Connie Crosby

Info Tech Start-ups Featured at SLA Toronto Event

2011-12-19T21:29:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago I attended SLA Toronto's event Start It Up! The event was hosted by Helen Kula at the MaRS Discovery District where she works as a Senior Information Specialist in the Market Intelligence group. Four local vendors presented their technologies, all in the area of information aggregation.

I was excited to attend because as someone who works and plays in the areas of social media, information management and knowledge management, I am always looking for useful new tools to use in my work. We live in exciting times when someone in his or her basement can quickly become the founder of the next Amazon, Twitter or Facebook. But it's not an easy road to getting there, and those startups that truly have valuable ideas need our support if they are going to be viable.

The notes below are based on notes I sent out via Twitter during the event. No doubt there are inaccuracies and omissions as a result; I welcome corrections and additions.

Trendspottr - http://trendspottr.com/ - @trendspottr

First up was Mark from Trendspottr. Trendspottr is a free web-based service that identifies and predicts trends from real-time data. Some of the largest media companies in the world are using it, for example: the BBC, The Guardian, BBC Today, Yahoo News and Canada's Post Media. Also some of the biggest PR agencies in the world are using it to identify trends. Klout is using also using it internally, sees the value of it.

Mark explained to use that the "half-life" of content is now about 3 hours. It will soon be down to minutes. Value dissipates quickly. The focus of Trendspotter is to find data very early on, hours before general awareness. They are now trying to predict trends and outcomes, getting ahead of the info curve.

Trendspotter has a bookmarklet that allows you to start a search to see what is trending on any topic.

In December it will be integrated with social media "dashboard" tool Hootsuite. They will soon also be releasing Trendspottr Newsroom and Trendspottr Pro (with notifications and analysis). Trendspottr is also working on time-based influencer analysis.

BuzzData - buzzdata.com - @BuzzData

Next up was Nick Edouard of BuzzData, a tool for data sharing and collaboration. Data sets loaded onto BuzzData are given their own URL and tools for sharing or working with privately.

Some of the features making BuzzData unique:

You can choose your license for making data sets available publicly, for example making them available under Creative Commons.
BuzzData helps to encourage community around the data, encouraging the community to work with, manipulate, and link to the data.
You can add context to data including visuals, graphs, images.
Versioning of data. Excel doesn't allow for this kind of data trail.
Site has ability to flag content as being inappropriate.

BuzzData is a platform. Edouard says "let's build an ecosystem of apps around it," which goes along with the general philosphy of BuzzData: "Good stuff happens when data is shared." It seems to me this is a lot of what we hear reporter/author Jeff Jarvis saying as well.

Still in public beta, BuzzData is being used by newspapers, news agencies, governments, cities, not-for-profits, NGOs and more.

Edouard explained that most people's experience with open data was version 1.0. We now need to take it a step further, curating the data and building engagement around it.

ConnectedN - http://www.connectedn.com/ - @getconnectedn

How do you get experts to comment on something relevant and turn it into content for clients? That is the goal of ConnectedN.

How does it work? ConnectedN delivers targeted information to the experts inside an organization (also for knowledge management and marketing teams). It allows them to easily add comments and then publish this out to blogs, a newsletter, Twitter, LinkedIn and other sources on the Internet.

This allows you to easily designate one person inside your organization to spend an hour a week or five minutes a day participating in content creation.

If you have a strong KM or marketing team trying to drive customer engagement, this makes it a lot easier.

Currently ConnectedN is available as a paid, customized service, but will soon be launching a self-serve, lower price point service.

Sciencescape - coming soon to: http://www.sciencescape.net

Next up: Sam from Sciencescape with a new product launched that same day.

Sciencescape maps out scientific publications/articles from PubMed, and includes news feeds, filters, timelines and article-level metrics.

To date Sciencescape has been mapping out current publications. They will be relying on users to map out historic articles. According to Sam, Sciencescape gets better the more it is used: as comments are added in, researchers around "bleeding edge" areas can be identified.

Once available to the public (soon!), there will be flagging methods in Sciencescape to help police contributions.

It is not yet ready, but in a few days we should be able to go to http://www.sciencescape.net/ and sign up for beta passwords.

Eqentia - http://www.eqentia.com/ - @eqentia

Next up at SLA Toronto start-up night: William Mougayar of Eqentia - a news/social media content curation platform. I was already familiar with Eqentia, having worked with Mougayar previously to put a sample site together (more on that below).

Eqentia allows organizations or internal departments to put content out to internal or external clients/customers. Content can be automated, curated, or manually gathered.

Eqentia looks for relevancy rather than popularity; it index 120,000 articles per day using semantic search. It looks for relevancy first, then popularity.

It essentially allows you to become the publisher - content comes in, is filtered according to rules you set, and the good content comes out. Your content can be branded, integrated with any site, even delivered via email.

Eqentia acts as an all-in-one comprehensive platform allowing for content harvesting, filtering, aggregation, curation, branding, newsletter managemeent, semantic searching, publishing and more. The content integrates well with social media; it has "on ramps" and "off ramps" bringing content in, pushing content out.

They already have a range of customers. Mougayar said he is talking to a few law firms currently because of mix of internal and external content.

Mougayar showed a sample Eqentia site at http://www.librariesfuture.com/ that was created with my help. (It needs work and, yes, it is heavy with posts from my friend Stephen Abram).

ITWorld Canada also has an Eqentia site http://www.itworldcanadacurated.com/.

Wrapping it all up

I personally find the subject of tech startups to be fascinating, and love to see us give support to these local companies, especially in terms of being beta testers, providing feedback, and giving them potential new business.

During the Eqentia presentation, I was asked how I got involved with the project. Long story short: I had attended a few Toronto Semantic Web Meetup Group meetings organized by William Mougayar in an attempt to get my head around the semantic web. He is extremely humble, not talking about his own semantic tool at the meetings. As I started to get to know him, I started to ask about his company. Finally one day he invited me to see it in action. I was hooked!

He then asked if I would like to curate a site. Of course! Unfortunately it has been a busy year and I haven't spent the time on it that I would like (which is why I've never written it up here previously). But I hope you will take a look. If you would like an introduction to the folks at Eqentia, let me know. I have no financial arrangements with them--I am just an enthusiastic fan-girl who likes to be the first to try things out.

Everyone seemed to quite enjoy the tech start-up evening. I hope SLA Toronto makes this an annual event! Toronto is a real hot-bed for tech start-up companies, many of them working in areas that should be of interest to special librarians, information managers, and knowledge management directors.

Why Occupy Toronto?

2011-11-15T10:53:00.001-05:00

I have been trying to get my head around the "Occupy" movement, particularly in Canada. It seems to me there are a lot of points of contention and pain in other countries, but wonder what we have to complain about in Canada that would move people to these extreme measures. I'm also not sure I completely "get" this movement since there are not specific demands or direction. On the other hand, I defend their right to peaceful assembly and protest.

I was in New York last week and walked past the Occupy Wall Street encampment. I was surprised at how small a geographic space it takes up (no bigger than Toronto's, albeit a lot more densely populated). I was also surprised at how organized they appeared to be, obviously quite self-contained in the space they are occupying.

Last night my fellow Slaw law blogger Omar Ha-Redeye appeared on TV Ontario's current affairs talk show The Agenda with Steve Paikin supporting the Occupy Toronto movement. It is a thought-provoking exchange and helped clarify things for me. Here's that discussion--

As I have been writing this, word comes via Twitter that the people at Occupy Toronto have been served eviction notices by the city. Everything is peaceful so far, but the city (and the world) will be watching.

My Top 5 Tips for Businesses Using Social Media

2011-11-13T17:01:00.000-05:00

On Friday Phil Ridout put out the following question to some people in his Google Plus network:

Social media in business setting - top tips please!
I've been asked to make a presentation in 10 days time about using Social Media in a Business Setting. I've a bunch of ideas and stuff of my own but what better way to demonstrate the power of social networking than by asking people in my network for their top tips. So, what are your top 5 tips for businesses using Social Media please.

I quite like the list I came up with, so decided to share with you here. This has been derived from a lot of reading, course work learning and hard-won real world experience. I believe all these points apply whether your project is inward facing or outward facing.

My top 5:

1. Start small with a "quick win" project, especially with a small group (e.g. pilot project, proof of concept) and then slowly work into larger, strategic projects from there.

2. Don't build an "empty disco" - seed any new tool with content and invite a few people in to share specific contributions to get the ball rolling. If the dance floor is empty, no one is going to want to be the first to dance.

3. Solicit early adopter(s) to be champion(s) of the project. Give them support, including special training in the project's technology. Keep them in the loop so they can accurately sell/evangelize to others inside the organization.

4. To sell it to the executives, the initiative needs to tie back to the organization's or department's business goals. Don't just start using a tool because everyone else is doing it. (Hint: "It will improve collaboration" rarely ties back to business goals and is usually not a selling point.)

5. If the small project doesn't work, kill it quickly and move on to another "quick win."

What do you think of these tips? What are your top 5 tips for businesses using social media?

Are You Using Plaxo? How to Delete Your Account

2011-11-10T15:33:00.000-05:00

A discussion on one of my listservs about Plaxo got me thinking about why I had signed up for it, and why I still had an account. It was many years ago that I signed on (probably when it was first launched). I signed on to see what it is about, but rarely went back. Few of my contacts were there, and those were mostly contacts I have connection with on other sites. So, I decided to delete my account and document the process for everyone.

Do you use Plaxo? I am curious to know what value you are getting from it. Why do you use it?

How to delete your Plaxo account

1. Go to the Plaxo site http://www.plaxo.com and click on the "sign in" button.

2. Sign in. If you don't remember your password, ask for a password reminder. Hopefully you remember the email address you used to sign up!

3. Once you successfully sign in, click on the drop down menu under your name. Then click on "Settings".

4. On the first screen under "Account info" find the line that says "If you no longer want to use Plaxo, you can delete your account." Click on the words "delete your account" (in blue).

5. Plaxo will ask you to confirm the deletion. Note that this deletion (and the deletion of all your contacts) will be permanent. It asks you to review what will be deleted. If you prefer, there is a way to download your content from the very first screen (under "Sync and Back Up" in the menu at the top). I didn't bother with that since I did not have much content or many contacts.

Plaxo also asks for your reasons for leaving, and what they could have done better to keep you to stay.

6. Click on the blue "Delete account" button (above) and voila! your account has been permanently deleted.

Blogger Monday: When should you back up your blog content?

2011-08-08T21:40:00.002-04:00

Last week I wrote my "Blogger Monday" blog post Sunday night and used the option to schedule it to post on the Monday. I went to sleep, content in having a new blog post under my belt. I have been on Blogger, Google's blogging platform, before it was even owned by Google. Yes, more than seven years. I have always composed my messages directly into the blog, hit "publish" and never had a problem. Until last week.

The next day I went about my day, and it wasn't until late morning that I thought to check in to the blog. Much to my surprise, the new blog post was not there! I went into the dashboard on the back end. Perhaps I had done something wrong? With the WordPress blogging platform, for example, if you leave the category "uncategorized" checked off, the post does not appear publicly. No, nothing there. I checked draft posts, I checked scheduled posts, and I checked all posts. Nothing. I tried searching the posts from the back end, again nothing. I spent a couple of stressed hours. I remembered largely what I had written, but who wants to spend another hour rewriting a blog post?

I checked Google's help forum and discovered a few others had experienced the same problem recently, but no one was offering answers as to why and how to recover. I vented a bit on Twitter, and got a bit of sympathy but again no real answers.

And then I got a message from educator extraordinaire, Diane Bédard:

Backup? Ummm...hrm. I had never thought to back up an individual blog post. I always thought once it was accepted as post I would be safe. Apparently not! My first reaction was to say "I could never write off-line and then post to a blog! Blogging directly into the blog platform is part of my creative process!". I have to admit to being a bit huffy about it. And then I realized that (as is always the case) Di was right.

Backing up individual blog posts

So, my compromise is to write directly in the blog platform, but then to copy down the content at least until the post goes up publicly. That way I always have my last post at least in draft "just in case." I am getting used to this new addition to the workflow, but here is what I do:

Go to the HTML editor for the blog post and copy all content (using "select all" in the browser). This way I capture all the HTML coding.
I then copy it into a text editor rather than Word so that extra Word code is not added to the document. And...save.
If I need to reinstate the blog post later, I would copy from the text editor document, and paste into the HTML editor screen.

So how did I get the post back last Monday? After putting it aside for a couple of hours, I came up with an idea: what about my browser history, was there a link there? I went in, and was very fortunate to somehow (mysteriously) be able to pull open the blog post. It appeared to somehow still be in Blogger, albeit lost. I copied from the HTML editor and then went to the blog in a fresh screen, started a new blog post, and pasted the copied text back into the HTML editor. I was extremely lucky all of this actually worked.

Backing up all archived blog content (i.e. exporting)

In addition to backing up individual posts, what else should you do to back up your blog content? It is a good idea to periodically back up your content in case the site goes down or disappears.

