as of this month, LTAIG (the Library Technicians and Assistants Interest Group under the auspices of the BC Library Association) is no longer an active interest group. I was a brand-new library tech when I moved to Vancouver in April 2003, and I knew I wanted to get involved in the library [...

The long tail of scientific research

Posted on August 11, 2008
Via Library Link of the Day, there’s a really interesting article in the July 17th edition of The Economist entitled “Great minds think (too much) alike“. The article describes research that shows how digital access to scientific journals doesn’t necessarily encourage use of long tail information...

My big Manitoba adventure & farewell to Vancouver

Posted on July 28, 2008
Yes, it’s true. And no, I’m not crazy. I’ve moved to Winnipeg! After five fantastic years with Alexander Holburn, I decided that I was up for a new challenge. Winnipeg has always been near and dear to me, so I took the plunge and moved out here...

Quickscribe vs QP LegalEze

Posted on June 26, 2008
At a time when everyone is debating this issue (literally — I was just talking about it with some colleagues at lunch today!), I was thrilled to see this Cosby Group white paper that compares Quickscribe Online to QP LegalEze for legislative research...

Blawg of the Day!

Posted on June 24, 2008
Sweet! This blog was Inter Alia’s Blawg of the Day yesterday!

SLA 2008 - To Teach So They Can Learn (Wednesday, June 18)

Posted on June 21, 2008
This was one of the best sessions I attended. Dr. Ilda Carreiro King is an educational and development psychologist who specialises in helping teachers learn how to teach more successfully. In this session, she focused on learning styles of adults versus children...

SLA 2008 - Inmagic Reception, PAM Party! (Tuesday, June 17)

Posted on June 21, 2008
I learned last year that the PAM Division Party is legen…wait for it…dary! at SLA and this year was no exception. The theme was “Prom”, and, oddly, “Under the Sea” (the party was actually co-hosted with two other divisions, and I guess the theme-wires got crossed, or intertwined, or something…) and we all got “PROM” [...

SLA 2008 - Keeping Found Things Found (Tuesday, June 17)

Posted on June 21, 2008
William Jones of University of Washington Information School spoke on personal information management (PIM). While Jones was a good presenter and this session was interesting, it was more about theories of PIM, and not on practical skills, as I had expected...

SLA 2008 - If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Tales from the Dark Side (Tuesday, June 17)

Posted on June 21, 2008
I only caught the last half-hour of this session, as it was running concurrently to the WOMM session. I wish I’d been able to attend the whole thing. Fortunately, one of my colleagues was there for the whole session and took meticulous notes, which she’ll be sharing! This panel was composed of librarians who used [...

SLA 2008 - Word-of-Mouth Marketing (Tuesday, June 17)

Posted on June 21, 2008
Deborah Aho Williamson is a senior analyst at eMarketer, and she presented a session on Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM). The main types of WOMM are: Brand monitoring (e.g., Yelp.com) Viral marketing (esp. YouTube) Influencer marketing (e.g., Proctor & Gamble Vocalpoint: a “community of influential moms, created by P&G”) Brand blogging (e...

SLA 2008 - Canadian Reception, Lexis Dessert Reception at EMP, Elsevier Party (Monday, June 16)

Posted on June 21, 2008
The highlight for me at this reception was getting to meet Karen S., my soon-to-be colleague in Winnipeg. [Karen and Brenda, who I know a little from Vancouver, blog at Library Technician Dialog.] We had a great time comparing notes on our jobs and she gave me the scoop on the Winnipeg law library scene...

SLA 2008 - The Next Information Revolution, and Our Role as Revolutionaries (Monday, June 16)

Posted on June 21, 2008
This session by Mary Ellen Bates, who I think is amazing, didn’t quite live up to my expectations, but only because its focus wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. The session was very centred on how to provide services to digital natives...

SLA 2008 - Knowledge Management at the Core: Facilitating Knowledge Sharing (Monday, June 16)

Posted on June 21, 2008
Wow, this session was so interesting! Dave Snowden, a UK-based KM guru and founder of Cognitive Edge, gave a funny, engaging 90-minute talk on the human side of KM, incorporating neuroscientific principles and debunking some common misconceptions about why KM works or fails...

SLA 2008 - Legal Division Open House (Sunday, June 15)

Posted on June 21, 2008
Christina, Kathy, and I hit up the Legal Division Open House, where we met a bunch of cool people: librarians from Alaska, Washington, DC, Texas, and China, and a hilarious vendor who, when we mocked him about his company’s orange lanyards, helped us coin the company slogan “Not quite as awful as the other [...

