Legal Research

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...

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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...

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