WordPress, for example, has an "Export" feature currently under "Tools":

Blogger has an "Export content" feature under "Settings" and "Basic":

Other considerations in backing up blog content

Other things to think about when determining how you are going to back up blog content:

Think about the format you are exporting the content into.
What about the blog template, especially if you have customized it? On Blogger it doesn't hurt to grab the template HTML (copy from the Template > Edit Template page). In WordPress, keep track of the plugins you have added.
What about blogger profiles? And other pages added such as with WordPress?
Will the content you capture allow you to sufficiently replicate the blog later? Move to another platform?
Where will you store the backup versions of the site? Think about the measures you typically take to back up important content. You may wish to do the same with your blog content.
How often will you back up content? It is a good idea to stick to a regular schedule. Will you back it up daily, weekly or monthly?
Who will be in charge of backing up the site? Who will fill in if that person is away?

I have to admit being a bit cavalier with my own blog, but after last week's incident am starting to realize how much personal equity I have built up in this blog and how I should be making a more concerted effort to back it up. And of course if you are administrating a blog for work or business purposes, you may have even more important reasons to back it up consistently.

When updating blog templates or layouts

Finally, it is a very good idea to have a separate development or test site for making changes to the blog template or plug-ins. Set up a copy of your blog at a separate URL to test out changes. That way if you mess something up, you haven't destroyed your good work on the main site. This is something I see others doing. In the past I would have just tweaked the template of this blog on the fly; however, especially with something like WordPress, code and plug-ins can interact in unexpected ways. As I start to think about changing the template to this blog, I am giving thought to setting up a separate test site so I can play around with options and not risk losing my hard work.

Innovative Ideas: Virtual Stores and the Possibility for Public Libraries

2011-08-02T23:45:00.033-04:00

This video depicts how Tesco have adapted their services for the South Korea market. One of their goals was to increase market share while not increasing number of stores. The solution? "Virtual" stores in subway stations. Have a look, this is pretty cool--

Shoppers add items to their shopping carts by scanning QR codes with their smart phones, and then the items purchased are delivered to their homes. This makes me wonder how public libraries might take advantage of something like this? Imagine browsing books while waiting for a train or bus and having them delivered to your ebook reader or home. Libraries have been exploring the various uses of QR codes. This use would certainly attract some attention to libraries, don't you think?

Can you think of other uses of a virtual store like this?

Hat tip to Martin Cleaver for sharing this video.

Blogger Monday: Kickstarting an Old Blog

2011-08-01T14:48:00.001-04:00

I know I keep harping on about the things I learned at AALL 2011, but there is indeed more. Last week I attended the blogger meetup hosted by the CS-SIS (Computing Services Special Interest Section). We were fortunate to have Meredith Lindemon, owner and operator of Meredith Group, join us. Lindemon is a consultant who specializes in launching the web presence for organizations as well as business development.

She sat with each of our tables and gave us individual advice about our blogs. I have to admit, I didn't expect to learn much since I have been blogging so long and even written a successful book about blogging. But I was pleasantly surprised! I explained to her that I have been blogging for over seven years, help other people to blog, and even consult in this area. But, I was struggling to keep content going on my own blog. I have been a stuck thinking about how I would like to change the look of this blog, and feel this has kept me a bit hung up on posting.

She gave me three pieces of advice to get started again, some of which I apparently have been taking:

Give up on the old blog and start fresh with a new one on a different topic.
Get into the habit of writing each day for just 20 minutes.
Pick a theme for each day of the week and write to that theme. For example, Mondays could be about law librarianship, Tuesdays could be interviews with mentors.

While I felt that the first suggestion to be sage advice, it is not good for me. My blog has been wide-ranging and has developed over time as I have developed my own interests. I want to keep blogging about what I am learning professionally, so don't see a need to start on a new topic or a new blog. That being said, at some point the look will get revamped.

But the other two pieces of advice hit the nail on the head, I think. Writing each day for 20 minutes is a low time commitment, and yet should get me back in the groove of blogging each day. I do a lot of writing throughout the day (Twitter, Facebook, email, blog comments, and of course client reports) so this should not be a stretch.

I am mulling over the idea of a theme for each day. Behind the scenes I have in the past put together series of blog topics only to feel less than inspired when it came time to write the full blog posts once I had completed the outlines. No doubt there are skeletal blog post remains littered all over the place. So, it will be important to pick themes I can sustain. No doubt the best plan of action will be to start with themes I am already addressing, and allow those to flourish. I am still giving some thought to this.

I do like the idea of making one day dedicated to the topic of blogging since I have written substantially in this area. Therefore, I am kicking off the themes with "Blogger Monday". What do you think? What sorts of topics would you like to see covered with respect to blogging?

And what about the other days of the week? What should I cover then? I have some ideas but haven't set fingers to keyboard yet, so there is still time to get your suggestions in.

Thank you so much for joining me in this journey to get this blog rolling again. I think it is about time! I really do hope you will consider participating and adding a comment or two to the blog. That would be some real encouragement!

Cheers,

Connie

Photo credit: based on "Kick Start" by BotheredByBees made available for use and adaptation under Creative Commons.

What Are You Saying? - Communication and the Need to Speak the Same Language in the Workplace

2011-07-29T15:15:00.002-04:00

Having just come back from the AALL 2011 conference, I can't help but think about all the sessions that started off by defining the terminology and concepts being discussed. Kathie Sullivan and I did the same in our session on collaboration tools, explaining what sense of collaboration we were talking about.

Here are a few things I have been thinking about lately with communication and learning to speak the same language in the workplace:

1. It is important for senior managers to get an accurate vision out to staff.

This means a few things:

Make sure everyone is using the terminology in the same way. There are different ways to collaborate; are you talking about the same thing? Are you talking just about co-ordinating with one another, or actually creating something together so that the individual contributions (and contributors) will not be distinguishable in the final work product?
How will this collaboration happen? Who will lead? What are the ground rules?
If you want to see something "innovative", what do you mean by "innovative"?
What is your risk tolerance and how open will this process be?

All of these things need consideration before people magically work together to make your vision a reality.

2. It is important for senior managers to communicate the vision directly to staff.

I see "broken telephone" taking place inside organizations: with communication being handed down from VP or Managing Partner to CIO to Director to Manager to staff. By the time it is handed down through the ranks, and questions meant to clarify go back up through the chain of command, everyone has a different picture in mind and is doing something different. How inefficient!

If holding a group meeting or a group call is too difficult, what about the senior officer with the vision putting the communication into a podcast episode for internal staff to listen to? Or have it video taped and post on your intranet or portal? And allow staff to submit questions in a way that everyone can see the answers to help with the understanding. Of course, ideally the senior person will speak to each individual on the project to ensure they are on side and on track. A periodic call around on important projects would be well worth the time spent.

3. If you are working on a project and are working from directions handed down through various chains of command, it is worth going directly to the source to ensure you understand what is being asked of you.

This was a rule of thumb when I was a reference librarian: if instructions on complex research had been handed down via an assistant or a junior, it is possible something was inadvertently missed during the transmission. It was always better to go directly to the person giving the research request directly to ensure the work was being done correctly and in the most efficient way possible. It was also an opportunity to ask questions and clarify.

4. Keep in mind culture and cultural differences.

If you are assigning work to someone or accepting work from someone with whom you are not familiar, keep in mind that the way in which you communicate may play a role at the outset. Emailing back and forth with people from different countries and of different cultures lately, I notice that in North America our communications tend to be direct and informal. Those in or from other countries may be less direct and more formal.

Think about how your communication may be received by the other person. Will you be seen as too formal? Will you be seen as too kurt and therefore rude? Speaking first by telephone may help alleviate some of this tension.

5. Are you using bad email habits to communicate?

Emailing in ineffective ways may mean that you are confusing others, and slowing down the process. Again, think about how you are communicating and what is most effective.

I love reading tips from my friend Bruce Mayhew since he has some great advice on how to communicate with email. I highly recommend his Email Etiquette blog posts. I have taken Bruce's email workshop and found it invaluable in communicating more effectively via email, and identified a few of my own bad habits of which I was previously unaware.

Your thoughts?

What kinds of communication breakdowns have you seen within organizations or teams? What would you recommend as a remedy? I look forward to hearing your ideas!

AALL 2011 - E-books and the Future of Legal Publishing

2011-07-26T11:35:00.001-04:00

These are notes are from a panel discussion session with Scott Meiser of LexisNexis, Dan Bennett of Thomson Reuters Professional, and Steven W. Sutton of YBP Library Services, A Baker & Taylor Company . The session was moderated by June Hsiao Liebert, Coordinator, John Marshall Law School. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

This panel discussion was in a Q & A format, with questions from the audience at the end.

What is the future of ebooks?

Meiser of LexisNexis:  People using ebooks in their personal life are expecting them in their professional life as well. There is a continued blurring of lines between online and paper content, also expectation of apps. Are of licensing will need to evolve, as will lending evolve.

Bennett of Thomson Reuters: They have taken an app approach: current ebooks standards are not satisfactory for professional level content. Current standards for ebooks are from the consumer side. Professionals expect things like footnotes and tabular material (sometimes works, sometimes doesn't). The ebook readers don't understand their updates; consumer grade ereaders just don't support this. This will be messy; different readers support different things.

Steven Sutton at YBP Library Services - Good future for ebooks based on current sales. Space is becoming an increasing issue. Also, patrons have changed; today's students expect access 24/7 and expect to have it on their computers.

Survey of audience: How many are academics who have bought standalone ebooks (as opposed to those accessible from databases)? - about 1/8 of the large audience.

They have launched demand-driven or patron-driven acquisitions. A whole new service, a new way to buy ebooks - part of the collection development strategy.

What kind of licensing models are you implementing; how are you implementing digital rights management?

Meiser of LexisNexis:  new ebooks start to look more like software than hard copy books. Start to look at unlimited access, pay-per-use, lending directly from the publisher. These are new options, and they will continue to explore. Customer demand will drive the model.

Bennett of Thomson Reuters:  He agrees. There will need to be different types of models for different content. You initially come at this from a print model, but it is constrained in ways that do not exist with ebooks. They have heard there has to be an archival version of the content, you cannot "rip it back" in the future.

They expect managing the rights "in the cloud" so you can see what you have access to.

Sutton of YBP: working with clients to understand the license agreements from their providers. They have to educate their customers on how to read the agreements so they can sign. They would ideally create one license agreement that would cover everything. Aggregators have the same problem - when you buy content from the aggregator, what are the implications of the agreement?

What difficulties are there in converting a book to an ebook?

Meiser of LexisNexis: The technology part is easy for them to do; it is the adoption and working with it by libraries that is going to be the difficult to part. What makes sense in what format, and what licensing model is going to be difficult for them to figure out. Consistency is going to cause difficulties for libraries.

Bennett of Thomson Reuters: Page numbers are incredibly important to people, and even when you have content that cites to paragraph or section numbers, you still get people quoting page numbers. There will be a period of transition when some clients will be looking at print, and some looking at ebooks.

Sutton of YBP: They have to be better at describing the digital; the ebook may not be exactly the same as the print and need to be able determine and describe the differences.

The challenge of the Expresso Book Machine was just getting the files. They have a whole new division internally to look at the files and make sure they are formatting correctly.

If you had a crystal ball, how long do you think your companies will continue to produce print?

Meiser of LexisNexis: He doesn't think ebooks are going to be even half their business in the near future. He doesn't see print disappearing.

Bennett of Thomson Reuters: High value books - there is a place for some of these in our world. There will be a "long long time" before the hard copy book disappears altogether.

Sutton of YBP: Turn the question around; how are you going to satisfy patrons who want print when you have bought ebooks? You may want to print on demand, possibly just chapters as needed. There is a question coming up as to whether they can discount books if they buy the ebooks; this is a pressure they are getting.

What types of content do you plan to put into ebooks first?

Meiser of LexisNexis: Customers expect all of their content to be online. The expect all of it to be available by first quarter of next year; 75% done by end of this year. Some of their books they can't afford to reprint in paper which they can put into ebook, so there should be more varied content.

Bennett of Thomson Reuters: A lot of value to give books that attorneys use every day in a format they can use on their ipads. Textbooks - they are doing some casebooks already.

Sutton of YBP: Encourages publishers to make their content either in digital format or at the same time as print. Customers want the option, they want no embargoes. Embargoes means libraries are forced to choose. Make titles available in a timely fashion as ebooks. (Show of hands: everyone in the audience agree).

What platform will your ebooks use?

Meiser of LexisNexis: Are aiming to be device agnostic, publishing in both ePub and Mobi as long as both models are used. Readers don't have to learn a new platform. They expect there will be a faster evolution than they could ever support so they are not going to get into the eReader business.

Bennett of Thomson Reuters: Didn't want to dumb their content down to consumer grade level. Delivering a number of platform features. Notes and annotations need to move to subsequent versions. Full text search - they have the full text search of Westlaw sitting on the iPad. They have their own platform that they can't deliver to the level they want to their own content.