A clever way to experience SLA

Posted on June 20, 2008
Going through the posts tagged for SLA2008, I came across this one about delegate April Younglove’s personal goals for the conference: to accept a scholarship award and get through the entire thing without paying for any food. “The secret genius of my original goals, I later discovered at the convention, is that they actually caused me [...

SLA 2008 Conference Notes - Opening general session - Charlie Rose and Dr Vinton Cerf

Posted on June 19, 2008
The opening general session was a combined awards ceremony and keynote speaker event. The awards shone a spotlight on some of the association?s most inspiring members. I was especially glad to see Sabrina Pacifici recognized for her excellent LLRX and Be Spacific sites, with the Innovation and Technology award...

Seattle at last!

Posted on June 15, 2008
Here I am in Seattle, attending the 2008 SLA Annual Conference. Seattle is an awesome city and I’m really excited to be here. This morning I went on the Bill Speidel Underground Seattle Tour (so cool) and am set to attend the Opening General Session at 5...

We?re not the only ones with a stereotype

Posted on May 27, 2008
The May issue of InsuranceWest magazine has a cover story on the portrayal of insurance industry folks on the big screen and in fiction. We’ve all heard stereotypes about librarians, obviously. We law library people have heard many a lawyer joke and cliche, too (who could forget last year’s “Lawyers Are Rats”-Gate?)...

Read it to believe it?

Posted on May 16, 2008
There’s an incredible story on page 2 of the latest issue of TechNique (the Australian Library and Information Association’s library tech newsletter) about how lib techs in Australia and NZ raised more than $4000 for Oxfam’s “Mobile Donkey Library” program — in just over a month...

LTAIG/LTIG social supper - come and meet your fellow lib techs!

Posted on May 15, 2008
Will you be in town for the CLA conference? LTAIG is excited to be co-hosting, next Thursday, May 22nd, a networking & social supper at Relish Restaurant, with CLA’s Library Technicians’ Interest Group (LTIG). All the details are here...

More helpful screencasts from BCCLS

Posted on April 18, 2008
The BCCLS has just rolled out another couple of screencasts; this time, on researching the history, judicial treatment, and intent of legislation. What makes them extra-cool is the example they use to illustrate these tasks: the illegality of “crime comics” in Canada...

Lib Techs on Video

Posted on April 02, 2008
University College of the Fraser Valley’s Library & Information Technology program has just put some videos on its website. Four short videos feature grads (and students?) talking about the program - check them out!

LibraryDevCamp.ca

Posted on March 28, 2008
Rex Turgano, one of the good folks at Andornot, has developed a neat site called LibraryDevCamp.ca, dubbed “a web playground for the library community”. It’s a place where people can try out open source software that might be of use to them in their jobs...

Douglas Coupland misses librarians

Posted on March 06, 2008
From Stray Questions for Douglas Coupland, in the New York Times Papercuts blog: “Without hesitation the Web is a blessing, but you know what I miss? Reference librarians. I used to live in the reference library but it?s now been over a year since I?ve visited one...

Google Teleportation

Posted on March 06, 2008
As noted on Slaw, Google’s introduced “teleportation” - the poor man’s site: syntax shortcut. Best of all, it works for the Government of BC website, which is notoriously hard to search using its own site search engine. Just type “gov bc” into Google and you’ll see the little site search box below the first hit’s URL, [...

What skills are you proud of?

Posted on March 03, 2008
If you have a moment, please answer the following question in the latest LTAIG Snapshot Survey: Throughout our training and careers, library staff cultivate many additional skills beyond traditional ones such as cataloguing, conducting reference interviews, and online searching...

QL v. Westlaw (and CanLII, too)

Posted on February 28, 2008
At last week’s VALL luncheon, Catherine Best & Teresa Gleave gave a presentation comparing Quicklaw and LawSource (WestlaweCarswell). Catherine, a research lawyer, covered scope and functionality; Teresa, a law librarian, discussed the practical aspects: pricing, administration, training considerations, cost recovery, etc...

Neat new instructional videos from BCCLS

Posted on February 27, 2008
The BC Courthouse Library Society has posted some videos on YouTube that show how to find forms and precedents (in this case, shareholders agreements) using three different sources: O’Briens Forms Online, CLE Online (one of my favourite tools of all time), and the BCCLS Library Catalogue...

