Monday, April 23, 2007

Blawg Review #105

I agreed to host this week's Blawg Review in tribute to UNESCO’s World Book and Copyright Day. Being a librarian, and former student of English literature, books and literacy are near and dear to my heart. Working in a law library, copyright is also of particular interest to me. From the UNESCO website:

“By celebrating this Day throughout the world, UNESCO seeks to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright.”

Here, then, are this week's feature law blog posts. I have taken the liberty of being a complete library geek and cataloguing the posts according to the Library of Congress schedule for K - Law (or an approximation thereof). I note that in Canada, many law libraries employ a modified version of this scheme, known affectionately as KF Modified.

Blawg Review Library of Blawg Posts


JK511 - Presidents - United States

At Balkinization, Sandy Levinson offers More on Presidential dictatorship in a thoughtful, in-depth post.


K100 - Legal education

J. Louis May discusses his method of preparing for exams in his post How I "Do" Law School Exams: at The Legal Scoop. Preparation and organization are key!


K115 – The Legal Profession

Al Nye tells us about The Power of Nice at Al Nye The Lawyer Guy. The title says it all!

Scott Greenfield presents It's Tough To Be The Big Guy posted at Simple Justice, a commentary on the blog post Not Really Legal MalPractice But… by Andrew Lavoott Bluestone over at the New York Attorney Malpractice Blog. The post is about a no-confidence vote in making Manhattan attorney Raoul Lionel Felder chair of the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct because of a book he wrote with comedian Jackie Mason, entitled Schmucks!

I love seeing people honour their colleagues! Stephanie West Allen does just that in The motley band of lawyers: Let's honor the diverse symphony of the profession posted at idealawg. She discusses the myriad reasons lawyers went to law school, and quotes a number of comments from individuals. I found this an up-lifting read, confirming that so many people want to work towards making a positive impact on society.


K115 - The Legal profession – law firms

Patrick J. Lamb at the blawg In Search of Perfect Client Service takes A Sobering Look Into the Future. With the exponentially accelerating flattening of the world, the standard law firm structure must be reexamined. It appears to the author that big firms, like many big businesses, will be particularly challenged to thrive in an environment where both China and India are each producing more honors students annually than the total number of students in the United States. Businesses will be confronting problems with technology that has yet to be developed. The author simply raises the question of whether a seismic change in the law profession is on the horizon.

Good news for blogging law firms! In Chubb Insurance law firm blog update: Big to do about nothing Kevin O'Keefe reports at Real Lawyers Have Blogs that the recent kerfuffle caused by Chubb's recent denial of coverage for a law firm which has a blog has been much ado about nothing, as Chubb has essentially backtracked from their earlier position. “…the insurer now says law firms publishing blogs will be covered by their malpractice policy so long as lawyers are not answering specific questions in a way that could be construed to be legal advice.” There is additional follow-up in O’Keefe’s post Malpractice coverage and blogs: More lawyers respond to Chubb Insurance.


K115 - The Legal Profession - lawyer fees

Mark Ross presents Time To Stop Time Recording posted at LawScribe's Legal Process Outsourcing Blog. UK attorney Mark Ross, based in Los Angeles, discusses the billable hour versus fixed fee or contingency fees especially in light of outsourced legal work. He argues:

The argument that time recording enables managing partners to assess the level of work being carried out by their fee earners also no longer holds true, because the technology in place enables tasks such as standard letters and documentation to be processed in a fraction of the time which would be recorded as single unit for time recording purposes. Those firms that survive will be those who embrace such technology, together with the desires of the client for greater transparency, and provide clients with a fixed fee quotation for the work to be undertaken.

Over at the Law Blog at the Wall Street Journal Online, Ashby Jones found out how high-profile attorney Willie Gary arrived at an $11,000 hourly billing rate in a case and shares the story in Willie Gary and His $11,000-An-Hour Fee. This post really should go into the category “I picked the wrong career path” but I can’t find a Library of Congress heading for that. :-P

K115 - The Legal profession - professional responsibility

Timothy Bishop describes A Good Example of "Unprofessional Irresponsibility" posted at The Legal Scoop.

K115 - The Legal profession - legal services

In Enough Health 2.0: What about Law 2.0? Avvo posted at Health Care Law Blog, Bob Coffield gives us advance notice of Avvo, a “Law 2.0” service just setting up shop in Seattle.


K270 - Jurisprudence. Philosophy and theory of law - Acts and events

A number of events this past week have exposed a number of moral challenges for the law:

Hanna Hasl-Kelchner pulls together a number of news making events in Two Universities and a Shock Jock posted at LegalLiteracy.com. She discusses lessons the Virginia Tech, Duke lacrosse, and Imus firing can teach business about building a culture of compliance.

Amidst discussion of increased and decreased gun control in the wake of the Virginia Tech murders, at Is That Legal? Eric Muller wonders how a Kent State situation happening again on a well-armed campus would turn out. See his post Gun Control, Campus Shootings, The Wild West, and Kent State.

Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy takes the discussion a step further in So What Are We Going To Do About It?, discussing how rare but horrific events like the murders can skew public consideration of related issues.

At The Technology Liberation Front Adam Thierer argues the FCC should not take the Don Imus situation as an opportunity to regulate hate speech on-air in post Don Imus and the FCC: Should Hate Speech be Regulated?

K300 - Jurisprudence. Philosophy and theory of law - Classification of law

At the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog, my colleague Steve Matthews gives a nice, concise run-down of the controlled vocabulary versus tagging debate in InfoWorld Editor Stuck in 2005 . Matthews says:

So here's the deal... Tagging is a great technology. Every corporate librarian out there will tell you that. And it works even better when teamed with a controlled vocabulary. But for Mr. Margulius to equate Librarians with one classification style over the other, and claim that we are a waste of money, is simply insulting. Librarians were examining the merits of folksonomies 2 years ago, and he's just getting into the game now?

K583 - Comparative Law - Legal systems compared

Over at Overlawyered, Ted Frank presents Underlawyered: Iran comparing the U.S. litigation and tort system with Iran’s.

K1297 - Product liability - medical devices - defense of preemption

Mark Herrman and Jim Beck present Why Does Preemption Matter? at the Drug and Device Law blog. This post explains why, in pharmaceutical product liability cases, the defense of preemption is important to drug companies. The post was prompted by media inquiries arising out of Merck's preemption victory in the Vioxx statewide coordinated proceeding in Texas.