Sutton of YBP: They re-sell the ebooks as they are; they do not try to standardize. They try to help clients understand what they can do with the various platforms.

Q&A

Q: Have you started working with your authors to introduce multi-media components?

Meiser: Yes, with their more tech-savvy authors who can see the need.

Bennett: Thinks they will.

Q: Is there a reason why books themselves can't be multimedia apps?

Meiser: need to look at whether it should be a book or an app

Bennett: for the volume of titles they have Apple would not let them put out that many apps, but they have done it for Black's Law Dictionary.

Q: How soon will things no longer be out of print.

Sutton: "About an hour." :) - Google is doing a lot of this.

Q: But what about out of print in the future?

Sutton: In the print world, "out of print" meant the publisher felt there was not enough business to continue it.

Bennett: There will be no incentive to throw it away, so it will not be a problem.

Blog post update August 1, 2011: The link to Dan Bennett's profile on LinkedIn has been corrected.

AALL 2011 - Coding Potpourri: A Survey of Programming Languages and Tools Used in Library Applications Today

2011-07-26T10:36:00.001-04:00

These are notes are from a panel discussion session with Nicole Engard, Director of Open Source Education ByWater Solutions, Ted Lawless, Library Applications Developer at Brown University, Jason Eiseman, Librarian for Emerging Technologies at Yale Law School Library, and Tom Boone, Reference Librarian, Loyola Law School. The session was moderated by Cynthia Bassett, University of Missouri Law School Library. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

The speakers gave us an introduction to each coding language, and we saw an example of each.

Nicole Engard on MySQL

http://web2learning.net - presentation will be posted

MySQL = My Structured Query Language - relational database management system, usually accessed via a web interface. Licensed under the GNU GPL, meaning it is Open Source and used in a lot of Open Source applications.

Who's using it:

Wordpress
Drupal
Wikipedia
Facebook
YouTube
Flickr
Ebay
Google (not searches)

Using the code for Koha, she created a table and then inserted data into the table. It is not necessary to enter data into every field unless a required field.

She then showed us how to query the table using the "SELECT" statement. Headings in query results can be created for combined fields with the "CONCAT" command. She showed us how to pull results from two different tables to give meaningful results. The most common use for reports is for end of month or end of year statistics, so date and time functions are used extensively in queries.

Ted Lawless on Python

http://python.org
http://lawlesst.bitbucket.org/aall2011

a "power tool" that can do anything such as manipulating data, building websites and running libraries. The tools for this have become better over the years.

"A little code can go a long way." - Eric Hellman at Code4Lib 2011 conference

Librarians' work is data oriented. It needs to be harvested from various sources, repackaged, and used in our systems so that our users can learn from it. We use tools such as Excel and MARCEdit; using Python is taking it to the next level; flexible and can be adapted quickly.

Getting started:

start with a real problem
get an overview of Python with The Programming Historian
a computer
a good text editor e.g. jEdit, Notepad++

Data types - identifies and classifies types of data
Reads data from spreadsheets - .CSV files (his example was showing reading a Bluebook citation from a table)

He showed us querying a file, searching for records via Z39.50, creating MARC records, building reports from the ILS, and harvesting data from websites not already in a .CSV file or in MySQL.

More advanced: for reporting, they had a script that ran every night to pull ILS data, used MySQL to put it onto a little website. Built with a Python tool called django for building websites.

Jason Eiseman on HTML5

One of the design principles of HTML5 is to support existing content

Some history

HTML 4.01 - 1999
XHTML 1.0 - 2002
XHTML 2.0 - 2006
Web Forms 2.0 - 2004 < focused on advanced web applications

2008 - HTML5 standard started
2012 - expected to be a candidate recommendation
2022 - expected to be finished

All standard browsers support HTML5 today; Apples, iPhones and Androids also support it; however the only browser currently supporting all of the elements is Opera.

HTML5 uses semantic tags to structure an HTML document;
good for accessibility for working with screen readers.
a lot more support for additional microformats

He showed us some of the graphical changes allowed by HTML5 and some new form elements that look the same on the computer but look better with a mobile interface. http://www.jasoneiseman.com/aall11/forms.html shows all of the forms available.

Last year he used Javascript to draw on Canvas to map out carrels in their library. He thinks they will be able to use graphics, Canvas and Javascript to create interactive overlays. See http://www.jasoneiseman.com/aall11/canvas.html and http://paperjs.org/ for examples.

Audio, similar. See http://www.jasoneiseman.com/aall11/audio.html for example.

HTML5 can delivery functionality to off-web applications (i.e. when not connected to the Internet).

For more reading:

HTML5 for Web Designers from A Book Apart
Dive Into HTML5 by Mark Pilgrim
HTML5 Rocks
http://www.slideshare.net/jeiseman
http://jasoneiseman.com/aall11.zip (all files from this presentation)

Tom Boone on CSS: Cascading Style Sheets

http://www.slideshare.net/tomboone

Without CSS, content is not unreadable. Tom showed us the Amazon.com, New York Times and Facebook websites without CSS - largely unusable to the human eye.

Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading - the cascading feature has changed in the way it works over time

browser style sheet (default styles)
site style sheet(s) - overrides the browser defaults - this is what web designers work on
user style sheet(s) - not used very often; users can overwrite styles e.g. he has a style that hides the comments on news websites

Style

font size, type, colour, format (bold, italic, upper case)

Sheets

linked - applies to more than one page - make the change once and it shows up in many places
embedded - embedded but appears in the head portion of the web page - has a CSS rule defined in the head.
inline - property directly embedded into the page - almost impossible to override, so avoid

CSS Syntax (see also: http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_syntax.asp )

p {color: red;}

p = selector -
paragraph tag - everything within the paragraph tag will show up red. Could be

etc.

{color: red;} = the declaration

can be more specific using classes, IDs and descendant selectors

e.g. p.summary{color: red;} - only applies to paragraph tags that have been given a summary class

Class and ID work very similarly, however ID can appear only once on a page; a class can appear many times.

p#summary {color: red;} - an paragraph with an ID of summary

Descendent selectors - a more hierarchical rule

ul li {color: red;} < white space - any descendent of a list will get the red

Classes/IDs can be combined with descendant selectors to create increasingly complex rules.

New developments:

Adaptive Web Design
CSS3

For more reading:

AALL 2011 - To Recover or Not to Recover: Trends, Solutions, and Alternatives for Taming Online Research Costs

2011-07-25T15:34:00.000-04:00

These are notes are from a panel discussion session with Joan Axelroth, Axelroth & Associates, Anthony A. Licata, CFO of Dechert LLP and Nuchine Nobari, Library Director of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, LLP. The session was moderated by Sarah Mauldin, Head Librarian of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

A panel discussion...

Is it ethical to charge clients for online research?

Axelroth: ABA put together an opinion on charges other than professional fees - library, computer research, third party providers - should be treated differently. You can charge for computer services, paper, person running the searches, etc. You have to pass on any discounts received from third party providers.

Can firms add a mark up to online search charges?

Axelroth: The fairness factor: is it fair to the firm's clients and the firm's attorneys. Are paid clients subsidizing non-paid clients? (Are you non-paid clients your larger clients who have negotiated this?)

Licata: Dechert model - most libraries have fixed fee contracts with the large providers and pay a retail rate for other 10%. There is risk to chopping up a fixed fee contract - they create a usage model, put all the usage for a month in and then "chop it up". They also look for trends; e.g. February has fewer business days than March, so individual searches that month cost more so they make sure they take a loss on every search. They actually mailed cheques back to their clients because they were able to reduce their online costs. "Usage swings wildly" so they track it carefully.

What are the trends on recovering for services that firms pay a flat fee for, regardless of use?

Axelroth: Percentage of recovery of costs by firms is going down. Indications show this is only going to come back a little. "Slicing and dicing is getting so complicated" partners are not understanding it and cannot explain it to their clients, so they are writing things off.

Does your firm attempt to recover costs for other services (especially local pay per use services) e.g. BNA, Bloomberg Law, Casemaker, CCH Intelliconnect, Fastcase, Hein Online, Loislaw, PACER, RIA Checkpoint.

Licata: They have tried to take the discussion away from the billing partner. They don't expect partners to; they ask the client finance person talk to the firm's finance person to walk through it. They make the attempt to pass savings along to clients. Clients are welcome to discuss deals up front, but they are not comfortable just billing full cost to clients.

Nobari: it is sometimes comparing apples to oranges. Lawyers would only go to alternative sources if they are as sophisticated sources as Westlaw and Lexis. Her only success is Fastcase; it has fewer bells and whistles for just basic reading of cases. They used this to manage use of Westlaw and Lexis. Lawyers are more reluctant to use Bloomberg Law, so they had less success with this service.

What is the trend with regard to following up on online charges that are written off?

Axelroth: 62% of firms track write-downs or write-offs of electronic research charges to see what can be billed back. The goal is to try to change lawyer habits. You need management to support this, and possible a reward/punishment system.

Licata: library staff don't running around up front trying to figure it out; they put in a "fairly diligent budget process" a few years ago. If the lawyers don't put something on a client bill, it is put into that lawyer's departmental budgets. Budgets got a lot of attention; they looked at because there were other things they wanted to spend their budgets on.

Nobari: spend 2 hours of staff time every week: letting the lawyers know if there is a better way of doing research because they may not know the most efficient way; they email aggressively to encourage lawyers to bill back to clients rather than charge back to office. They have decreased usage of Westlaw and Lexis by 20%. Start with your 20 least effective users and follow up with them.

What is your firm's average rate of recovery for Westlaw and Lexis research costs?

Licata: they recover about 70% of their contract spending. It is a line item everyone understand. Clients don't necessarily understand why lawyers need to have legal research, they expect the lawyers to know. You need better communication with the clients showing value. Help put clients' focus on their overall value from the law firm's work.

Nobari: they fall pretty much within the same ranges. They work with consultants to compare, and they are comparable to others.

What are the trends for using cost recovery tools like OneLog, Research Monitor, Lookup Precision?

Licata: It gives them more data, but he's not sure it helps them recover more. He gives a qualitative "yes it does" because information helps you back up your argument when trying to change lawyer behaviour.

Axelroth: using software for recovery is one reason, but you can use it for things like acquisitions decisions and others. Even if you are not charging back (rolling online charges into overhead), have attorneys input client matter number to get an idea of needs by individual clients. Greg Castanias gave an impassioned talk at the PLL Summit asking us to put pressure on the vendors to give libraries what they need to get results.

Nobari: a research tool to help you qualify and quantify are useful. Librarians are the ones who get calls when something is going wrong with the vendor databases. Make sure you are part of the conversation when your senior management want to change the research services the firm subscribes to.

Are clients pushing back against paying for online research resources?

Yes.

What is the trends for firms no longer charging back?

Licata: you need to understand what your base level of overhead is, and what $ is needed back to keep things going. Firms ultimately will not be recovering less, it will just be recovered in different ways. He thinks clients are asking the wrong questions. Clients who ask not to pay these fees are asking firms to be less transparent.

Nobari: the lawyers' margins on specific work are so thin since they are now moving to flat fee and volume arrangements for clients.

Axelroth: in response to Licata, says you can still track what research has been done for the client. You still want to track this internally. (Licata's response: he was not saying they would be less transparent, he was just looking from clients' viewpoint).

Q&A

Audience comment: they blocked 1000 "mysterious" client numbers that did not get research billed back; also, she is seeing dramatic shifts of "new guard" products replacing use of "old guard" products by tracking usage.

Licata: doing what they do depends on the firm culture.; they try to run their firm more like a business than a law firm.

Licata: library costs are less predictable than other firm expenses such as leasing space costs. He puts the responsibility for recovery of costs on the shoulders of accounting departments, telling law firm CFOs with respect to working with libraries: "If you don't learn what they do and how they affect financial statements, how are you going to teach them about financial statements?"

Q: fixed fees of attorney costs?

Licata: varying levels of usage for all these tools. He encourages discussion around costs early. Sometimes it becomes a volume issue, so it depends on what the firm is doing.

Q: looking at possibly rolling these expenses into overhead and want clients to know this is what they are being charged to. Thinking of rolling it into a "research charge" charged to all clients equally. Are there ethical concerns?

Licata: being transparent is the right thing to do; however, client doing 15 real estate transactions is going to question 15 research charges. Law firms don't get all terms of arrangement into the agreements; don't have a handle on how we do research. Need more documentation in the arrangement letters.

Q: Usefulness of the tracking services from the publishers?

Nobari: Neither PowerInvoice from Lexis nor Quickview from Westlaw provide you with enough information to be used in negotiations later. They are not research tools.

Q: if they role the cost of the two flat rater contracts together and bill clients back according to that, are there any ethical problems with this? They are not looking to make a profit.

A: No ethical problem if you are not making a profit. It is an interesting idea.

Nobari: get an opinion on ethics from a lawyer so that you do not get caught in the middle. Let the lawyers decide how much they want to bill the client.

