Legal Research

Why I voted Yes on the SLA name change

Posted on November 19, 2009
A few years ago I was asked to speak at an Enterprise Information Management conference in San Francisco. It was very exciting, the first time I had been asked to speak somewhere. I was slated to speak on the second day, but after attending the first day of sessions I was very nervous...

Interview with Jim Milles, Professor of law and former law librarian

Posted on November 13, 2009
Jim Milles is in town for the Journalism and New Media Ecology conference and I managed to score an interview. We discussed news and journalism, his new position, and the future of libraries. Enjoy.

On imitation and stealing in library innovation

Posted on October 13, 2009
Recently there has been some heated debate, and even a backlash against the use of certain technologies in libraries.Aaron Schmidt at Walking Paper is planning presentations questioning innovation in libraries. A colleague here at Yale, started a debate by suggesting it was “reprehensible” for information professionals not to be on twitter...

Video: Interview with Stephen Schultze, co-creator of Recap

Posted on October 07, 2009
Today, Stephen Schultze and Harlan Yu from the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton, and two of the creators of the Recap project, presented Recap at Yale Law School. Afterwards I had a chance to record a short video interview with Stephen Schultze about issues related to Recap and online access to government records...

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Team Digital Preservation and the Aeroplane Disaster

Posted on September 18, 2009
via youtube.com Cool videos about Digital Preservation. Posted via web from jeiseman’s posterous

AALL 2009 Wrap Up Awards: The Wolf pack award

Posted on August 01, 2009
OK. So I am going to do this again because people seemed to like it and asked for it again, and it’s a good way for me to organize my thoughts about the conference. Let’s call it my annual AALL wrap up awards. This award is based on a quote from the comedy movie The [...

AALL2009 Word Cloud

Posted on July 31, 2009
I created a word cloud from the tweets marked with the #aall2009 hashtag. There were over 1250 so some editing was in order. The word cloud appears below, click on the image to see the full size at http://wordle.net where it was created. So I did this by using the Twitter API to download all 1250+ [...

Essential reading for emerging technology librarians

Posted on July 19, 2009
If you’re like me and responsible for using new technologies to connect with patrons or if this is just a topic you’re interested in then I have a book recommendation for you: Groundswell : winning in a world transformed by social technologies...

Calicon09 Word Cloud

Posted on July 01, 2009
I created a word cloud for the #calicon09 tweets with Wordle. Thanks to Yankee in Canada for the idea. Here’s how I did it: 1. Used the twitter API to access the tweets with the #calicon09 hash tag in a json format. 2. Based on some code found around the interwebs, I put together some php for processing the json [...

5 takeaways from CALIcon09 conference

Posted on June 24, 2009
I’m back from CALI and even now, a few days later I still have trouble wrapping my head around what I’ve learned. Sarah and Meg enjoyed the conference. A lot of the other cool kids were there also. If I didn’t link to you it doesn’t mean I don’t care though...

10 tips for networking at CALI, AALL and beyond

Posted on June 11, 2009
I think I’m a pretty good networker, and after recently meeting some bad ones I’ve been thinking about networking a lot. It’s such an important skill, and with CALI coming up and AALL after that I thought it might be a good idea to offer up some networking tips...

Interview with Aaron Swartz

Posted on March 25, 2009
Today, I attended a presentation at the Sterling Memorial Library by Aaron Swartz. He came to talk about his project, The Open Library. If you haven’t heard of this project it’s definitely worth checking out. It was a great talk and he had a very interesting perspective on things...

OCLS Mobile for iPhone and iPod Touch

Posted on March 25, 2009
via youtube.com I don’t even live in the OC, but I want this app. This is great. And the video advertising it is great also. Posted via web from jeiseman’s posterous

YouTube - Librarians? Parade

Posted on March 16, 2009
via youtube.com Facinating video from the 1930’s showing Yale librarians ceremoniously moving the collection from the old library to the Sterling Memorial Library. Great use of YouTube for historical footage. Posted via web from jeiseman’s posterous

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable « Clay Shirky

Posted on March 15, 2009
With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves ? the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public ? has [...

Online Social Networking: Is It a Productivity Bust or Boon?

Posted on March 11, 2009
There is a fair amount of research, the most prominent of which are

Using Data: Web Tech Guy and Angry Staff Person

Posted on March 06, 2009
via usingdata.typepad.com This animation is from Michael Edson of the Smithsonian, from an IMLS conference. He is a keynote speaker at Computers in Libraries this year. Hope someone live blogs that, and he posts his slides. Thanks to the Infotoday Blog...

John Conyers and Open Access (Lessig Blog)

Posted on March 05, 2009

Five things every legal practice should know about?

Posted on March 05, 2009

Yes We Scan!