K3255 – Constitutional Law – Individual and State – Freedom of speech

Nicole Black presents Rebel With a Cause, or Without a Clue? posted at Sui Generis--a New York law blog. “On March 19, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in this case, during which our finest judicial minds used their collective brainpower to decipher the underlying meaning and free speech implications of a nonsensical phrase first seen by Frederick on a snowboard. “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” — a seemingly meaningless slogan made suddenly meaningful by virtue of the possibility that it could change First Amendment jurisprudence for generations of teenage pranksters to come. By either design or mere happenstance, Frederick hit the judicial jackpot.” Black takes law blog posting to a new level by including a related video in her post.

K5462 - Forensic psychology

An emu dead under suspicious circumstances gives Norm Pattis pause for reflection and self-accusation and a new understanding of guilty conscience confessions by innocent suspects in J’accuse at Crime & Federalism.

Scott Greenfield is on a roll this week at Simple Justice! In My Brain Made Me Do It! he discusses the difficult question as to how those suffering from some mental illnesses are treated in the courts, that there is either “not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect” or guilty (i.e. evil) with no middle ground. Even the subject headings in the cataloguing system don't seem to handle this subject very well.

K8915 - Defense (Civil Procedure)

Scott Greenfield presents It's the Defense Lawyers, Stupid posted at Simple Justice in response to Randy E. Barnett, in an April 17th Wall Street Journal editorial, Three Cheers for the Lawyers.

KD807 - Contract law - England and Wales

Ken Adams talks about The U.K. Approach to “Representations” and “Warranties” at AdamsDrafting. He is interested in hearing the views of U.K., Canadian and Australian lawyers about the use of these “magic words”. His assertion is that, “if you want to accomplish a given contract goal, address it directly rather than relying on courts to breathe the intended meaning into obscure language.”

KE2750 - Internet publishing - Law and legislation - Canada

In Conservative MP Introduces 'Clean Internet Act', Canadian IP/IT guru Michael Geist says:

Conservative MP Joy Smith yesterday introduced the Clean Internet Act (Bill C-427). The private member's bill would establish an Internet service provider licensing system to be administered by the CRTC [Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission] along with "know your subscriber" requirements and content blocking powers. Just about everything associated with this bill is (to be charitable) rather odd.

In Social (Media) Host Liability - BC Libel Lawsuit, Rob Hyndman (a terrific fellow who I seem to run into everywhere, including in the submissions for this review), talks about one of the first cases of its kind in Canada, and what could be the first case to go the distance (based at least on the deep pockets of one defendant). Google, Wikipedia and Openpolitics.ca are being sued in BC for libel based on user-generated content. Hyndman also speaks about deleting a comment for the first time because of libel chill. [Oh! Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.]

KE3775 - Water - Pollution - Law and Legislation - Canada
KZA1118 - Law of the sea - Treaties and other international agreements

For anyone who hasn't found this gem, I strongly suggest you check out the Library Boy blog. Michel-Adrien Sheppard is a former news researcher/journalist/web producer who now works as a reference librarian at the Supreme Court of Canada. He does any amazing job of pulling together important resources on a myriad of topics. This past week in particular, he was looking at water law resources in three posts:

[I have given these two call numbers since these posts would likely be split apart as they cover a range of subjects about water.]


KF85 - Legal research

How best to provide reference services in libraries has always been of debate by law librarians. The centralized reference desk in some types of libraries has gone in and out of style over the years. Now with new technologies, methods of service delivery have becoming increasingly diverse. Over at Out of the Jungle, Marie S. Newman opens up the subject for conversation in The Future of the Reference Desk.

At WisBlawg celebrity law librarian blogger Bonnie Shucha shared with us the "Read" posters put together by the University of Wisconsin Law Library in celebration of the U.S. National Library Week. This year's posters feature UW Law School faculty members Ken Davis, Allison Christians, and Jim Jones. What a great idea!

KF564 - Computers - Law and legislation

Scott Vine, a.k.a. Information Overlord out of the U.K. tackles the new assertion that supporters of the concept of net neutrality also support piracy in Net Neutrality supporters = Piracy Supporters. Worth noting: he also does a nice little round-up of new technology ideas in a snappy regular feature called Odds & Sods.

At Canadian legal research and technology blog, SLAW, Patrick Cormier and Simon Fodden did a fantastic job blogging the Legal IT conference held last week in Montreal. [Interesting blog note: the "a" in Legal is supposed to be an @ symbol but Blogger does not seem to know how to handle this with a link.]




KF574 - Stare Decisis

Michael Stokes Paulsen is guest blogging over at Balkinization. The Pernicious Doctrine of Stare Decisis is a thought-provoking post arguing against the principle of stare decisis: "Stare decisis is a charade. The doctrine, taken seriously, suggests that judges should deliberately decide cases in ways they otherwise are fully persuaded are wrong, on what they otherwise would regard as the proper interpretive criteria -- sometimes . . . Taken seriously, the doctrine is unconstitutional: it suggests that a court should prefer the (by hypothesis) faithless earlier departure from the Constitution to the correct understanding of the Constitution, in situations where they conflict." If this topic hits home with you, be sure to read through the thorough discussion in the comments as well.

KF905 - High Technology Industries

Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog covers the session Gadgets, Gadgets Gadgets presented at Computers in Libraries this past week in Librarians Show Off Cool Gadgets. Calloway says: “Like many others, I love a program about tech-related gadgets. Too bad none of us can afford all of the gadgets we want. Barbara Fullerton, Manager, Librarian Relations, 10-K Wizard, Sabrina Pacifici, Editor & Publisher, LLRX.com and beSpacific.com and Aaron Schmidt, Director, North Plains Public Library, gave their annual presentation on gadgets at the Computers in Libraries meeting. They have posted a PDF of their PowerPoint on LLRX.com for all to enjoy. This is one of the best gadget round-ups you will find. They even include gadgets not yet available.” I was at the session and have to say my favourite gadget was the low-tech reusable collapsible chopsticks. Madinkbeard agrees.

If you like to keep up with the latest in tech tools (we're talking on the web, not gadgets this time), you should have a look at lo-fi librarian's weekly This Week's Useful Tools. Lots to keep you busy for a full week until the next list!

KF1296 - Products liability - damages

“The less efficient a company, the fewer punitives? The more efficient (the more it adds value to the country) the greater the punitives? Decisions like these are surely applauded by defendants, but they are just as surely indications that punitive damages as currently awarded make no sense at all. “ So asserts Michael Krauss in NJ Verdict Demonstrates Absurdity of Punitives posted at PointOfLaw Forum. [April 24/07 - name corrected!]