Comments: Do we add value to the firm when we follow up with lawyers about expenses being written off? You need to also look at actual recovery as well. She asks the lawyers "Was there a problem with the service? Did you not get the service you wanted?" The third party tools helps her see where someone needs more training.

AALL 2011 - Barbara Tillett and John Mark Ockerbloom on Authority Control Vocabularies and the Semantic Web

2011-07-25T11:52:00.000-04:00

I am at the American Association of Law Libraries 2011 Conference in Philadelphia. These are notes are from talk by Dr. Barbara B. Tillett of the Library of Congress and John Mark Ockerboom of the University of Pennsylvania. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

Dr. Barbara B. Tillett, Library of Congress

DBPedia - example of a linked data, open data project

Community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and to make this information available
covers 3 million things that are interconnected
meant as proof of concept/prototype, but fully working now
linking Wikipedia to lots of other content on the web (videos, websites, etc.)
libraries got involved in the linked data network with University of Sweden getting involved first
Library of Congress Subject Headings now linked
Virtual National Authority File also linked

All our data can be freely accessible on the web, or available for a fee; now we can share in the cloud via the Internet. Data can come from publishers, data sources themselves, libraries, and from anyone else who wants to help describe the data

Bibliographic resources are available now, and vocabulary being added.

Three projects the Library of Congress is involved in:

1. VIAF (Virtual International Authority File)

http://viaf.org

Objectives:

facilitate exposure of authority data
reduces cataloguing costs
simplifies authority control (creation and maintenance) internationally

From the VIAF website:

VIAF, implemented and hosted by OCLC, is joint project of several national libraries plus selected regional and trans-national library agencies. The project's goal is to lower the cost and increase the utility of library authority files by matching and linking widely-used authority files and making that information available on the Web.

e.g. if bibliographic data appears in Japanese script, VIAF could be used to show this to users in Latin script.

Originally thought national bibliographic agencies in each country should be responsible for the authors in their own countries; however, this is problematic because different countries have different cultural needs.

VIAF now has 18 participants with more adding on. There are 21 different authority files as some countries have different languages.

All of the terms in the VIAF data are represented by URIs and are linked data. VIAF itself is using unicode so they can handle any script characters. MARC 21, UNIMARC and RDF are all supported.

Usage of VIAF tripled last year.

They are mining data from bibliographic records to create a derived authority record. All of the data is normalized (diacritics and capitalization removed). Subjects are group, material types are turned into a code; publication date turned into a decade; co-author pulled out. Take the author record and attach derived authority data to it to created an enhanced authority record.

A lot of information can be derived from bibliographic records e.g. areas of interest of authors, for how long those people published, who they worked with, alternative names they published under, etc.

Tillett encourages us to use VIAF - "It's fun!" VIAF shows us how we can more creatively (and graphically) represent data from our MARC records.

Next steps for VIAF

better searching
more "Linked data"
Participants beyond libraries

have Getty signed on
Rights management agencies, publishers
museums, archives
have been working with ISNI project to include their information

want to add more name types (beyond personal and corporate names)

geographic jurisdictions
family names
"uniform" work titles

2. SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System)

http://id.loc.gov/

Have put the Library of Congress Subject Headings into SKOS. You can search e.g. "animated films" pulls back three entries. You can suggest subject headings (under the "terminology" tab) to them, even if you are not a member.

You can go to the "aquabrowser" display that visually shows headings into graphical interface (with circles).

3. RDA (Resource Description and Access)

RDA controlled vocabularies - currently free on the web at Open Metadata Registry (RDA element sets and RDA vocabularies available).

http://metadataregistry.org/schema/list.html

Metadata includes the URI for every one of the terms.

Originally created in English: also in German, and Spanish and French being added (French so that Canada could use it).

RDA Linked Data - all linked data can be displayed using linking URIs. Depending on the user's view, all of the linked data can be displayed in one particular language.

What is slowing them down: current ILSes (integrated library systems). "They are still working in 1970s technology mindsets. They do not take advantage of this."

John Mark Ockerbloom, University of Pennsylvania Libraries

Increased use of linked open data will improve discovery significantly

Some definitions:

linked data:

data that you put on the web that has resolvable, persistent URIs.
creates a web of data that machines can be used

open data:

data that welcomes reuse, with little or no restriction
may included linked data
people may reuse, remix, mash up data, and give results back to the community
if you open your data, make it easy to get in bulk

E.g. showing us the LCSH record for Arbitration (International Law)

RDF:

a coded format, easier for a machine to understand
once you have this information, you can do analysis

Penn Libraries were able to pull the Library of Congress Subject Headings to pull down data and apply to their catalog to improve the quality of their own data. Also, using linked data they can enhance the catalog so that researchers can find data e.g. movie An Inconvenient Truth was catalogued under "global warming" but not "climate change" so may not be found.

The Online Books Page - http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

They have used these technologies to created listings of 1 million books freely available on the Internet, and to let people to easily search the subject categories.

He talked about libraries pulling data from external sources and combining it with what we have in our own collections.

Another example of a project using linked data: Cornell and others are building VIVO - a network showing university scholars and what they are doing (publishing, where their funding is coming from, who is collaborating with whom).

Getting started:

Don't jump in the deep end right away. "Make good data" and then make it available in one of these systems. Adapt and improve your own data.
Consume and adapt others' data to create practical applications
collaborate with a growing community of collaborators
everybodyslibraries.com

PLL Summit - Larry Guthrie and Doug Malerba on Developing Collaborative Communities

2011-07-23T16:47:00.000-04:00

One of three sessions in the PLL Summit Administration concurrent sessions track. These are notes are from talk by Larry Guthrie of Covington & Burling LLP and Doug Malerba of McKenna Long and Aldridge on developing collaborative communities. Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

Larry Guthrie on Collaboration in Libraries

Larry Guthrie says that libraries are all about collaboration; collaboration has a positive tone today. There is an emphasis on building a team culture.

6 types of collaboration by libraries

historical perspective - libraries were originally a collaboration e.g. most monasteries created one place to hold all their books.
through inter-library loan - "the more we share, the more we have" - libraries by nature are collaborative, helping each other as well as those inside our own firms.
in various locations - telecommuting, embedding librarians in branches, face-to-face meetings are preferred
using various communication techniques - social media (wikis, blogs, Twitter, etc.), Harvard's 5 Tips for Better Virtual Meetings (purchase required), communication across generations.
over various disciplines - with other fields and specific areas of interest - the public library can be the hub for a number of communities, can facilitate this with social networks. New book coming out: Collaborative Governance by John D. Donahue and Richard J. Zeckhauser.
for activism on behalf of librarianship - library associations are partnering with other organizations to advocate on various issues. Librarians need to work with other information professionals to lobby on behalf of libraries.

Doug Malerba on Virtual Teamwork: The Life of a Teleworking Law Librarian

He now teleworks exclusively from his home in Connecticut. Teleworking is common; most knowledge workers work from home one day a week. However, it is still fairly rare in law firms.

In his case, his wife was given a job opportunity in Connecticut so they decided to move. He thought he would have to find a new job.

Advantages - worker

cost savings
decreased interruptions in work day
improved work/life balance
geographic freedom

Advantages - employer

cost savings (real estate, utilities)
employee retention
increased productivity
decreased absenteeism - people can still often perform their duties even if they might not have been able to go into to work (sick, family member sick)
business continuity

Advantages - society

cost savings (roads, infrastructure)
decreased traffic
lowered air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions
energy security

He had to determine which duties were tied to his physical location and could no longer be performed:

shelving
periodical binding

However, is primary functions could be performed virtually

reference desk
working with government affairs group
subject alerts
ILL
document delivery
e-resources management

He was able to do most of the work.

His proposal to work virtually came at an opportune time: his firm was looking to reduce operating costs. Also management believed in telecommuting. He started by working 25 hours per week by telecommuting.

The started using "unified reference", that allows expanded reference services provided by the librarians across the firm's offices. He noticed that communication between librarians in different offices improved; there was increased awareness of librarians in other offices.

During "snow-mageddon" requests from the attorneys continued to come in; he

was one of only a few librarians who was able to work meet the need.

He has now regained his full-time status.

Telework challenges:

It is essential the virtual employee create and retain a robust identity to be seen by other employees. It is essential to use all forms of communication in addition to email: voice, teleconferencing, etc. People need to see a living, breathing human being and a colleague.
Professional isolation is when an employee loses connection to the organization's employees and culture. This can lead to feeling less motivated.
Social isolation - working alone can be harder for some people.
Employee burn out is a risk - absence of distractions can be a double-edged sword if employees don't take breaks or establish boundaries. It is important that the employee "turn off."
When you work remotely, there is an expectation that you can handle basic computer trouble-shooting issues. Also need to maintain connection with those who can keep you running remotely.
Need support from management - need solid support, need to feel connected.

He is now collaborating with Joelle Coachman on uses of social media. They are also looking at other new tools, such as reference monitoring.

Many of us are already serving clients remotely; we can now take advantage of telecommunications.

Jack Niles - coined the phrase "telecommuting" - predicts this term will disappear as it becomes more common.

A great compliment: one of his lawyers did not realize they no longer worked in the same office after a year of his telecommuting.

People have to get over the psychological barriers - there is an idea that everyone working from home are in their pyjamas watching TV. Comment from a manager in the audience: if you have a diligent employee, there is no need to expect their attitude to change when they start to telecommute.

PLL Summit - Joelle Coachman - Resistance is Futile: Integrating New Technology into Your Library

2011-07-23T15:50:00.000-04:00

One of three sessions in the PLL Summit Technology/Tech Services concurrent sessions track. These are notes are from talk by Joelle Coachman, E-Resources Librarian at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP and owner of Info-2Go Legal Research Services, on integrating new technology into your library. Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

Joelle Coachman gave a lively talk comparing the law librarian profession and law firms with Star Trek.

Note that different generations relate to different generations of Star Trek. Summer associates see William Shatner as the "Priceline Negotiator", not Captain James T. Kirk.

As librarians we are "Data", the data gatherers. Focus is on the vertical engagement, delivery of information up to those we report to. She encourages us to work more in the horizontal, which is more challenging.

Social media is the "bad guy" in the room - you might miss key information if you are not searching in social media. Most of us see it as a research tool rather than an engagement tool. Most of us are private and do not want to share. It is the "monster" in the room; we don't view it favorably.

The Borg - a lot like a social network - they have no thoughts of their own once assimilated. "Resistance is futile". It creates connection between people; be careful it does not become a negative for you. The way vendors are using data that is being collected.

How can we take a Borg-like existence in social networks to instead becoming more engaging and in control? The information proliferated in social networks "is huge" and were "giving it all she's got, Captain". If you are following blogs, you have to make it a daily habit. Make your social engagement, whatever avenue you choose, part of your daily habit.

Twitter is valuable, breaks news. But the trouble with Twitter is that it is prolific - too many tweets are not valuable. Engagement is different than anything else we have done as law librarians. She has been following others for a long time, but has only recently started talking with others on Twitter.

Tips:

When you first set up your Twitter account, watch it for a while. It takes a while to fine-tune it specifically.
You don't have to follow the world; it is your private domain; follow who you want.
When you first start, know who you are following.
If tweeting, keep in mind you cannot speak on behalf of your law firm. Keep in mind you are doing both personal and professional mixed together. Know your purpose and know what you want to say. She personally tweets about library and personal topics "all mixed together."
People often take key phrases from speakers and tweet them, and then have "little spurts" of discussions. Mark those tweets with tags.
You need to know the language of the interest group you are speaking to. Use hashtags to connect with those and other interest groups. So often we keep what we do in the back as "housekeeping" but if you share with the larger world, they will gain respect for what we do. This is horizontal engagement.
Cultivate and share who you are. It gives you the opportunity to be individualistic.
Earn the right to tweet the link.
Organize your social house. She recommends using a third party dashboard such as Hootsuite to allow for following different channels of discussion from the broader community. Otherwise you have to actively build habits to go search certain hashtags. TweetCaster, Tweetdeck and others are available.

Other considerations:

Mobile devices help. If you are not mobile, you will have to work that into your engagement. You don't have to text message, but if you can get a device that allows you to follow conversations, it will help you be connected and be relevant in a fast-paced environment.
LinkedIn - 2 billion people are using it; possibly 500 million are engaged day to day; it is growing and there is a definite change in the way people are using it. Use it for external sharing - how many people shared that you are going to be at this event today? Don't just share with your peers, but share with others you are connected with to show you are active professionally.
There is nothing wrong with asserting ourselves and talking about ourselves.

LinkedIn tips:

Maintain an updated profile - it is like keeping your resume up to date, but easier since they facilitate addition of information in a standard format. You never know what opportunities will come to you.
Use your custom URL
Join or create groups; there is not harm, you can un-join if you do not like it. Get into a habit to go to the group every day or set up email notifications to send to you every day.
By working with LinkedIn, it will help you answer questions about it later.
Strategic linking: use the "share" button - share to LinkedIn articles you are reading. You never know who in your network will find it interesting as well.
Don't hesitate to ask for recommendations. Lawyers cannot always have recommendations because of bar association rules, but law librarians don't have these rules. Even if your firm doesn't post your bio, you should have a bio on LinkedIn. It gives her the opportunity to reach those who would not have found her through her firm.
When you are sharing articles and links, send via LinkedIn, even to people internally. She found over time that people in her firm started to re-share links around to their followers.