Posted on March 05, 2009

Professional development survey

Posted on March 01, 2009

New blog design

Posted on February 21, 2009
I’ve had a default theme on this blog for awhile now. This was for a few reasons. I had hoped that a student from my web design class would take on the redesign as a project. That did not happen. Since then I’ve been kind of busy, what with the new job and all...

A day in the life of a librarian: new job edition

Posted on January 29, 2009
So the day in the life of a librarian meme seems a great way to start blogging from my new position at Yale. I got put onto this by The Technological Tortoise (thanks Sarah). A reminder to new readers of this blog, I just started a new job as the Librarian for Emerging Technologies at the [...

Google adding RSS feeds for web search results: mixed emotions

Posted on October 13, 2008
As reported by Search Engine Land, Read Write Web, and others, Google is adding RSS feeds to web search search results. Thay already have RSS feeds available for News, Blogs, Patents, and other searches. While I love using RSS feeds for monitoring the web and use it very effectively for competitive intelligence, marketing, business development, [...

I?m back: but where have I been?

Posted on September 18, 2008
As some of you may have noticed I have been on a little hiatus the last month. But just because I haven’t been writing here doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. Here’s some of the things which have occupied my time: Keeping it real Being a facilitator for the AALL CS-SIS Web 2...

Free criminal records search online - but is it accurate?

Posted on August 07, 2008
Almost two weeks ago a new service called Criminal Searches was brought to my attention. The site, talked about at WisBlawg, AbsTracked, Legal Dockets Online, and even the New York Times, offers free criminal searches throughout the US. Users don’t even have to register or login...

Whither law firm support staff?

Posted on July 29, 2008
Anyone paying attention to the blawgosphere has heard about Virtual Law Partners an attempt at a new-ish (depending on who you ask) model for a virtual law firm. You may have heard about it at Law.com, or on one of many blogs. I’ve read the comments, heard from the well wishers, the doubters, naysayers, and generally [...

Would you like to play a game?

Posted on July 25, 2008
As I mentioned in a post earlier this week, I’ve never really gotten into online virtual worlds like Second Life, and I’ve certainly never gotten into MPORGs (Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games). However posts this week from Libraryman, The Shifted Librarian, and Terri at Creative InfoPro have piqued my interest...

AALL Wrap-Up Awards: Session Law (Librarian) award

Posted on July 22, 2008
The final award, the Session Law (Librarian) award is going to the most memorable, best, or my favorite session at the conference. Winner: Energize! Teleporting to Second Life: Exploring the Legal and Library Communities in a Virtual World, presented by D...

AALL wrap-up awards: You Look Nothing Like Your Avatar award

Posted on July 19, 2008
The You Look Nothing Like Your Avatar award goes to the person/people I was most excited to meet after connecting with them online. Winner(s): in no particular order Tom Boone, Meg Kribble, Bonnie Shucha, Jim Milles, Sarah Glassmeyer, Katie Brown, and Lyonette Louis-Jacques...

AALL wrap-up awards: Let?s Get The Band Back Together award

Posted on July 18, 2008
The Let’s Get The Band Back Together award for the best group, committee, team, or person to work with at the conference or leading up to the conference. I enjoyed working with all the different committees, caucuses, and groups, but the choice was obvious...

AALL wrap-up awards: Mean Girls award

Posted on July 17, 2008
The “Mean Girls” award is not a reference to actual mean girls, but rather the movie Mean Girls. This award is for the event I wasn’t looking forward to going in, but attended based on recommendations, and ended up enjoying. Winner: CONELL Speed Networking I’ve been working in law libraries for over four years now, but this [...

AALL 2008 wrap up thoughts

Posted on July 17, 2008
I very much enjoyed my first AALL conference, and I feel very professionally energized, particularly after the Bloggers meetup. I’ve been trying to do a little more with this blog, and have been struggling with how to accomplish and most importantly how to find the time to accomplish the various things I want to do [...

Martindale.com taps social networking well

Posted on July 09, 2008
Originally saw this on Kevin O’Keefe’s blog, then again on the KM Space blog by Doug Cornelius, Martindale.com appears to be using LinkedIn’s API to allow users to tap into their LinkedIn connections while viewing firm and attorney information...

Countdown to AALL 2008

Posted on July 08, 2008
This weekend the AALL 2008 annual meeting starts in Portland. Word is there will be about 2,000 attendees, and this will be one of the best attended AALL conferences in recent years. I look forward to meeting many law librarians, vendors, and other visitors...

LexMonitor launched, important discussion ensues

Posted on June 26, 2008
Last week, while I was recovering from what could best be described as an intellectual hangover after the SLA conference in Seattle, Kevin O’Keefe from LexBlog released a web tool called LexMonitor. As Kevin describes it: LexMonitor is a free daily review of law blogs and journals highlighting prominent legal discussion as well as the lawyers and [...