KF1446 - Auditor committees - United States

Leon Gettler presents Judges' low opinion of auditors posted at SOX First. Gettler provides a warning for auditors: researchers have found that judges now have a low opinion of them and they will no longer take the excuse that a bad set of accounts is management’s responsibility. That means more auditors could be taken to court and put out of business.

KF2750 - Internet publishing - Law and legislation - United States

At The Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr has a lively discussion about cyber-bullying, a subject close to my heart, taking place. In Legal Responses to “Cyber-Bullying”, he suggests that provider immunity for online defamation and "cyber-bullying" could be conditioned on simple measures to prevent search robots from indexing offending "free-for-all" sites. But who would really want to trade indexing on Google for allowing anonymous comments on a blog? Not me.


KF2805 - Broadcasting - law and legislation - United States

Timothy Bishop talks about the FCC’s attempt to curb the “payola” practice in the U.S. radio industry in Payola Settlement between Gov't & 4 Broadcast Companies posted at The Legal Scoop.

And over at Concurring Opinions, Frank Pasquale describes how the pending XM-Sirius merger may be a "standard-setting" merger which promotes innovation and saves an industry -- satellite radio -- and why that position might have changed since the FCC's original licensing of the former competitors in the post The XM-Sirius Merger.

KF2905 - Medical malpractice - blogs

Those of us in the blogosphere should take note of Walter Olson’s update on accounts from authors of medical blogs who are being pulled into malpractice suits at Doctors' first-person accounts of litigation posted at Overlawyered.


KF2972 Intellectual property – trade mark

Ron Coleman presents That’s a wrap posted at LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION. In it, Coleman follows up on an earlier story about New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s IP enforcement program focused on the train symbols of the NYC subway system, how those symbols are pretty much being used by other agencies including the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to promote condoms. Bonus points for the double-entendre post title!

Attention law bloggers! Marty Schwimmer at The Trademark Blog announces a meetup of law bloggers at the International Trademark Association convention to be held on April 30th:

Billy Goat Tavern, 430 N. Michigan, Monday Night, April 30, 7:30 to 9:30. Convenient to all buses going to bigger better financed INTA parties. Ron Coleman of Likelihood of Confusion, John Welch of TTAB Blog and a domestic shorthair from IPKat will be signing copies of their blogs. My colleagues from Moses and Singer will buy you a drink. Special prize to the best avatar.

KF2996 Copyright – United States

Episode 011 of Rules For The Revolution: The Podcast by Colette Vogele is entitled Fair Use!. This episode brings back Tony Falzone, Executive Director for the Fair Use Project at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society. Tony describes what Fair Use is under the Copyright Act, and how the law is developing in this important field that helps to balance copyright and free speech under the First Amendment.

KF3771 - Abortion - Law and Legislation - United States

At Legalities, one of the ABC News blogs, Jan Crawford Greenburg discusses Anthony Kennedy’s landmark abortion case handed down on April 18th in her post The Last Word. An excerpt:

It's sometimes too easy to mock Anthony Kennedy, and people sure have done a lot of it over the years. He can seem infuriatingly unmoored. He agonizes over his decisions. He's been known to change his mind in a case or two. And his writing style is about as grand as his ornately decorated chambers in the Court. But in yesterday's landmark abortion case, Kennedy was the Associate Justice he believes himself to be.

KF8775 - Judges--United States

In Another Reason Not to Elect Judges Norm Pattis discusses the catch-22 situation wherein elected judges are expected by voters to comment on issues of interest, yet are prohibited in doing so by ethics rules over at Crime & Federalism.

KF8999 - Summary judgments - United States

In"Eenie Meenie" redux posted at Overlawyered, David Nieporent talks about a summary judgment in favour of an airline in a customer service complaint from a 1996 flight.

KF9350 - Internet Crime

Scott Felsenthal tells us about a Cruel Craigslist Hoax over at The Legal Scoop. Be careful what you read on the Internet, people!

KFN2142 - New Jersey - Workers compensation

In NJ comp fraud case: lawyers settle out, workers nailed posted at Overlawyered, Walter Olson tells us about 84 workers who are personally on the hook for at least $2.26 million after filing en masse for workers compensation following the closing of a bathroom-components factory in New Jersey.

KFT1496 - Texas. Transportation code

Scott Henson discusses how data gathered by Texas police indicates there are racial disparities in searches associated with traffic stops, and how wide disparities also exist in the rates of searches for all races from department to department. He indicates: “changes in the law would allow law enforcement to drill down into these data deeper to determine whether departments that search more often gain any law enforcement benefit from the practice.” See Traffic stop info shines light on police searches; date needs tweaking for maximum benefit at Grits for Breakfast.


KFT1497 - Drunk driving - Texas

The Austin DWI Lawyer Jamie Spencer writes about flaws in three new proposed pieces of DWI legislation in Texas. He comments on each in individual posts all available from 3 DWI Bills covered by the Austin American Statesman.


KNQ1139 - Joint ventures - Law and Legislation - China

Dan Harris presents Danone v. Wahaha - Which Of Us Is The Most China Rookie? posted at China Law Blog, discussing an IP dispute between Danone and Wahaha in China, and then broadens the lesson to give some precautions about joint ventures in China.

KPT78 - Thailand

The University at Buffalo Law School is taking an interesting approach to covering research and ideas by faculty and other prominent scholars by podcasting what it calls "Faculty Conversations." Instigated by Jim Milles, the conversations take a more accessible approach to the formal papers regularly presented by faculty. The latest of these is Faculty Conversation: David M. Engel on Legal Pluralism and Injury in Contemporary Thailand.


Linkworthy - wrapping things up!

10 things they didn't tell you about blogging, a thoughtful blog post by Rajesh Setty, includes a secret that's at the heart of the success of Blawg Review, the carnival of law bloggers:

7. If you want to succeed, you HAVE to start making others succeed.

You want to succeed in your blogging initiatives. Others want to do the same. If everyone thinks that ONLY they want to succeed, it will be hard work for everyone. Please spread the word about other blogs. You don't have to promote other blogs blatantly. A little bit of "link love" will go a long way. Don't worry. People will reciprocate if you write "linkworthy" content.