"Make it so!" We can sit in the Captain's chair and drive the ship where we want it, contribute to the enterprise with "happy eyes" rather than fear and trepidation.

She was also asked about use of Facebook. She uses Facebook personally but not as much professionally. The training she does now has forked toward LinkedIn. She encourages law firm librarians to make it personal rather than professional. If businesses want to be found, they have to be there, but think about your focus. If you are not using LinkedIn as a professional, you need to question why. It is where the professionals are.

PLL Summit - David Curle on transformations in the legal publishing industry

2011-07-23T14:48:00.000-04:00

One of three sessions in the PLL Summit Technology/Tech Services concurrent sessions track. These are notes are from talk by David Curle of Outsell on transformations in the legal publishing industry. Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

$15.5 billion - publishers in the legal, tax and regulatory industry worldwide

2008 was the first year they went into negative growth; came back slight in 2010; expect it to take another 3-4 years to get back to where they were pre-2008.

Three companies dominate the space: LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters and WoltersKluwer hold about 70% of the market place. BNA is next with about 2% market share. It has made it difficult for anyone else to break into the market because they keep getting "gobbled up" by one of the big players.

It is difficult to describe the major players because depending on what part you see, you see something different. We tend to think of the "big three" as legal publishers; however, they serve a number of markets. Curle has broken the top three by type of legal information; about a third of their revenues is U.S. legal information. About a quarter is non-US legal. The rest are other areas such as corporate, government, academic, tax, governance and compliance areas. So only about $3.5 billion is generally derived from US law firms.

How much revenue do law firms bring in? About $400 billion. The largest firm brings in about $2 billion. It is a very fragmented industry, making it difficult for providers who work for anything from $2 billion business all the way down to a solo practitioner.

$40 billion - the 10% of law firm expenditures that firms see as needing to cut. Legal vendors looking to expand into this space, the "business of law" such as in the IT area such as servers hosted in firms, etc. Vendors are pretty entrenched in their existing legal information areas and need to look to these ways to expand.

What do law firms do?

Develop strategy
Deliver legal services
Run their businesses
Market themselves

He uses Thomson Reuters as a case study, but similar things happened in WoltersKluwer and LexisNexis

Thomson Reuters' role, 1996 > were not addressing these four areas
Thomson Reuters' role, 2009 > expanding into these four areas
Thomsone Reuters' role, 2011 > purchased services in these areas, now starting to compete with their own clients e.g. Pangea3, a legal outsourcing area; Hildebrandt and others

This transition is not unique; it is happening in other industries they are tracking. A business-to-business publisher has gone from publishing about marketing to actually doing marketing on their clients' behalf.

See Susskind's Grid: Toward an uncomfortable quadrant - describes where technological change is most likely to take place. Acquisition of Pangea3 puts Thomson Reuters in the upper right quadrant - online legal services. It involves clients directly, and it is not just about technology; it is about law firms' proprietary skill.

Questions from law firm and corporate libraries survey: How are law firms managing all of this change? Especially given the challenges they are already facing? How are law firm libraries different or similar to corporate libraries?

The responses showed that the corporate world felt the economic crisis faster than the law firms. Techniques for survival showed up later in law firm libraries. Part of strategy is comparing what you do versus what you do not do, and technology poses a number of these questions. Technology is front-and-center.

In the area of vendor relations - what techniques are librarians using to evaluate products? Law firm libraries tend to rely heavily on information provided by the vendor. They look at the products themselves, look at demos, look at the contracts, and then get feedback from some other buyers. Law firm libraries do less than corporate libraries: putting out requests for proposals, developing requirements lists, comparing products.

What can we expect from vendors and other players, and how will it affect law libraries?

A continuing divergence of products and sub-groups; more targeted products. Offerings may even be by size of firm. LexisNexis is putting a push on to get back to smaller firms and solo lawyers, for example.
More niche players and disrupters - especially as legal information access becomes more open. New information companies can come along and make new products out of it. In the past the three big vendors had control of the information.
Law libraries need to invest in strategic planning and vendor portfolio management - what competencies and skills do library staff have that can serve the firms? Is there anything we need to give up doing? (He referred to Steven Lastres' comments in the KM session earlier today).
Move toward Susskind's upper quadrant - providing more services directly to clients, the same as legal information providers are trying to do - high value, client-proximate solutions.
Help to shake off the primary law mindset - most law graduates have a primary law mindset, jumping directly on Westlaw (or more likely Google) to pull up primary information. So much legal work is pulling up primary legal sources "in a hap-hazard way"; he sees this as a shame. What is being lost is the sense of context and legal doctrine they used to get from working with legal treatises. Small firms and non-lawyers will start to use more free and cheap legal services. Lawyers in big firms need to be able to use other higher-value sources.
More collaboration and peer-to-peer for content creation - libraries need to help facilitate this. You get better information from getting people talking to each other than from experts (knowledge sharing among peers). Need to help corporate counsel and non-lawyers collaborating and help to create the legal information e.g. building code information. This should be part of knowledge management efforts.
Vendor relations needs to be about data: ROI, usage and pricing. Introduce more and more data into the evaluation and purchase of products. There is no trust that vendors are providing right and appropriate data; the law firm librarians need to introduce this as an idea.

He doesn't have solutions, but hopes this talk helps us understand the dynamics going on with legal vendors.

PLL Summit - Greg Castanias - How librarians add value to their law firms

2011-07-23T13:29:00.001-04:00

One of two lunch speakers at PLL Summit. These are notes from a talk by Greg Castanias, Partner at Jones Day on how librarians (and library partners) add value to their law firms. Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

Greg Castanias related a story about how their libraries came to be coordinated under a global library partner. He talked about how their various offices are being supported by the libraries.

He outlined who law firm librarians work with:

Library customers
Firm management
External vendors

He urges us to adopt the model for dealing with internal clients: adopt a customer service model. Speak the talk of a service, not of a "space." E.g. What is your problem and how can I help you find the answer?

He suggests:

putting out a newsletter
publishing photos of the professional staff so people know who can help them
put tips into the firm newsletter
making services seamless so that library staff in other offices can take over work

"If you are sitting in your library waiting for your clients come to you, you are doing it wrong." "Change is not coming, it already came and has passed you by."

Ask yourself if the library space, physical collection and staff the right size? Is the library adding value, or perceived as adding value, or perceived as being a drain? You can earn gold stars by offering to give back space for new staff.

When he told lawyers about case law in Google Scholar via firm newsletter. He got a lot of feedback back from lawyers who thanked him for being sensitive to their client cost needs.

Castanias then talked directly to vendors:

"Vendors, your business model is broken." Demands for increasing costs do not make sense. Others do not provide sufficient tracking, forcing firms to buy third party tracking services to see how the firm's own lawyers are using the services.

"You fail to understand how we do business while seeking partnership with us."

"We are eating a significant amount of our contracts with you."

"You acquire and acquire and acquire, but you are incapable of integrating your businesses in any meaningful way." Businesses may be under one umbrella name, but firms are forced to deal with them all as individual businesses.

Libraries are heading toward a virtual approach. Clients are going to expect virtual libraries as part of the firm's overhead; they are not going to accept disbursements in the future.

He predicts vendors are going to see more consolidation and elimination. He tells the vendors to find ways to distinguish themselves. He implores vendors to treat law firms as clients.

"We are willing to pay for value." He encourages vendors to create the right services for the right clients, and to come up with a better pricing model.

He says the "winners" may be vendors that do not exist yet. Beware that other publishers are finding that they being passed by, and legal publishers need to beware.

PLL Summit - Joan Axelroth - What Law Firm Administrators Want Librarians to Know

2011-07-23T12:19:00.002-04:00

The second half of the morning at PLL Summit allowed attendees to attend 2 out of 5 summaries from the PLL's Law Firm Management webinar program (we got to choose which two). These are notes are from a 30 minute session with library and information management consultant Joan Axelroth on law firm administration. Note: these are my notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

Rather than summarize her webinar, Joan Axelroth asked us to work through the questions that James Jones posed to us in the morning.

Q: How will these likely changes in law firm management models impact traditional library/information services?

A: Obvious answer: budget cuts, reduced staffing and access to services.

One law firm embedded their librarians into departments; this was very successful. Their billable hours have increased (doubled!); they may be a way to use this to justify more staff.

Has anyone thought about not pricing library time hourly? In some firms it may depend on the arrangement with the clients - some time billed to clients; some written off. Even if the firm is using alternative billing methods, they still need to account for time and still ask the library staff members to track their hours.

In some firms, marketing departments are now hiring librarians directly. This new market is forcing librarians and other departments to partner more to get things done. One librarian related a story of creating a business analyst position within her library; within a year it was moved to the Marketing Department.

The mantra is to break down silos, but it is difficult to collaborate.

With vendor products aimed at different departments, they try to use economies of scale to share services between departments.

In one firm the CIO was put in charge of the electronic resources. This was expected to be horrible; however, it turned out to be useful. It brought departments together to talk about the resources; it reduced duplication and also helped the CIO understand how difficult it is to turn down an attorney when he or she needs a resource simply based on cost.

What have you done to support the changes your management has been making in response to the economic downturn?

One response: they had to write a monthly report. It was dreaded at first, but forced the library director to set down what they were doing, geared them up for what was coming up.

Some partners are now micro-managing more. What is the budget, how far off are you on your budget, do you have any new contracts? You have to address what they want to know. How do you get them to listen? You need to say it in a way they will hear - the value they will get. Put it into terms they will listen to e.g. dollars and cents. If you don't find the right approach, try it again. Do they want a quarterly oral report, do they want a written report, do they want one page, bulleted?

Some tips from the group discussion:

You should be reading what Hildebrandt is blogging and publishing.
Be ready for an elevator speech.
Follow clients in the news and be ready to talk about them.
It is amazing how much your vendors know about your organization - they may be able to point you to people internally to speak with.

If you have ideas about making the firm more effective and cost efficient (that clients are looking for), how do you communicate that?

Becomes political - you have to be careful not to go over someone's head. You can't go over the other departments and speak directly with the managing partner. Instead try to talk with the other departments and come up with a new model first.

Even though you may have an org chart, it may not show you where the real power is. You can learn where the power is and use it to your advantage.

See also: blog post by Mary Ellen Bates also covering this session.

PLL Summit - Steven Lastres, Julie Bozzell and Toby Brown - Moving Beyond the Library Walls to Support Strategic Knowledge Management

2011-07-23T11:34:00.000-04:00

Intranet/portal content development
Creation of expertise databases
Database development & maintainance
Taxonomy, development of controlled vocabulary
Project management
Statistical analysis
Search engine optimization

If your library is not into KM, how do you get there? You will not be invited - you need to get yourself involved. Prepare your "brag bag". Lawyers are not necessarily struggling with the research databases; they are struggling with the other tools they have access to. We have expertise and can help them; we should approach IT.

Best bets and ideas:

help review what people are searching for on the intranet, work to offer up "best results" - IT does not like to do this
thesaurus development
SharePoint 2010 - metadata term scores - help building taxonomies and synonyms to help surface content
connect lawyers to key KM resources
index the lawyers' content e.g. by practice group
managing projects on wikis (Bozzell found calling it a "resource page" helped them adopt it faster)
dashboard development - pulling together content from external providers e.g. by industry or client - it is too difficult to expect lawyers to have 90 different vendors and 90 different passwords; need to pull the content all together for them.

Stop using library terms; use terms people are already use e.g. Internet-related terms.

Analysis KM

draws from the ediscovery field - too much information for humans to digest
search becoming less effective

Kiiac - created by Kingsley Martin (who developed West KM previously) - takes a group of similar documents, breaks them down into their components and compares them; the human can then choose what is correct or not; can then compare the "standard" against the other documents to show which are standard and which are not. Important for librarians to work in this area - makes you part of the strategic part of the firm.

Steven Lastres: Don't wait to be told what to do - go to the management partners and tell them what you want to do and why you want to do it. Learn to do a business case analysis and present it. We are the ones who work with the lawyers and the ones who know how to do this kind of work. Stop doing the work that is not lawyer-facing. No partner cares if you have a pristine catalog record.

Audience comment: Get out and talk to the lawyers in your firm, find out what they need.

Lastres: with firm cuts there are fewer people to do this kind of work; it is a great opportunity for law firm librarians to step out of our comfort zone and do this kind of work. Bring it back to the client: what's the value to the client, what's the value to the lawyer?

Audience comment: Lawyers don't want to share outside of their practice groups. A: Needs to come from management, needs to be a factor in their compensation model.

Note the PLL KM sub-group will be doing monthly chats on related topics; they are looking for members. Join them on LinkedIn - PLL/SIS Knowledge Management Group.