Random thoughts and lessons from SLA 2008

Posted on June 20, 2008
So I’m back from Seattle, after a great first conference and just wanted to try to collect some thoughts. Seattle was a great location. Lots of great restaurants near the convention center and hotels, easy to get to the monorail, public library, market, and other interesting locations...

In Seattle for SLA 2008

Posted on June 14, 2008
It’s Vint Cerf and Charlie Rose. It’s Seth Godin. It’s librarians from all over the world. It’s SLA 2008! I’m here in Seattle for the SLA 2008 annual conference. I’m looking forward to a lot of great sessions. Stephen Abrams is launching the SLA Innovation Lab, among other great initiatives...

Qwaq: Second Life for the enterprise

Posted on June 10, 2008
The May issue of Smart Libraries had an interesting article about Qwaq Forums, a virtual space for organizations. Many companies have been exploring the use of virtual worlds like Second Life to connect with customers, and some have even used it for virtual meeting spaces...

Limited creative juices lead to writer?s block

Posted on June 04, 2008
I have never been a blogger who posted very often, but in the last few weeks I’ve fallen off even more than usual. This is in direct violation of one of my 2008 goals which was to post on a more regular basis. Although it’s not as if I haven’t been busy...

Finding the right tool for the job

Posted on May 17, 2008
Jeremiah Owyang had a great post yesterday about how he stays organized. Anyone who follows him knows how active he is. He twitters often, posts daily on his blog, and has thousands of pictures on Flickr. So how does he stay organized? He puts pen to paper in a Moleskine...

AALL 2008 Portland video finally posted online

Posted on May 09, 2008
This week has been all about the upcoming AALL conference for me. It’s included meetings, projects, and extracurricular work. All of this is good, but it has been keeping me busy, and that’s way my blog posts this week are focused on the upcoming conference...

AALL dine-arounds at some of Portland?s best spots

Posted on May 05, 2008
The information for the AALL no-host dinners, also known as the dine-arounds has been posted the local arrangements committee website. There are a lot of really great options for dinner. Blogger and local law librarian Laura Orr is hosting a dinner at Dan and Louis Oyster Bar...

The science of search: time for a librarian role in e-discovery?

Posted on April 28, 2008
A column by Craig Ball in the April issue of Law Technology News, The Science of Search, argues that ”lawyers need to learn more about the science of search as part of our legal and continuing education.” As someone tasked with educating attorneys about the science of search, I will say hear hear! But I do think [...

Off topic: participating in a viral marketing campaign

Posted on April 14, 2008
I’m something of a movie buff and I love to learn about what films are going into production, director and casting news, etc. One of my favorite blogs for this kind of news is FirstShowing. net. Back in December they had a really interesting post about the viral marketing campaign for the upcoming Batman movie, The [...

How and should bloggers be credentialed as news gatherers?

Posted on April 02, 2008
Sports fans among you may already be following the controversy involving the status of bloggers covering the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, and their ability to enter the team’s locker room after games. The story is basically that back in February a blogger named Tim MacMahon, who blogs about the Mavs for the Dallas Morning News, wrote [...

Potential breakthrough in personal information management strategy

Posted on March 28, 2008
Longtime readers of this blog might remember that one of my goals this year has been to come up with a comprehensive personal information management strategy, and to blog about it periodically. Towards that end I am currently reading the book Personal Information Management edited by William Jones and Jaime Teevan...

Ambrogi discusses ?online legal research revolution?

Posted on March 18, 2008
Robert Ambrogi has written a great article over Law.com called Online Legal Research Revolution. He discusses the recent release of free legal research tools like AltLaw, PreCYdent, and The Public Library of Law, all partially powered by the release of federal case opinions by Public...

Link roundup: future of law libraries, Google?s Intranet, CI in law firms

Posted on March 14, 2008
I have not had time to write full posts on all these items, but think they’re important enough to note. Nick at Binary Law posted a great summary of a discussion about law libraries going on in the blogosphere. The discussion is over a report of firms downsizing law libraries in the Birmingham Business Journal...

User generated content is on the way out?

Posted on March 13, 2008
March 6th Newsweek put out a story called Revenge of the Experts. The gist of the article is that the current trend of user-generated content is on the way out in favor of a renewed interest in expert-vetted content. Although there’s been some debate on this (see the comments on the post at the Lost Remote [...

UNdata provides international statistics from the United Nations

Posted on March 06, 2008
Just saw this noted in Read/Write Web. The United Nations has released a new website called UNdata. UNdata, also known as the UN data access system aims to provide UN statistics to the global community free of charge. While I haven’t had a lot of time to explore this yet, it looks great...