Brett Trout, who will be hosting Blawg Review #106 on April 30th, has compiled the Top 10 Ways to Commit Malpractice with Your Blog including references to Kevin O’Keefe’s post mentioned above. Now, that's linkworthy.

Disclaimer: I am not a cataloguer. The classifications applied to blog posts above are for entertainment purposes only and may be inaccurate. These should not be used for cataloguing purposes. Please consult a cataloguer for questions about categorization and classification of your blog or blog posts. I assume no responsibility for any party who applies these classifications to blogs or blogs posts and is thereby unable to locate respective information in searches.

Happy Book Day, everyone!

Cheers,
Connie

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Blawg Review #105 Coming Soon!!

I am proud to be hosting the Blawg Review on this site this coming Monday, April 23rd. Blawg Review has more information, including instructions on how to get your blawg posts reviewed in this upcoming issue. Remember: for this carnival, I am looking for law-related posts.

I have had a few submissions already. Please keep them coming!!! I was selected to host by Ed. in honour of World Book and Copyright Day. So, anything related to this subject particularly welcome.


Cheers,
Connie

[April 21/07 - name of carnival corrected! ]

Fantastic Freebies - Promoting 2.0 Training

Liveblogging:

Janie Hermann & Robert Keith, Princeton

Gadget garage - iPods, gadgets - can lend out or use to teach in classes [cool name and idea!]

email, Internet, search engines, online catalogue. You can do more! Even a small library without a big budget behind you.

First: get the word out. You want your technology librarians/staff as the tech gurus.

Databytes - each librarian for a month give a daily update on one topic. Teaching distributed around the department. Originally was meant to train the staff, but the public asked to join in so they have included them now.
  • e.g. "Tuesday Technology Talks" - one on Firefox was "hot" -
  • Fun with Flickr poster is cool, brought in a lot of people - what your staff needs to know about Flickr is what the public needs to know about Flickr.
Have demonstrated 40 different websites/tools, mixing and matching depending on the groups of people. They stay up to date with PC Magazine, SEOmoz Web 2.0 awards, Time Magazine 50 Coolest Websites, Filehippo, tech blogs, library blogs, Slash Dot, and others.

Text editing freebies:
  • Google Docs
  • YourDraft
  • Ajaxwrite
Organizaion freebies:
  • Tadalists - make "to do" lists
  • Cozi Central - organize your entire family - shared family calendar, shopping lists, photo collages
  • Google Calendar
Productivity freebies:
  • LogMeIn - give someone tech support remotely
  • CCleaner - cleans out garbage e.g. temporary files; resolves issues
Photos and video freebies:
  • The GIMP
  • Everystockphoto
  • Flickr
  • OneTrueMedia
Goes with easier sites for beginners; more difficult sites for techies.

You build up your user base; keep teaching, adding in, give classes catchy names e.g. "What's the Fuss about RSS"; "Become a Blogger". Doing a podcast project (last summer was a wiki - Booklover's Wiki"). How to create and post free podcasts.

Matt Gullett & Robin Bryan, Public Library of Charlotte and Macklenburg County

Tech freebies - promoting to teens

"Kids are snacking on media and they want to be a part of creating that snack."

You can use what you already have. Excel, Powerpoint - most of us have some sort of office suite on our machines. You can do some innovative programming with what you already have.

ImaginOn - a branch of public libraries and children's theatre in Charlotte (ages 0-18). Has a museum feel to it.

Jewel in the crown is Studio i - video music and animation - blue screen wall, three stations (live action, 3D animation, music creation. Came up with idea of portable imagination station:
  • Stop Motion Pro
  • Pinnacle Studio - editing software
  • Sony Acid Music Studio
  • GarageBand (Mac)
  • Final Cut Studio (Mac)
Thanks to Michael Sauers for Twittering the links which I have included here while liveblogging!!

The Library of the Future - Darien Library!

Liveblogging:

An Extreme Library

Louise Parker Berry,
Darien Library


Delays in building of their new site afforded them time to really vision what they would like in their new library - 2 years.

"The first of the new libraries, not the last of the old."

They used the idease from Ray Oldenburg's book The Great Good Place .

Adapted "extreme customer service" in a new building organized with new technology. Library of the future.

Peter Gisolfi, the architect, shows us the site plan and discusses the planning details. Lots of environmentally friendly details. Then he moves on to show us the floor plan. Now we are looking at artist's drawings of the building. Lovely--looks like it fits in well with existing buildings - lots of bricks, glass, and green landscaping. Lots of green space. He seems to have a grasp of what type of materials are going into the space.

Trying to create "timeless interiors" so they do not go out of style, don't look old so they will still look good in years to come.


Alan Kirk Gray:
Did not want to put some technology over an existing plan; wanted to do something seriously different. Not their library; it is their patron's library. They need to take some risks if they are to survive.

OODA loop:
  • observe where you are
  • orient yourself
  • decide what you are going to do
  • act
--> start the loop again
--> term used by fighter pilots

Make each single part perfect before moving on to looking at the whole.

Set it up so that patrons can use technology as technology. Set them up to do patron to patron (P2P) or they will by-pass the library.

Material handling system happens to have RFID at the front end. Self checking for the patron - major benefit for the library if it is done right. You can organize the workflow and change out who does what.

Skip the RFP process - the more important the process, the less value an RFP process gives you.

No tech services, no circulation back office, no cataloguing. They have "workflow managers" rather than clerks. They are out-sourcing literally EVERYTHING to do with technical services. They only catalogue about 150 books a year on site. They want to see librarians to be knowledge workers.

They want their time from book order to book on the shelf to be 18 hours. It would be 5 hours if they were closer to the book supply site. They want a "short supply tail". In 5-10 years: they want delivery from distributor and to the patron the same day.

Not a traditional reference desk - collaborative space where librarian can work together with patron.

No gaming; no computers in the teen space. It will be right beside the computer space; they can bring their own computers in, but they want it to be a "hang out" space.

David Lee King: Guiding Libraries & Infopros through Change

By David Lee King
http://www.davidleeking.com

this session on change management will focus on change management, but will apply to other types of change

Readings:
• SIRSI Dynix One Source – article by Stephen Abram on change management
• OCLC Perceptions report

books:
Creative Management
Good to Great

One of the ways to de-motivate people is to ignore reality.

2004 – “Web 2.0” coined as a phrase

Two most popular websites right now: MySpace (founded 2003) and YouTube (founded 2005)

All the books about change are by corporate types.
• The old way: leaders ordered change; when it failed, the leaders looked to see where it went wrong;

However, while change is an external thing, but transitions are internal. Most leaders focus on getting the change accomplished rather than getting the workers through the transition process.