PLL Summit - Esther Dyson on Technology Changes in Business and Libraries

2011-07-23T10:47:00.000-04:00

Second on at PLL Summit is Esther Dyson on technology changes in business and libraries. See her website: http://www.edventure.com/ Note: these are my notes from this Q&A session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

She started out with a response to James Jones' talk. She characterized the changes in law firms as part of the larger movement we are seeing "from fuzziness to clarity," allowing us to commoditize legal work. She suggested that librarians join outsourcing firms where information is the core business rather than law firms where we have supporting roles.

Is the world getting smarter or stupider? Dyson quoted William Gibson "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed." You are getting more and more at either end of the range. Google is not destroying our ability to think, but it is changing what we are finding as important to remember. Lawyers think logically--someone still needs to read the laws to determine if they are fair and just and internally coherent. Google affects our ability to think deeply.

What percentage of AALL PLL's membership is female? It is a female dominated profession working in male dominated organizations. Dyson says it is wonderful to see a group of women in this area. She started as a reporter and fact-checker. As a young female reporter she was able to get a lot of high level executives to "be indiscrete" in what they shared with her. However, she didn't work in a male-dominated organization.

Talking in global terms, she says it is easier to get rid of a government than it is to re-build the government with a new social contract. In social networks you can leave if you don't agree with something; it is harder to leave a country if you don't agree. Help people know they are not alone.

In the US there is a tolerance for failure and taking a risk that is not tolerated elsewhere. People who step out of line may be despised or even shot. US individualism is mostly good, and not appreciated. Americans are not as kind and generous without social circles, but willing to take a risk.

Young people in other countries don't have a lot of role models to try something different; they look to the US for those role models. They see what Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have done, but not what their local people have done.

She sees the future of search as more oriented toward actions or transactions: search with verbs when you want to do something. She wonders about a legal search engine that focuses just on legal information put into context.

What does she think about the new web domains? We have no shortage of domain names; the shortage is space in people's heads. E.g. you could have a domain name and add 1,2,3,4 etc. She doesn't see the need for these new domains. She doesn't see the need for having to buy domains with all different extensions.

Re: access to your genome information. The issues are more around privacy than healthcare. If you want information private, don't put it online. It is your own information and you have the right to it. In terms of health, your family history and lifestyle are more important right now for predicting your health; however in the future knowing your genome will become more important. She also thinks checking your blood on a regular basis will provide a lot more information in the future--can show changes in your health.

The only problem is that people get the data but don't change their behaviour; however, social networks can impact this. She compares it to frequent flyer cards, what people do to get free miles and get status. If you had a similar card that measures how many steps you take that gives you the perks for your health care - earning status. Sharing data with friends and competing or collaborating (such as through Facebook or iPhones) is going to be more motivating than seeing just your own data.

People are far less naive than 15-20 years ago as far as advertising goes; they may not understand the advertising industry, but they know what it means to get an online service for free and where the revenue comes in - you get the service for free because it is supported by ads, for example. She talked about http://www.patientslikeme.com/ where people with diseases can voluntarily share their data to pharma companies etc. to allow them to help fight the diseases. https://www.23andme.com/ allows people to share their genome information with their doctors. You can do it with a fake name if you don't want your insurance company to find you. You can also share genome information with friends.

Is Facebook uniquely American or uniquely Internet? When she sees people use online tools in other countries, she sees they may be more open but they are still the same people, e.g. Russians online are still Russian. The culture online will be affected by the users. However, the Internet is making people more open with the people they don't know. It is changing people all over the world; she sees the idea of the "global village" is "way overdrawn."

She is trained as a cosmonaut with 6 months training in Russia, which she says is generally not useful in the rest of her life. Most people in law like logic - when you search online you cannot currently get the whole context. People who do that will have an advantage of people who don't. People who think and value knowledge will be needed and have an edge.

Google's "filter bubble" that provides you with information filtered for you - she sees value in going beyond your own filter bubble. She speaks metaphorically - people have the choice to go beyond their own filter bubble or they don't. We have more opportunity for regret; we have more opportunity to do exciting things.

She feels the US government has not done a good job of getting people excited about space travel, which has led to the cancelling of the space shuttle. She is on the NASA advisory council, gets to visit the research centers; however the people who need advice is Congress, not NASA. They cut back budget on needed programs; they keep fostering projects that are way over budget. It is all about to be privatized, and she expects it to blossom.

Space law will become interesting.

PLL Summit - James Jones on Understanding Law Firm Trends

2011-07-23T09:43:00.001-04:00

First up at PLL Summit is James Jones of Hildebrandt Baker Robbins helping us to understand trends in firms and where we are today. Note: these are my notes from his talk; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own.

James Jones took us through a summary of recent history, from 2007 to the present. After the economic crisis, in 2010 we started to see some return to stability although not growth in law firms. Firms were starting to see the benefits of significant cuts in 2009 since you typically do not see benefits of cuts in the years they were made. In 2011 you would not see the same benefits as you could not make the same cuts, and expenses previously delayed would have to be paid. As well, firms that made too deep of cuts to associates would be hiring some back at increased cost.

In 2011, legal business will stabilize although not at the levels seen in years prior to the economic downturn in 2008.

As we see more competition in the market, firms are going to need to spend money and start investing resources to compete in the new market place. He sees this as a delicate balancing act. He predicts firms will see modest profit (in the single digit range). He sees 2 to 3 years of ongoing "slugging it out" before we start to see recovery by firms. As well, some things will not come back to where they were.

Other factors:

Aside from the economy, there have been other driving factors for changes to U.S. law firms:

Availability of information

Notably, more competitive information has started becoming available. Jones theorizes law firms were not a proper market because market information was not available for clients; "law firms controlled the whole scene." This started to change in the past three decades with publications such as The American Lawyer and LExpert. A lot of information started coming from the trade press. A lot of effort has now gone into rating firms such as with Chambers ratings. As well, the courts have had an effect; any time the bar associations have tried to put anti-competitive rules in place they have been struck down.

Drive toward customization

He referred to Richard Susskind's The End of Lawyers? - Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services.

Most lawyers see themselves as doing "bespoke" work; they see the other option as commoditized ( such as downloading your will). However, most law is done somewhere in a range between the two:

standardized - form file developed by individual lawyers
systemized - form files developed between lawyers, rudimentary knowledge management systems
packaged - starting to make some of the forms available to clients to fill out

Services typically work their way from bespoke to commoditized.

Lawyers typically don't like this model; however, quality with packaged and commoditized is typically higher than bespoke work because the lawyer has been through the type of work many times and builds in responses to many types of problems. Bespoke work is typically from the first time a lawyer does the work.

Growth of enabling technologies

UK firms are ahead of US firms in this area:

Clifford Chance Online Services
Linklaters blueflag
BusinessIntegrity
Newchange Document from Allen & Overy
Practical Law Company

There is an emergency of new service providers that are not law firms:

CPA Global
Pangea3
Lawscribe
OCS - Outside Counsel Solutions
Morgan Lewis (a law firm)
Integreon

Some are basing the work out of India, but not all. They are doing work previously done by associates in firms e.g. discovery.

Lopsided Economic Model

Boom of law firms in the past was their ability to raise rates 6-8% every year. So now it is difficult to maintain this in these economic times. "Client push back became inevitable." He showed us in graphic form how law firm rates increased right through to 2008, whereas the economy turned down in 2008; "this was not a sustainable model."

New competitive models drive new strategies

When demand exceeds supply, prices go up. Before 2008, even firms that had no strategic focus could easily make money. Post-economic crisis, supply now exceeds demand. There is now huge pressure on prices to reduce. For a firm to grow, it now has to take market share away from another firm. "Firms that don't have clear strategies are going to be losers in this market."

In the past there was no incentives in the system for efficiencies. First were all about expansion and growth; nobody talked about efficiency.

The new world is different: it is a buyer's market, driven by the clients. Clients are looking for efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Quality is still important, but all the firms clients are looking at provide quality. Differentiating factor is the cost.

This is now driving new strategic directions:

- client models

- service delivery models

- talent models

Should firms run with a talent model? Or do you get rid of 16-18% of associates every year? (As often happens now).

In the past when firms looked at strategy, they only looked at positioning strategy. Firms are still going to need this, but "this isn't enough." What type of technology, infrastructure and processes are you going to need? If you move to a different model that doesn't fire 16-18% of people each year, you need to look at hiring in the first place.

Some firms are seeing more demand, some are seeing a lot less. We are starting to see a segmentation in the law firm market.

7 questions

Seven questions posed to us by James Jones with respect to the role of law libraries in light of these trends:

How will these likely changes in law firm management models impact traditional library/information services?
How will this drive for efficiency and cost-effectiveness impact ways in which legal research is undertaken?
How might librarians/information specialists help in partnering with clients and in supporting "one-to-many" knowledge sharing models?
In an age of "disintermediation," how can information be rendered more useful and actionable? (Trends we have seen in other industries, we will start to see the same thing happening in law...lawyers will no longer be gatekeepers of esoteric information)
What roles might librarians/information specialists play in the management of new firm "products" - e.g., various tools for on-line guidance and services?
What roles might librarians/information specialists play in the development of "just-in-time" training resources.
How might the growing importance of information management impact the roles that executive librarians play in their firms?

Q&A

A: Firms should be sitting down with their 10 biggest clients. The number one thing clients want is to have their general counsel sit down and talk with them; very few lawyers do.

Q: Are clients not unique, wouldn't commoditization be a problem?
A: There are ethical concerns about one-to-many systems; however, the market is driving it and these concerns will need to be worked out. E.g. Linklaters system available only to existing clients - there is a client-lawyer relationship.

At AALL 2011 - Private Law Libraries Summit - Change as Action

2011-07-23T08:53:00.004-04:00

I am currently in Philadelphia at the American Association of Law Libraries 2011 conference. Today I am attending a full day hosted by the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section, a day they call the PLL Summit. The theme this year is "Change As Action." See the full agenda.

The room is chocked full of law firm library managers and directors. This is a very popular day.

I am planning to live blog as much of the day as I can, so hang onto your hats!

Update - here's the full list of blog posts:

PodCamp Toronto - February 26 & 27, 2011

2011-02-10T10:24:00.001-05:00

I have been involved in PodCamp Toronto since it started in 2007, and have been part of the organizing team since 2008. Check out the video below, and the description below it by Daniele Rossi.

I hope you will consider joining us over the weekend! More details at http://podcamptoronto.com.

Introducing PodCamp Toronto 2011! from PodCamp Toronto on Vimeo.
We are excited to be producing a video podcast for PodCamp Toronto this year! Here’s our first episode giving a brief overview of what the event is all about and to encourage you - yes YOU - to participate and sign up for a speaking session.

This episode is hosted by 4 members of the enthusiastic organizing committee, Mark Van Tol, Connie Crosby, John Leschinski and yours truly, Daniele Rossi. A special thanks to videographer Andrey Tochilin who did a fantastic job with this first episode!

You can subscribe to the PodCamp Toronto video podcast RSS feed (information on podcamptoronto.com) or watch right here on Vimeo.

If you shoot and upload videos (and other content) during PodCamp Toronto, please tag them with #pcto2011 and release under Creative Commons.

We hope to see you at PodCamp Toronto 2011!

Talking Twitter

2011-02-03T21:56:00.000-05:00

I've been on Twitter pretty much forever. Well, since March 2007 anyway. Four years! So forgive me if I forget to share lessons about Twitter as I go along. To me it has just become a mainstream form of communication, to connect with people in my life and get to know others I haven't met yet. It is a fantastic resource for many aspects of my life and work. And yet, I get into a rut using the same tools and not exploring what is new.

I want to share a couple of interesting blog posts from today that nicely pull together some Twitter thinking and Twitter tools:

From Charlene Burke (@charleneburke), a fellow member of AIIP, she describes the tools she uses for Twitter searching in 12 Twitter Search Tools. I had only used a few of these, so I thought this list to be particularly valuable. She says this is culled from a list of 60 tools that she uses to search Twitter--wow! I appreciate that she has shared her favourites.

Yesterday Twitter sent out a little list by email to subscribers telling us a few uses for Twitter. Well, three uses. It seemed a little underwhelming. So, social media communications whiz Dave Fleet (@davefleet) has jumped in to fill the gap with *his* version in 25 Suggestions for How to Use Twitter. I'm trying to think if there any ways I use Twitter that he hasn't already covered off....

So, how are you using Twitter? What tools are you finding invaluable? Anything new and cutting edge I should try??

Which Book Could Save Your Life?

2011-01-06T23:50:00.000-05:00

Michel-Adrien Sheppard mentioned this video today on Slaw, but I saw it a few days ago on Facebook and had earmarked it to share. Regardless, if you haven't seen it yet, enjoy!