Information overload strikes, lawyers hardest hit

Posted on February 29, 2008
Earlier this year I said that Information Overload may be the phrase/trend for 2008. It looks like that may have been an accurate prediction. This week LexisNexis released a workplace productivity survey that suggests legal professionals suffer from information overload at a staggering rate...

JD Supra lives up to the hype

Posted on February 29, 2008
I’m always fairly skeptical of new document sharing sites. There have been a host of new legal document sites in the past year, and none have really impressed me. There was a lot of hype ahead of the JD Supra release this week, and frankly I was worried it wouldn’t live up to it...

AALL 2008 Local Arrangements Committee Website & Blog Released

Posted on February 20, 2008
So today was the day we could finally reveal the AALL Local Arrangements Committee Website & Blog for the 2008 annual meeting in Portland. As you may have deduced it is a WordPress site. Rob Truman at the Lewis & Clark law library suggested we use the WordPress installation there...

An exciting week for legal research, PreCYdent, Public Library of Law, and more

Posted on February 18, 2008
February 11th through February 15th turned out to be a very exciting week (work week) for legal research. I had originally been skeptical of the Public.Resource.Org move to make cases freely available. But in November I became a little more hopeful as I recognized how these public releases could be used to create new legal search engines...

Personal information management strategy

Posted on February 11, 2008
A few weeks ago I listed my goals for this year. To be perfectly honest I have not made as much progress on them as I would like, but 2008 is still early and I do need to pace myself. My goal to make a great AALL website for the annual meeting is under way...

Hell yeah the plane takes off!

Posted on February 01, 2008
I’m back… I’m tanned, rested, and ready for a great 2008. I’ll start with this off topic thread celebrating Mythbusters taking on the question of whether or not a plane will take off from a conveyer belt. Jason Kottke liveblogged the show, and even commemorated the event with a t-shirt.

On Vacation, see you in a few weeks

Posted on January 11, 2008
I will be going on vacation for awhile to the Caribbean. Sorry, but there won’t be any blogging while I’m gone. On my way back to Portland, I will be stopping in Louisville, Kentucky for the SLA leadership summit. If you’re going to be there please let me know to look for you, or you can [...

Goals for 2008: AALL, personal information strategy, and more

Posted on January 11, 2008
A colleague here at the firm suggested a few days ago that I should set some goals for the coming year. Not because I am a directionless loser (I think), but just because it’s a good idea. And he’s right, it is a good idea. So I’ve decided to write down some goals I have for [...

An amazing infographic

Posted on January 10, 2008
I’ve been a fan of the Mental Floss blog for awhile. Today, they had an interesting post about 6 less than helpful infographics. This is particularly interesting to me as I’m a huge fan of Edward Tufte, and the whole concept behind visualization...

Early candidate for 2008 phrase/trend of the year: Information Overload

Posted on January 09, 2008
In the last few weeks I’ve seen a slew of articles and blog posts about information overload. Stephen Abram points to a Basex report on lost productivity caused by information overload, finding that from an ARS Technica post. iLibrarian blogged about a Reader’s Digest article on information overload...

I?ve won a CLawBie award

Posted on January 03, 2008
Steve Matthews has announced the 2007 ClawBies (Canadian Legal Blog Awards) and I’ve won the Friend of the North award for frequently reading, linking to, and commenting on Canadian legal blogs. Actually, I’m co-winner with Doug at KM Space, who also just won, deservedly, a Blawggie award from Dennis Kennedy...

Corporations fail web marketing 101

Posted on December 28, 2007
I am not going to say that web marketing is easy, but some corporations just seem to continually shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to promoting their brand online. Or at the very least they miss some great opportunities. So here is a friday round up of poor corporate marketing, branding, and usability [...

Will Facebook ever be an effective enterprise application?

Posted on December 21, 2007
I am a little late coming to the ‘Facebook as intranet’ debate because I simply haven’t been able to figure out exactly how I feel about it. It’s one of those developments that made me say ‘huh’. I didn’t find it shocking or appalling...

Organizing your home library

Posted on December 17, 2007
The Mental Floss Blog has a good post today on organizing your home library. Hopefully, many librarians are familiar with the tools and issues from this post. It’s still nice to see links to LibraryThing which has made quite a splash in the library community...

Friday round up, holiday style

Posted on December 14, 2007
If you want to get me a holiday present, I will gladly take the 5-disc ultimate collector’s edition with the Deckard-style briefcase and origami-unicorn please. Speaking of the holiday season… Don’t know what to get that special someone? MyThings allows you to send an anonymous quiz, allowing you to find out what they want without revealing [...

The Personal Information Trainer

Posted on December 07, 2007
Stuart Basefsky an Information Specialist and Lecturer at Cornell has a fantastic article in the November issue of Information Outlook (SLA membership required to view online), called “The Personal Information Trainer.” Apparently this is based on a presentation he made earlier this year at SLA, as covered by the DIY Librarian...