Legal Research

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...

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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.

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