Library Girl (original song)

2010-12-21T21:01:00.001-05:00

A little music video for you by Reina del Cid. Susan found this and posted it to Facebook, but I enjoyed it too much not to share here as well. This reminds me of my days as a page when I was in high school and as a circulation assistant when I was in university. :)

'Tis the Season: Great Book Sales

2010-12-15T01:00:00.003-05:00

I don't usually talk about sales on this blog, but I happened to notice a few book sales you may find of interest--check these out:

Information Today - library, information management and knowledge management titles

Michael Sauers has posted about the Information Today sale on books from Internet Librarian 2010 conference being extended to January 31, 2011: 40% off the retail price on all books. That is great news!

I am reading The Accidental Taxonomist by Heather Hedden which I picked up from InfoToday at KM World. For anyone into taxonomy, I highly recommend it!!

I also purchased the new edition of Building & Running a Successful Research Business by Mary Ellen Bates which has been having great word-of-mouth reviews from colleagues, and Open Source Web Applications for Libraries by Haren Coombs & Amanda Hollister (shown in the image above). Lots of holiday reading in my future.

Looks like I need the new edition of Michael's book Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's Guide to add to my collection, too!

Rosenfeld Media - user experience design titles

Rosenfeld Media, the maker of fine books on user experience design (also affectionately known as UX) currently has a 40% off sale on their books, epubs and webinars until January 1st. I have several of their titles on my shelf for reference. They are gorgeous books, beautifully designed and bound, with practical, well-written content. I try to pick up the latest ones every time I see they have a sale.

Neal-Schuman Publishers - The Tech Set series for libraries

I noticed the series my book Effective Blogging for Libraries is part of, The Tech Set series, is currently on sale 30% off from Neal-Schuman if you purchase the whole 10 book set (there is an ad on the front of the website). The deadline isn't indicated, so you might want to check with them directly.

In Canada this series is distributed by OLA Store. I checked with them, and they will extend this sale to Canadians until the end of the year as well. Contact Ryan Patrick of the OLA Store directly at rpatrick@accessola.com for the sale price. (Thanks, Ryan!).

What about you--have you seen any good book sales? What work-related titles are you looking forward to reading?

Understanding Influencers

2010-12-14T01:55:00.003-05:00

Following my friends in the social media PR world on Twitter and at in-person events, I often hear the talk about identifying influencers and reaching out to them. But who exactly are influencers and how can you identify who they are?

In Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, he examines this to some extent: the people with wide networks who can help spread the word on something he calls Connectors.

Stephen Abram has posted a great movie from R+I Creative about influencers (which I have re-posted below), and along with it has posed some questions for library folk:

Libraries are a very misunderstood ‘brand’. In some respects we are that “book, books and nothing but books” image and positioning. How do we make the library brand broader in our users’ consciousness?

Do we understand the influencers in libraryland?

Who among our users are influencers?

...

Who are the library opinion leaders – those who infuence library folk and those who influence broader social networks?

It's not very often I see people in libraries reaching out to influencers specifically, apart from perhaps well-planned marketing campaigns to raise funding for something. What about day-to-day, do we know who are influencing our library users? Who are setting the trends, who are identifying the trends? Do we try to connect with them, learn from them, and perhaps even influence them?

In libraryland I certainly see Stephen himself in this role, but there are plenty of others. The trick is to look beyond our immediate roles, our immediate world, look to other groups, other communities, other industries, to see what is happening. So often ideas are pollinated from one area to another, you can literally see an idea spreading, morphing, becoming adopted over time. That is how futurists are many times able to make predictions, they look to see what already exists somewhere else and thinks about how that will have an impact down the road.

Anyway, regardless of whether you are in the library world or not, this video is very interesting, entertaining and informative:

INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION from R+I creative on Vimeo.

This movie is a keeper--great catch, Stephen!

So, who influences you? How do they influence you--are they people you have contact with on a daily basis, are they people in your family, in your workplace, in your industry, or in the media?

A Day in the Life of a Digital Nomad

2010-12-06T00:44:00.000-05:00

Last week I had the privilege of kicking off Toronto Public Library's conference day for its Information Services Team staff. I wanted to talk about the new collaboration tools as well as providing an overview of social media tools, but putting it into a meaningful context.

I got the idea of talking about my collaborative work, tools and computer gear that I use in my consulting when I was reading Mitch Joel's 2009 book Six Pixels of Separation. Mitch talks about the concept of "digital nomads" who are mobile enough to work from anywhere. I don't believe Mitch originated the concept, but the way he expressed it (see some of the first slides for the quote) made the idea click.

A day in the life of a digital nomad

View more presentations from Connie Crosby.

I had a lot of fun putting this presentation together, and hope TPL's staff found something useful in my discussion and the Q&A. I welcome more comments here or via email conniecrosby@gmail.com.

KM World 2010 Workshop: Social Media Inside the Enterprise

2010-12-05T23:00:00.000-05:00

I had the privilege of presenting a new workshop at KM World 2010 in Washington, DC last month. The workshop was an introductory survey on social media inside the enterprise. I promised the participants I would share my slides (below). Unfortunately what you don't see in the slides is all the fantastic participation by those who took the workshop. What a fantastic group! I invited people to share their experiences to help inform others attending the workshop, and everyone was very forthcoming. I thank everyone who took the workshop, and encourage you to stay in touch either in the comments here or by email to me conniecrosby@gmail.com and let me know how your projects go. Social Media Inside the Enterprise

View more presentations from Connie Crosby.

Practical Applications of Web 2.0 Technology for Law Libraries

2010-10-22T23:58:00.003-04:00

I had the privilege today of being the closing speaker at COLAL, the Conference for Ontario Law Associations' Libraries, put together by LibraryCo.

I took the opportunity to try out an alternative presentation software called Prezi. Prezi allows you to put together all the content on one screen, kind of like a mind map, and then set a "path" through the content that the presentation follows as you click through. The application is definitely Web 2.0, based on a web platform, but the paid level allows for a version of the software to be downloaded to the desktop. I just used the free web-based version here. It took a little bit of work to learn how to use Prezi, but once I got the hang of it I had fun putting this together.

The presentation is below. You can either follow the path I used when I spoke, or you can move around and zoom in and out to explore the content I have put here. To view, I strongly suggest clicking on "more" on the bottom right and selecting "full screen". Then you have the chance of clicking through screen by screen, or clicking "more" and then "autoplay".

Note I also promised the group a list of links referred to in this talk and some additional content. It is getting late tonight, and that is going to take a bit of work, so I am going to add the links later. In the meantime, enjoy my prezi!

Practical Applications of Web 2.0 Technology for Law Libraries on Prezi

What do you think of this format? What was I missing in the content? I'd love to hear your take on it!

Connie Crosby Update: September 14, 2010

2010-09-15T18:30:00.005-04:00

Last night I threw caution (and makeup) to the wind and recorded another late night video to catch you up on a few things. Notes and links are below the video--lots of great content here. I could have written several blog posts from the links below, lots of videos for you! Yes, I look tired. It is mostly that darned cold I picked up on the weekend. I'll be 100% real soon, not to worry!

Connie Crosby Update: September 14, 2010 from Connie Crosby on Vimeo.

Late Night Links

PodCamp Montreal
Video recorded sessions from PodCamp Montreal are available as links from the schedule
My Slaw.ca post yesterday Social Media: Neither Social Nor Media. Discuss
Jennifer C. (@CanuckLibrarian on Twitter)
Didier Labonte (@reidid)
Xavier Beauchamp-Tremblay (@XBT)
Xavier is also an organizer of the Legal IT conference
Discussion about the PodCamp concept on Bob Goyetche's blog We Need Camps for Creators
If you are in Toronto, watch the Rotman School of Management events calendar for fantastic speakers
If you can't make it in person, Rotman has selected video from past events
Douglas Coupland
Generation X
RootsxDouglasCoupland
Toronto Wiki Tuesdays
Sean Moffitt
Mike Dover
Wikibrands (to be released December 17, 2010)
Wikibrands Facebook Page
uStream recording of Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover at Toronto Wiki Tuesdays, September 14, 2010
Video of Sean Moffitt interviewed by Robert Lavigne after the talk
R.E.M.
Library of Congress National Recording Registry
National Recording Registry - page about audio montage of all songs included in the Registry in 2009
Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation Preservation Award presented to R.E.M.
KM World 2010
My workshop at KM World will be Monday, November 15 at 9 am - W8 – Social Media Inside the Enterprise: Blogs, Wikis, Video, & Microblogging

Candidates for SLA 2011 Board of Directors

2010-09-09T01:22:00.005-04:00

Hi folks! Well, I'm not completely AWOL, just rocked off my socks with work. That's a good thing, right? But I do truly miss popping by the blog and sharing my thoughts with you. The urge to blog is strong, it is. Some quick musings tonight:

I love that the Special Libraries Association has its candidates for Board of Directors each year record video to share their thoughts and give the members an idea of how they perform under the pressure of presenting on video. The quality gets better every year, too.

I am posting two from the Candidates for 2011 Board of Directors that stand out for me, not only because Jill Hurst-Wahl and Ulla de Stricker are friends and fellow consultants who have generously shared with me a lot of what they know, but also because I like the way in which they express how we are part of something bigger, a network of librarians and information professionals who are stronger as a whole than we can be individually. Ulla's analogy is particularly well thought-out.

If you are a member of SLA, I encourage you to check out all the candidate videos. The polls close September 29 at 2 pm PT/5 pm ET.

Jill Hurst-Wahl (candidate for Director):

Ulla de Stricker (Candidate for Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect):

I Am Not Radical Enough

2010-05-28T07:30:00.001-04:00

I don't take things far enough. I haven't pushed the envelope enough. You see me and you think "wow, she is doing a lot." But really, I'm not doing enough.

I have not done enough to provoke you. I am just too middle-of-the-road-nice and likable. I have not done enough to get you angry so that you leap out of your seat and feel compelled to act.

How do I know? What is my measure? It is because I do not hear from you. You are not engaged, you are not commenting. This blog is over 6 years old. At first I thought "oh, it is because librarians are shy about being online." But I see plenty of librarians on Facebook and on Twitter and on listservs talking up a storm. But on the blogs you fall silent.

Many ideas pass through this blog, and you think "ah yes, something new to learn." But, what do you really learn? Do you take any of this and use it?

I have not done my job. I have not gone far enough. I have not provoked you. How can I change this?

Photo: Free Children of The Revolution Punk Girl With Fun Mohawk by Pink Sherbet Photography, original photography by D Sharon Pruitt, made available under Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Martha Murphy on Media Mining the Internet

2010-05-27T07:30:00.034-04:00

I first met Martha Murphy of the Fire Sciences Library at the Office of the Fire Marshal in one of my classes at the Professional Learning Centre (now the iSchool Institute) at the University of Toronto a few years ago.

Martha has been a leader in thinking creatively on how to use social media tools in both research and the dissemination of information to her stakeholders. This recent presentation gives a good overview of some of the tools she is using. In it she discusses the use of these tools for:

mining information
building your personal image and reputation management
providing customer service
crisis communication
brand awareness

Social media mining the internet

I suggest you also view the other presentations by Martha Murphy for additional ideas.

Update: As proof that "great minds think alike" I noticed Wendy Reynolds posted a column on Slaw.ca yesterday discussing another presentation she did as a panelist with Martha Murphy for Showcase Ontario.

New on Slaw.ca - a Redesign and an Anniversary

2010-05-26T01:32:00.005-04:00

If you haven't visited the Slaw.ca blog lately, you must drop by! Simon Fodden has led us in a fabulous makeover giving the site not only a new look but also new content. We now have a whole new distinguished cadre of columnists writing on justice issues, legal information, legal marketing, legal publishing, legal technology, outsourcing, and the practice of law. The re-development of Slaw was kindly assisted by a grant from the Law Foundation of Ontario.

This has meant the rest of us daily bloggers have had to pull up our socks! My latest two blog posts were inspired (no surprise to you, dear readers) by my latest foray into conferences and presentations:

A Tale of Two Conferences: CALL 2010 and LSUC Solo and Small Firm (May 17, 2010)

Information Work Versus Knowledge Work (May 24, 2010)

I have to say, all the conference sessions I attended and people I have spoken with over the past few weeks have given me a lot to think about. And I am feeling inspired again about blogging. Hopefully that will be reflected both here and on Slaw.

And in case you missed it, we recently celebrated the 5th anniversary of Slaw with a little party captured in this video put together by Canadian Lawyer magazine:

Incidentally, that is me running around with the macbook in the video. I was connected to Steve Matthews in B.C. via Skype so that he could see and hear what was going on at the party. We did our best to all say a few words to Steve who is a vital part of Slaw.

The Role of Web 2.0 in Legal Services via the Internet

2010-05-17T23:49:00.000-04:00

Three weeks ago I spoke on a panel at the Legal IT 4.0 conference in Montreal. I spoke alongside Olivier Charbonneau of Concordia University and Michel Gamache of Heenan Blaikie in Montreal; we explored the role of Web 2.0 and whether it is becoming a threat to legal knowledge.

In my part of the presentation, I took on the idea that Richard Susskind put forward in his 2008 book The End of Lawyers? whether the work of lawyers will be replaced by non-lawyer people supported by sophisticated Web 2.0 systems.