Three steps to transition:
• Saying good-bye
o i.e. letting go of the past, or the way things used to be
o they may feel like they are letting go of their whole world of experience
o most people still think of libraries of just books, but we are not just about that any more – hard for some people to make the switch
• Shifting into neutral
o In-between state full of uncertainty and confusion
o e.g. two companies joining together, and then middle management has to figure out how all the details
o rules are getting changed and re-written
o can be a personal thing; to get past this stage you have to want the change and to accept the change
o some people never get past this stage, don’t want to let go of past ways; some get stuck in the neutral zone, and others freeze at the new beginning
o librarians are deciding en masse not to accept the stage and to leave positions – many would take early retirement rather than learn something new. Those of us at this conference are in the minority.
• Moving forward
o Requires behaving in a new way, can be disconcerting and put your sense of competence at risk;
o Resistence can start happening at this point.
o 80% of executives say that resistance to change is why most new technology fails; however, David King says that it is more likely that it fails because of management’s response to the resistance that makes most fail.
o E.g. if a library uses Flickr to store photos, IT dept. freaks out because you are storing them off-site
o E.g. comments on MySpace – some libraries freak out when there are comments posted

Information-based resistance
• Disagreement with the idea itself, don’t understand or confused about the idea

Physiological/emotional resistance
• You feel your job is threatened
• Feeling of loss of power, feeling loss of competence
• All mental, but still real to the person

Other types of resistance
• E.g. cultural differences, disagreement over values

How to navigate through the change:
• Leaders and techies are usually the first to deal with change
o People making the decisions have already come to terms with the change
o It is the transitions people are going through that usually is the problem, not the thing being changed itself.
• Plan the details of the change very carefully
• Use different forms of communication that are regular
• Help people respectfully let go of the past
• Provide a constant stream of information, even when projects slow down and speed up
• Big picture – what are things going to look like and feel like once the change has taken place? How can you help people get there?
• Model new behaviour e.g. you as the administrator should be adopting the change for example using RSS aggregator

Don’t:
• Confuse novelty with innovation
• Confuse motion with action
• Keep something going if it “has a few good years of life left” (sometimes takes a while for people to can their pet projects)
• Adopt a culture of “no”. Common in IT departments.

Always share too much training and too much information – it should feel like you are sharing too much

Watch out for “Technolust” and “Technomust”

If you refuse to change, there are missed career opportunities out there. If you accept other changes in your life, you will learn new skills that make you more marketable. They also bring new networking possibilities. You can shape your own destiny.

Learn all you can about the change if your leaders are not telling you about it.

Stress management.

Whine with purpose. Constructive criticism is good!

Frame the change so that it helps you meet your mission, serves the customer.

One page brief about the change gets on the table a lot faster – elevator
Pitch

Q&A: Resistance versus laziness – if they were not lazy about the old things, then it is a resistance thing. Laziness is an HR issue.

Q&A: Resistance versus inertia

Q&A: technochange fatigue – there is a balance; you have to restrain yourself from implementing too much change; you will feel like you are taking baby steps.

You have to get supervisors on board. You cannot change if the administrators are not there.

Q&A: Communicating in ways that don’t become a barrier –
• don’t say no (become a culture of no); say instead yes, and then put it into place in the priorities and focus.
• Learned from a workshop on communication styles: person is his/her own communication mode and are not thinking about yours – taking other communication styles into perspective.
• Another method is to be honest and to give constant communication telling what is happening.

Technolust – someone who just wants to implement new technology without a reason – have that person to spend 5 minutes figuring out why you are setting it up, who it will serve, who will continue the work in 1 year, 2 years.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

RSS presentation by Steven Cohen

Liveblogging [additional notes added April 18/07]

He says he LOVES Google Reader for his RSS reader, much better than Bloglines. "Google Reader makes you smarter" - you feel like you are reading more.

You can share items with others, including those in Bloglines (not proprietary to Google).

Google Reader very intuitive, very easy to run. He uses it to teach RSS because it is easier to use.

Windows Vista has a "News" button that is really an RSS reader. Cool that they haven't referred to RSS; it doesn't matter what RSS stands for, it is what it does that is important. Call it news feeds, or whatever.

He doesn't browse the web any more - he reads:
- RSS
- Twitter
- email (and he doesn't get through his email)

LIBWORM is cool - David Rothman and developer Frankie Dolan created this site - searching only library feeds. He conducts a live search for CIL2007. Then you can throw the search into your Google Reader. [note corrected April 18/07 - Connie]

Page2 RSS - throw in a URL and create a feed for a site.

Techmeme - what is hot in the tech community

Justia - search U.S. court filings from PACER for free and create a feed for free. Woo hoo!

He puts Justia RSS feeds into Thunderbird - whenever a client gets sued in Federal Court, the attorney knows before the client does.

[additional notes added April 18/07 - I lost the live feed up to here:]

University Libraries RSS Feed - from the University of Oklahoma - cool!

LibraryThing – RSS feed so you can read when someone specific reviews books, lots of other types of feeds. Big on feeds.

Twitter! Blogging and social messaging on crack. He follows 77 people and 95 people follow him. Each page comes with a feed; every time he Twitters something, it comes up into the aggregator and reader.

However, stuff via RSS is going to appear in Twitter. What RSS to Twitter does – you sign into Twitter, you put in a feed, and any time that feed gets updated, it shows up on your page – automatically creates a title and a link.

“Twitter is like going into a room with all of your friends and saying something, and hoping someone listens to you.”

Tumblr http://tumblr.com - he uses it as his linkblog – if he finds something he wants to share with people; what he is doing, he shares photo, quote, link – going to update on his Tumblr page and it creates a feed. Similar to shared items on Google Reader. He can set it up as RSS to Twitter so that every time he links to something on Tumblr, it shows up on Twitter [geez, no wonder it looks like he is always on Twitter!!].

A colleague of his uses Twitter to document what research questions she has had.