Strike at Victoria Public Library

Posted on February 21, 2008
There’s a good article in today’s Globe & Mail (BC Edition) on the strike currently happening at the Victoria Public Library. The article reminds us that public libraries are not just about books, and fulfill different needs depending on the user group...

Quickscribe strikes again (in the best possible way)!

Posted on February 20, 2008
Steve Matthews has just announced the launch of BC Legislation Portal, a new website from Quickscribe that offers free, updated-daily legislation monitoring. From Steve’s announcement, “The primary goal of this site is to provide a quick and easy place for anyone in British Columbia to watch the latest updates to provincial law...

LTAIG 2007 Salary Survey Results

Posted on January 29, 2008
After many months of hard work, the results of LTAIG’s 2007 Salary Survey are in, and can be viewed at the LTAIG website. Court (who was the Survey Coordinator) and Rob have both already weighed in on the subject. Thanks to all who completed the survey, and big thanks to my fellow LTAIG Committee members [...

A sick sense of humour

Posted on January 22, 2008
Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette does it again!

QL QuickCITE Statute Citator

Posted on January 17, 2008
…thanks to Steve’s fabulous LegalPubs.ca feed, I was just alerted of the announcement on the LexisNexis site describing the new enhancement to Quicklaw: a statute citator. I have always found that the content of WestlaweCarswell and QL’s case citators differ quite a bit, and often one will have one or more cases that the other doesn’t...

SLA 2008 - Seattle, here I come!

Posted on January 16, 2008
Woo hoo! My favourite time of the year - conference planning begins! I whipped up a map of all the conference hotel locations in relation to the convention centre, and that made it quite easy to select the one with that would work for me. With the conference being so close to Vancouver this year, I think [...

The library never sleeps

Posted on December 05, 2007
Check out the uber-cute “The Library Never Sleeps” constellation jpeg at the U of A Library Website. The image is part of an announcement about 24/7 library service during the final exam period. I think I want that on a t-shirt!

This blog?s reading level

Posted on November 15, 2007
(As seen on Library Revolution) This test will determine what level of education is required to understand your blog. I wish there were some information on how the reading level is determined, though.

What is Stephen Harper Reading?

Posted on November 15, 2007
My best friend’s English prof sent the link to this website to his class last week. On “What is Stephen Harper Reading?“, Canadian author Yann Martel (Life of Pi) details his quest to expand Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “stillness”...

CLB & Lexis showdown

Posted on November 07, 2007
Make sure to catch the article in today’s Legal Post on the Canada Law Book/Lexis debacle. I wish everyone could just get along and make one giant database of everything that’s available. Obviously, that’ll never happen. Still, a law library tech can dream.

YouTube Canada

Posted on November 06, 2007
At lunchtime, the elevator news informed me that YouTube has just unveiled a Canadian version, youtube.ca. In response, the Ingram 2.0 column on the Globe & Mail website asks the question, “Do we really need a YouTube Canada?” Ingram says no, that funny is funny, and therefore the localisation of YouTube is pointless and probably just [...

Public Transportation in Vancouver, and Google

Posted on November 05, 2007
This morning I read about an online survey that Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan is sponsoring, on extending the Skytrain Millennium Line out to UBC (um, awesome). Whilst looking for it online, I stumbled across the news that Google Transit is now available for metro Vancouver...

LegalPubs.ca - Aggregated Canadian Legal Publishers Feeds Site

Posted on October 30, 2007
Steve Matthews has done it again. As announced today on his Vancouver Law Librarian Blog, he’s just created LegalPubs.ca, a website/feed that aggregates Canadian legal publisher RSS feeds for a one-stop collection development shop. Another great project, Steve - way to go!

How do people react when you tell them you?re a library tech?

Posted on October 25, 2007
That’s the question I’m collecting responses to for the 3rd LTAIG Snapshot Survey. Help me out by taking the survey! The results of the survey will be announced in a forthcoming issue of LTAIG News.

The other side of legal news

Posted on October 10, 2007
Big news for one of my favourite blogs: Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style. Editor Melissa Kluger announced a few days ago that she’s launching a print magazine by the same name. I’m not a lawyer - but I live with one, and work with them all day long, so I’m pretty excited [...

Facebook

Posted on October 06, 2007
I started a draft of a big rant about facebook a couple of months ago, when I noticed myself becoming increasingly frustrated at how facebook was affecting normal social interaction amidst my group of friends. I’d go to parties, and no one was talking about things that had happened in real life; they were talking [...