Aggregators he has used:

Newscrawler – he wants it based out on the web

Bloglines – goes down too often for himself

Feed on Feeds http://www.stevencohen.info/feeds

He has fallen in love with Google Reader; however Twitter may soon take its place, may be the new reader. E.g. NY Times feed can be subscribed to in Twitter

His top 12 Really Cool Tools:
• Internet Archive http://www.archive.org
• Snapper – http://adonns.mozilla.org/firefox/2703 - allows you to capture just part of the screen as a screenshot and creates a .png file
• Browster – http://www.browster.com - slick! If you have it installed it opens up a little browser so you don’t have to leave your current browser; can make a tab of it and add it to your current browser. Google or Yahoo search – it will automatically cache first 10 results so pages load because they are preloaded – perfect for LEXISNEXIS – go through cases quickly
• BugMeNot
• TinyURL
• GoogleGroups
• Picnik http://www.picnik.com
• CiteBite – http://www.citebite.com - copy the piece of a website and the source URL, and it creates a cite, creates a unique URL – click on the URL, brings you to a cached page on the CiteBite site and highlights the part of the page you selected so you can show it to someone
• E-Bay for research – trademark, copyright – e.g. find Coca Cola bears – http://www.Missing-Auctions.com - allows you to search mispellings on e-Bay – if you don’t find what you need, try it out and you might find it.
• Twitter
• Meebo
• PBwiki

Project Planning Using Blogs and Wikis

Liveblogging

Nicole Engard, Jenkins Law Library

problem using email for project planning; difficult to follow and go back to decisions a year later.

Use a blog for each project; give every staff member the ability to contribute to or create a blog. Discussion is still date-stamped.

Everyone can read what is happening in other departments.

Reduces clutter in in-box. Easy to go back to see the year, and complete reports.

Uses wikis for collecting documentation.

She opened up their site live to us and demonstrated some of the features. Kind of hard to transcribe everything, but here are a few things:

They have a shared calendar that is web-based. Everyone is able to edit it.

To do lists - share to do items with other staff, mark items off, keep track of everything. She hasn't said what platform they are using (or perhaps I missed it).

Every staff member has the ability to start their own project.

Staff members don't have to focus on making things look good; they have the power but should focus on writing (i.e. creating content). The web team go in to make things pretty. Web team also have the ability to delete posts, but doesn't happen very often.

Staff get email alerts when things are updated if they want.

Use good web design, icons to make things clear, Dilbert cartoon to inspire people to visit the site. :-)

They have a "future wish list" thread for everyone. Also works for posting meeting minutes and people can post their comments about the meeting.

WYSIWYG editor - WYSIWYG Pro; they also have ability to edit by HTML. They decided to go with editor since it allows for multiple editors on one page. Approx. $40 for non-profits.

Limit the number of Word documents; prefer to term them into wiki pages so they are searchable, easier to handle.

People can read about projects in other departments; improves communication, lets people know what is happening across the organization.

It is an in-house developed platform based on MySQL using PHP for the front end. They would have to do a lot of work to make it available as open source. She is willing to share parts of their code.

See her website where she will post her presentation:

web2learning.net

Accelerated Planning

Selected notes:

Rebecca Jones, Dysart & Jones Associates

Project planning elements:

• Clarity

• Preparation – the power of 2:

o 2 minutes to respond to a question
o 2 hours for a meeting
o 2 months to start a new service initiative
o 2 years to get a new project completed

• Competence

• Balance

• Follow through – has to be built right into the plan

Eat complexity one bite at a time – eat the elephant one bite at a time

Identify stakeholders; think of them as individual people, not by their position or as a group. They can make or break your project, and are not the same as your clients.

Environmental scan – becomes a goal within the plan. Get together what we’ve got
see if there are any gaps or holes and SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities.

**Drafting the document as you go along. As soon as people see things in print it helps get their ideas together. Get your draft out ASAP to refine our thoughts. Feedback/push-back is essential and tells you where you need to focus your attention. No more than 3 to 5 goals; any more then you cannot remember them.

Core team – accelerating the process
• Everybody plays by the same rules
• No hidden agendas
• If you are off-setting stress with humour, make sure it is funny to everyone

By writing out the draft document, it starts to give a vision – position for discussion throughout the organization. You start to have a conversation around the strategy. If we do this and not something else, what are the consequences? Can we live with the consequences?

Balance:
Dealing with reality – figure out first what you want to happen. Figure out what barriers will stand in your way so you can deal with them. Pay attention to what barriers you are going to influence and deal with them. Then figure out critical success factors. Focus on steps that are critical. Relationships are key- you all have to work together.

Follow-through:

In one day (one long day) – close the library and bring all people together
Prior to the meeting:
• Have draft SWOT
• Have draft mission
At the meeting:
• Have a stakeholder help set the tone of the meeting; or a highly respected person from outside the organization, explaining the importance to show the alignment of what you are doing
• Review SWOT & environmental scan
• You want to create a draft vision for the future
• Draft segmented market, offerings, capabilities & strategies
• Identify what the next steps are – emailed to them
After the meeting
• Documentation
• Development tactics

You will not please everyone. Acknowledge you will not know everything to make the decisions.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Building Communities

Selected notes

Michelle McLean
, Casey-Cardinia Library Corporation (public libraries in Australia)

Dating program very successful; 300 people took part; 200 took away

Inside a Dog
• Book reviews, authors in residence, author reviews, book news, forums, competitions
• Blogs
• Over 200,000 visits since January 2006; mostly kids going on themselves after school.
• 75% Australian audience; also 15% U.S.
• want to add podcast and video

Libraries Interact
• Independent libraries blog; no affiliation to one organization; all blogging librarians have their own blogs
• Majority of comments from U.S. readers

Second Life and VLINT
• Kathryn Greenhill – has organized an Australian libraries building
• “Virtual Libraries Interact”

L2 Unconference

Library Lovers Day

Has a paper in the conference proceedings.

Karen Huffman, National Geographic Society

Building communities
• Building teams
• Intersection between physical and virtual
• Decentralized approach with document management using HTML, JavaScript, wikis and blogs
• Library staff work with users to design solutions to their problems
• Once they gain traction with their groups, they teach them how to do it themselves
• Their teams are as dynamic in working in their organization as they are electronically

Nearly 50 sites within their organization; they help the teams organize their sites.

Weekly classes posted on a share calendar.

Research database – 1,000 documents, plus 1,000 more in the works

Also take a decentralized approach to records management – RIM managers meet twice a year as to what should be archived or discarded. System called “e-docs”; show how to use it during coffee breaks and via Webex for those in remote locations.

Intranet Team Site & Wiki
• Started out as a way to appeal to the Gen-Y group
• The Gen-Y group came in and created a mind map of what they would like to see on the intranet
• The Gen-Y team worked on creating an intranet incorporating the ideas.

Intranet Division Site & Blog
• Plug-in like application posts a thumbnail photo that posts the person’s photo (avatar) when they post comments.

Cross-Divisional Wiki: Kids 2.0
• RSS feeds to educational news sources

Wikis & Mashups
• Women’s explorer research database
o Collaboratively build a research site for women explorers, photographers, researchers and writers
o Divided by nationality/geography, and whether they have been contributors to National Geographic
o Amelia Earhart, Diane Fossey, Losang Robgey (Tibet)

Cross-team Wiki & Mashups
• Geographic information – each ladybug on the map represents a “bio blitz”.
• Want to make a KMZ file to show all the National Geographic projects on Google Earth

Brainstorming – “speed dating” style with users
• Each person sat at a different table for 10 minutes to help brainstorm
• Food and coffee (in the morning)
• Came up with a lot of good ideas

Desktops moving to the web
• Custom home pages
• Looking at IBM and Open Source

Second Life
• Gracie (with green hair)
• Should be in the social spaces where their audience is

Collaboration is key – for many years she has been “a community of one” but many people are now catching on.

Make sure your staff are playing the right roles so that you have covered all the aspects – some people are better at some things than others.

Gaming and Libraries

I'm a bit disappointed because I lost some of my notes. Here is the first 2/3 of Jenny's talk~

Jenny Levine

Gaming – not just Nintendo, not just teenage boys in the basement

• 90 million people up to age 35 (compared to Boomers who number 77 million)
• average age of the game is 33 years old
• largest group of online games – middle-aged women

Examples:
• Guitar Hero
• Dance Dance Revolution – very popular for women wanting exercise
• Nintendo Wii – new type of gaming; has opened up the world of gaming
o Families are playing together
o Seniors are playing e.g. bowling
o Those with physical issues can now bowl

Gamers – characteristics
• Organized
• Make decisions quickly
• Distrust of bosses (bosses are the villain they beat in the game)
• They learn a lot from games – physics, words, planning their next moves
• They expect rewards

Different types of services
• Collection development
o Mario Brothers Memorial Librarian
o Gaming Target
• Support materials for the culture of gaming
o E.g. gaming night for families @ImaginOn
o Orange Country Library System http://www.ocls.info/gaming - have a whole blog devoted just to gaming; allow kids post game reviews that get posted;
o www.myspace.com/gamerspryte (?)
o collections of older games so people can study them
• Reader Advisory
o Instead of asking what movie they like, ask what games they like
o Games have different genres
o Can determine what kind of books they will like by the type of game they will like.
• Non-video games
o E.g. hungry hungry hippos, Cranium
o Geocaching – you put something in a place and post the GPS coordinates on a website and someone finds it and puts something in its place – just a big scavenger hunts
• Open play
o Have the kids bring in their games
o Some libraries are offering tournaments after school e.g. Dance Dance Revolution
o You get interesting groupings of kids who would not normally be seen together
• Blog
o Teen blog about gaming – kids comment and interact every day
o Ann Arbor District Library
o Kids love it so much they have created their own online forum to talk about the library tournaments

Gadgets Gadgets Gadgets!

Always fun, the gadgets show with Barbara Fullerton, Sabrina Pacifici and Aaron Schmidt. My favourite so far: the retractible, reusable chopsticks. I need these!!!

Um, I didn't liveblog this because it took me a while to get connectivity. I suggest checking out David Lee King's blog since he seems to be blogging it completely from what I can see on his keyboard beside mine. ;-)

Jessamyn West - Pimp my Firefox

Liveblogging:

Pimp my Firefox
by Jessamyn West

See Jessamyn's presentation on her website here.

This is my first time watching a presentation by Jessamyn. It is a room of 300-450 people, and she is very comfortable and entertaining on the podium. This is a dynamic presentation in many ways; she is jumping to and from websites and showing us how she uses the Firefox add-ons on her machine.

When you install something on Firefox, it sometimes has to re-start. However, Firefox restarts quickly AND reopens with all the tabs you had open opened up still. Cooool.

Smart keywords - allows you to find any box to search keywords on the web. Saves you time so you can answer a question quickly.

Themes allow you to put your own esthetic onto your browser.

Greasemonkey is a javascript enabler - smiley monkey down in the right-hand corner means that Greasemonkey is working. Installs scripts that other people have written and allows you to manage them. It does work between the website and what you see on the screen.

Examples of scripts:
  • "Flickr more home script" - Greasemonkey allows you to see 8 pictures instead of 4 at a time on Flickr.
  • "Yahoo mail welcome skipper" - by-passes the advertising for you.
  • "Facebook auto colorizer"
  • "Facebook auto login"
  • "Gmail signature flow" - puts your signature under your text rather than all the way at the bottom of all the messages
  • "Wikipedia cleaner" - she doesn't like the sidebar; changes the style sheet and puts the sidebar at the bottom
Greasemonkey can be used to remove ads from webpages. Do you want to block ads in a public library? Will this block out legitimate pop-ups?

What can you do with this at your job? See the resources on this page about using Firefox in the Library. "Walk Like a Librarian" page - great for new Firefox users. Will step you through the stages.

You can add searches onto Firefox (top right corner). See the Search Engines add-on page.

"Elder Statesman" links in her handout are for making web pages easier to see for anyone having issues viewing the page, including some seniors.

Wow. I have lots to learn about Firefox. But I guess that is why I attended this session and not Meredith Farkas' session which I also would have loved to attend! :-)

Ken Roberts on Hamilton Public Library - Library 2.0

Liveblogging:

Library 2.0: Building Communities, Connections & Strategies

Ken Roberts, CEO of Hamilton Public Library

From the tab "Library Services", they access not just HPL but also other libraries in the community including Mohawk College and McMaster University.

If you are a library user and are on the city's portal, any search will also pull up library results. "Complete integration with municipal services." Using Sharepoint portal software. Compliant with accessibility codes; just because the software is compliant, it doesn't mean the documents added are compliant. Have provided training on this aspect.

26 web authors for the content, it gets put directly onto the portal without any mediation. They do extensive staff training and have a standards committee to look at changing standards. 200 people have been trained on creating content.

Risk management components: which parts may fail, what will they do if they fail? However, they didn't account for how much the events calendar would be used by the community. It was the first application that crashed.

Create collaborative space for community groups. Now have 70 online book clubs that use the collaborative space.

Designed for online transactions (maintained by the City); community organizations can use to do fundraisers, sell tickets, collect donations; has not worked well.

70-80 users per week obtain library cards that never go into a branch; they are using electronic services. Do not require them to go into a branch to pick up a card.

Find-it guides, on-line pathfinders, book clubs - if they add new titles to the catalogue, they automatically update. Dynamic, unlike a fixed PDF file that needs updating.

**If we provide fewer services but spend more money on publicity and marketing, we will find them better used. Ken Roberts was on the jumbotron at a local Tigercats football game that was nationally broadcast - becoming a "famous librarian". Had a tie-in with the Ticats; gave away Ticats tickets obtained from the team during off-season for free. Next run of library cards will have the Ticats logo on it (good organization, so good tie-in).

Partnerships in the community work well; your reputation will precede you. Nobody now starts a public partnership now without considering the Hamilton Public Library; considered a good, honest broker which will bring valuable resources to the table.

Built a fibre optic system in the community with the public schools in the mid-90s; has really paid off to allow them to put the portal into place.

Featured in an upcoming IFLA book on partnerships. Partnerships – many work, some don’t. For those organizations that don’t work well in the partnerships will have a more difficult time starting up partnerships later. Going into a partnership you need a common vision. Sometimes you need to compromise to create that common vision. You have to stay true to your organization’s goals; many times compromise works, sometimes it does not and you do not pursue the partnership.


“Celebrate success, excuse mistakes.” Any time working with a partnership, mistakes will make; look for a common culture. This is the attitude that the HPL brings to the table. You lose volunteers fast if you become critical; everyone who worked on it gets T-shirts, Ti-cat tickets, had a draw. Everyone is recognized.

They have not turned on financial transactions yet (city and library are currently using them but haven’t turned on for the community groups; legally with the city they haven’t decided how they should open it up).

Virtual library branch is a real branch. Started in 2001. Provides full online services, has its own manager.

Bibliocommons – social software, front end for library systems, allows users to put in information. Want to be the first multi-faceted group to use this

Second Life – have an island, just starting to build it. He loves SL; he believes it has huge potential. Working with vendors to deliver services

Hpl.ca
Myhamilton.ca

Blogging at Computers in Libraries

I'm now settled into the conference hotel, ready for Computers in Libraries to start tomorrow. I spent the last two days with Sabrina Pacifici preparing our workshops for Thursday, a new one on blogging for the enterprise, and one that Sabrina runs annually on mining blogs and RSS for research purposes.

I've now had a look at the list of people planning to blog the conference, and it is quite impressive! For anyone not here, it will be a well-covered conference. My only regret was deciding not to bring my new microphone, so I won't be recording people. Too bad, because it would have been a great opportunity with all these interesting people here.

Lots of ideas for future projects are already flying around. I may have to take a sabbatical from my usual job to get all these extra projects done! Heh.

Anyway, if you are here as well please do say hello. :-)

Cheers,
Connie

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Caveat Emptor? Researching Metropolitan Who's Who

I find it incredible the number of people finding my blog post about Metropolitan still. They are trying to determine whether to take memberships, whether to take the risk. You will note I do not call the Internet-based private social network a scam. As a librarian, I believe in presenting the various points of view, good, bad or indifferent, so that people can form intelligent, well-informed opinions on their own. People deciding whether to join should make up their own minds about Metropolitan. In addition to the Metro-written website, blogs and press releases which as with anything written by most organizations are very positive, also have a look at this and this and weigh the risks carefully for yourself before you pay $741 or whatever amount they quote you. If you don't feel uncomfortable giving them your money after reading the various points of view, then you will have piece of mind giving out your credit card number.

Remember, in any relationship when you sign on to join a group or buy something, caveat emptor. A nice Latin phrase for you legal research fans!!

Monday, April 09, 2007

Third Winner Found in Blog Anniversary Draw!

Congratulations to Heather Acton who is the third winner in my third blog anniversary draw! Heather has been away from her email and just saw my message today.

Again, congratulations to all our winners! I'm still waiting for our Cafe Press store to open up.

Cheers,
Connie

Have You Found Your Second Life Yet?

I have been playing with Second Life for several months now, slowly finding my way around and discovering more reasons to visit. Tonight I am joining a group of Canadian women called "After a Fashion" who are using the excuse of shopping to learn our way around SL as a group. This will be my second time out with them, their third trip as a group.

As I become increasingly familiar with Second Life, I seem to hear about more related groups and events.

Wayne MacPhail of rabble.ca podcasts seems quite involved. This is what I found checking out his efforts tonight:

  • Rabble.ca podcast: Who's on Second? talking to educators and activists using Second Life. This podcast has been running since November 2006 and is up to its 20th episode.
  • Rabble.ca on Second Life
  • Tomorrow night 9 pm EST Don Tapscott will be in Second Life discussing Wikinomics with Wayne MacPhail's help. See the notice.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Winners of Connie Crosby's Big Fat 3rd Blog Anniversary Draw

Thanks to everyone who took part in the little survey in honour of my 3rd blog anniversary!! Everyone who responded is a regular reader, with the exception of one person who described him/herself as someone who reads frequently but not regularly. You all left wonderful comments. I also asked about my portrait photo on this blog, whether it should be changed. 3 of you said to keep it since "it is a classic" (those were my words), 2 of you said it is time to change it, and everyone else said it is up to me. So, I'm not going to go out of my way to have a photo taken just YET, but if I happen to walk in front of a camera, you may see a change sometime in the future..... heh.

Okay, now without further ado! Three winners of NE2007 swag from the yet-to-be-created Cafe Press store were selected randomly from the 18 people who gave me email addresses in the survey (there were more who responded to the survey). Each of the 18 were numbered, and I had Wendy Reynolds pick three numbers in the 1 to 18 range. She could not see the list of email addresses. Each of the winners was sent an email message from me notifying of the win and requesting permission to post their names to this blog.

And the winners are:


Yes, the third person has not yet responded!! And, because I don't have the name of the person (although I have my suspicions who you are), I cannot hunt you down via your work address. If you left your gmail account address, please check to see if there is a message to you from Connieblog! If I don't hear from you tomorrow I will try sending the message again. I'm hoping it didn't get stuck in your spam filter. I will keep trying!

Anyway, congratulations Kathryn and Steve. And thanks to everyone who took part in the draw!!! I appreciate all of your support in this little blogging endeavour of mine, and am thrilled that you are reading along with me. You have made this little milestone very special.

Cheers,
Connie