Is Web 2.0 a Threat to Legal Knowledge? -- Legal Services via the Internet

View more presentations from Connie Crosby.

I have additional thoughts on the topic to share, but am going to save them for an upcoming post on Slaw.ca. In the meantime, I wanted to get this online to share with you. Please note most of the other presentations are available from the Publications page of the Legal IT conference.

CALL/ACBD/MichALL 2010 Presentation: Legal Research Free and Fast! - Web 2.0 Sources

2010-05-11T17:58:00.000-04:00

This works well as a companion presentation to the panel talk I gave yesterday: online sources and search tools of the Web 2.0 variety in the legal industry. Grab your RSS feed and use it with some of the things you learned about in yesterday's session!

I only have a few minutes to post this, so hope to say a little more later on. These slides will also be posted to the CALL/ACBD/MichALL 2010 conference website once the dust settles.

Legal Research Free and Fast! - Web 2.0 Sources

View more presentations from Connie Crosby.

Some additional sources mentioned by Catherine Sanders Reach in her talk yesterday:

for blog searches: BlogCatalog and WhosTalkin?
for Twitter searches: Twellow

I'm sure there are others out there--what are your search tools and tricks for social media searches?? Please share with us!

I thank MichALL for the opportunity to take part in this panel discussion!

CALL 2010 Presentation: Media Monitoring and Current Awareness - the New Tools

2010-05-10T18:30:00.001-04:00

I was one of three panelists today in a CALL2010 (Canadian Association of Law Libraries annual conference) session entitled Media Monitoring and Current Awareness: Tools in the Information Explosion. I explored some newer tools that people should develop some familiarity with including some features of Google Reader, Yahoo! Pipes, widgets, the semantic web, and mobile tools.

I will share my slides via the CALL conference website, but in the meantime am sharing them here so everyone can grab the links and start exploring! A couple of "goofs" in this set of slides: you have a slide towards the end which is actually my notes which was not in the live presentation. That's okay since the notes seem coherent and put things into context. The other is the list of sources says (1/2) and there is no second page--I ended up putting the two pages of sources together on one. Will correct this for the CALL website version!

Media Monitoring and Current Awareness: New Tools

View more presentations from Connie Crosby.

I neglected to explain how I have actually USED Yahoo! Pipes myself. I helped one of the law firm libraries set up practice group pages, and in addition to links to pertinent websites and legislation for each group, I located a number of good sources in each area that had feeds and consolidated them with Pipes, then used the Pipes badge to post the resulting headlines onto their practice group intranet pages. I aimed for key, reliable sources that produced about 5 or 10 new headlines a day when put together. So, some of the Pipes created had 5 feeds, others had a dozen feeds.

When speaking at the LegalIT conference 2 weeks ago in Montreal, I heard additional good things that Michel Gamache at Heenan Blaikie is doing. I hope his presentation gets posted to the LegalIT website soon so you can see what he has done (and I hope he doesn't mind me mentioning him personally!). He's doing a lot of good things with respect to delivery of information in his firm. The tool Dapper mentioned in my presentation is courtesy of Michel.

I also mention Viigo.com in my talk about mobile current awareness--thanks to Wendy Reynolds for reminding me of this great resource yesterday!

One great question from Mary (which I wish she had asked publicly) was the question of copyright in using all these RSS feeds. The quick answer is, if a feed is made available publicly, then the assumption is you can use it unless otherwise stated on the website. In the case of search results from Google tools, Google likes to be credited as a source of the feed; in this case I usually put a credit note on a webpage beside any widget or feeds I set up using a Google tools such as Google Alerts or Google News. Of course, Google itself isn't exactly a primary source but more of a conduit or consolidator of sources. If anyone has additional thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them!

There is also the question of setting up other tools to monitor sites and create RSS feeds from pages that do not have explicit feeds--what is the copyright covering use of feeds in this way? I don't know the answer and welcome your thoughts on this.

Being here at CALL and hearing all the excitement around many of the new tools makes me realize I have been learning a lot but not sharing what I know! I am coming away with a new resolve to blog more often in this space.

Tomorrow I am on a panel talking about "fast and free" legal research sources and will again share. It is a nice tie-in with my talk from today.

Cheers,
Connie

Facebook Privacy Settings How-to from David Lee King

2010-05-04T22:42:00.000-04:00

Okay, I don't mean to make this blog all about Facebook, but a lot of people I know use Facebook and perhaps don't know about the recent privacy setting changes.

Every Tuesday the awesome David Lee King of the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library puts together a video in a series he calls "Tech Tuesdays". This week he walks through the new privacy settings on Facebook. It is well worth following David's blog if you aren't already. I always find he is about a year or two ahead of me in anything I am doing, so a good person to watch on where things are heading for libraries and all things new media!

Targeting Facebook to Different Audiences

2010-04-04T23:48:00.004-04:00

I can't believe how long it has been since I've written to all of you! March was a whirlwind, and April promises to be much the same.

I noticed this video in Tod Maffin's latest newsletter and thought I would share with all of you. It answers a big question I have had for a while--how to accept all those Facebook friend invitations but not necessarily share everything with everyone. I originally tried to keep Facebook only for personal friends, but over time a lot of business contacts and people I have not yet met have invited me to be their friends. I've been wondering what to do.

In this video Tod shares what he calls "Friend Splitting", putting friends (i.e. friends, family and contacts) into different groups and both watching the groups as separate feeds and allowing them to see different content from your page without starting more than one account. It is a fantastic solution. As Tod points out in his newsletter, a lot of people create more than one Facebook account to achieve this, but it is against Facebook's terms of service and they will close accounts if they find you having more than one.

Anyway, watch this short screencast to see how it's done.

Connie Crosby Update: February 15, 2010

2010-02-16T09:23:00.002-05:00

Connie Crosby Update: February 15, 2010 from Connie Crosby on Vimeo.

Some of my mentions in this episode:

ChangeCamp meeting in Toronto on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 working on a civic engagement toolkit. While the session is full for participants, we are looking for volunteers to act as scribes as I mention in the video. If you have a laptop with good battery and would like to join me in liveblogging at a table via Scribblelive.com feel free to contact me and I will pass your name along. Scribes show up at 4 pm, and the show gets underway around 5:30 or 6:00 pm. I mention one of the people leading us in the evening, Mark Kuznicki, who inspires me to do more in leading and connecting people.
PodCamp Toronto - will you be joining us? February 20 & 21, 2010 at Ryerson's Rogers Communication Centre. The Schedule is now live so that presenters may add their sessions in.
Personal Brand Camp 2 - an event including Humber PR students learning about social media and how to build an online presence. I am giving Michael Cayley a hand with this. This event will be held in conjunction with Third Tuesday Toronto on February 23, 2010, a speaker series about social media for the PR industry, courtesy of Joseph Thornley. Our speaker for the evening will be Mitch Joel on (what else?) personal brand.
Ontario Library Association's OLA Superconference, February 24-27, 2010. Look for me at the Knowledge Ontario booth where I will be helping out periodically.
Over on Slaw.ca I usually post every Monday. This week's post: Google Buzz Already Raising Privacy Concerns.

And did I mention my book? No? I've been proofreading the final proofs! We're almost ready for the printer!

Cross-posted over on my business blog Connection.

Big Swag & Mixed Feelings

2010-02-01T22:23:00.006-05:00

I received some big promotional swag today from a major U.S. legal publisher, Thomson Reuters Legal, for the launch of their new product WestlawNext. I share my thoughts on it in this video.

Connie Crosby opens WestlawNext Promo Swag from Connie Crosby on Vimeo.

See Sarah Glassmeyer's blog post On Vendor Swag which she posted today on this topic as well.

Photo: Thomson Reuters Legal's President & CEO Peter Warwick at media briefing for WestlawNext at LegalTech NY earlier today. Source: Westlaw on Twitpic

Feb. 2nd update: I should have included a link back to Simon Chester's blog post on The Future of Westlaw over on Slaw.ca. He was one of the group who went to Eagan, Minnesota to preview the new product, and he has been tracking some of the conversations that came out of that visit.

Connie Crosby Update: My New Brainchild

2010-01-29T03:07:00.001-05:00

Something a little new: catching you up on all I'm doing (well, except real client work!) in a chatty video. Let me know what you think--is this of interest? Should I do this again? Are there questions you would like me to answer??

Cheers!
Connie

Connie Crosby Update: My New Brainchild from Connie Crosby on Vimeo.

Links to a few things mentioned:

Knowledge Workers Toronto
My new book from Neal-Schuman: Effective Blogging for Libraries (Part of the new Tech Set series) scheduled to be released in March
PodCamp Toronto 2010
Ignite the Web! Audio & Video in the Law webinar with Connie Crosby presented courtesy of Nina Platt Consulting Inc.

Also posted on my blog on the Crosby Group Consulting website.

Ask a Mac Expert - What to read in 2010

2009-12-14T00:21:00.002-05:00

From the McMaster Daily News, they spoke to Titles Bookstore's Mark Lefebvre, Professor of English and Cultural Studies Lorraine York, and Associate University Librarian Vivian Lewis to find out what books they would recommend to the University community in the upcoming year. I have my friend Mitch Joel's book Six Pixels of Separation, all lined up, ready to read!

So, what are YOUR suggestions for 2010?

My Nominations for the Clawbies

2009-12-09T17:40:00.001-05:00

If you have been reading the Canadian blawgosphere lately, you know it is time for CLawBies nominations! The CLawBies, or the Canadian Law Blog Awards, are organized by Steve Matthews each year.

I read a lot of Canadian law blogs, so it is a challenge to narrow it down to just three! After some thought, here are my picks this year:

1. The Stream - from the B.C. Courthouse Libraries - This is a relatively new blog, but is already influencing others. I also hear it mentioned behind closed doors by my law library colleagues. The folks at the B.C. Courthouse Libraries have set the new standard for design and engagement by a law library in Canada. Congratulations to Johanne Blenkin and her team--they are already winners in my books! While you are on the site, do visit their whole website as it has a clean, fresh design: http://www.courthouselibrary.ca/

2. All About Information - by Dan Michaluk - Dan does a great job of writing consistent quality blog posts. He manages to stay focused while keeping it personable. I know when I am looking for information to update myself on the state of social media and employment law in Canada, this is the first place I head.

3. Jason the Content Librarian - by Jason Eiseman - This is my pick for international law blog. Jason is the Librarian for Emerging Technologies at Yale Law School Library. I like that he is posting on things relevant to me, does not have a strictly U.S. focus, and on a personal note was one of a group of law librarians including Meg Kribble, Bonnie Shucha (who are both excellent law bloggers in their own right who also deserve votes) and many others who made me feel at home as a speaker at this year's AALL conference.

Like almost everyone else who have blogged their picks, I can't help but mention others who are well deserving and should be included in any "top Canadian law blogs list" - Library Boy by Michel-Adrien Sheppard, Law is Cool by an ever-growing slate of law students, created by the inimitable Omar Ha-Redeye, Thoughtful Legal Management by David Bilinsky, Canadian Privacy Law Blog by David Fraser, Michael Geist's blog which has a reach far, far outside the legal community in Canada, and Halo Secretarial blog by Laurie Mapp who is a legal virtual assistant (or legal VA) and helps me stay on track in my day to day work. And so many others!

I also can't wait to see what Tim Knight at Osgoode Law Library does with the KF Modified Blog which I should talk about with its own blog post soon.

And on the international front, I consistently read Mary Abraham's blog Above and Beyond KM (last year's winner!) because she is always thoughtful, thought provoking, and lively in her writing on knowledge management.

I am delighted to see the new entries from the B.C. Courthouse Libraries and Tim Knight because, frankly, there are not a lot of law librarians blogging in Canada. And our range of organizations, job descriptions, and geographic locations can only give us a widely diverse perspective. I hope more will jump in to provide their thoughts to the biblioblawgosphere!

The Agenda Interview: Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin

2009-12-04T07:30:00.001-05:00

If you missed her speaking at the Women's Law Association of Ontario's 90th anniversary gala last week, here is Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada in a recent interview with Steve Paikin of TV Ontario's The Agenda. It is an interesting look inside the SCC rarely seen. The video runs about 26 minutes.

Some of the things they discuss:

being the first woman to head the Supreme Court of Canada
how diversity on the Supreme Court is important
the life of a "Supreme"
cameras in the courtroom

Hat tip to Michel-Adrien Sheppard over at the Library Boy blog for the link.

Coming Soon: Celebrity Librarian DeathMatch!

2009-11-24T16:58:00.001-05:00

See the website! Join the Facebook page! Check out the trailer! --

From About the Game:

Welcome to the home of Celebrity Librarian DeathMatch, the show that pits two teams of reference librarians against one another for bragging rights and prizes! Listen in to the live podcast and play along through our TalkShoe Interface, or listen to past shows in the Episode Guide! Watch this blog to see the game in progress as Command Central gives out questions and follow up information and librarians fight the clock to give the best reference in the quickest time! Don’t forget to watch the introduction video before each podcast to learn all about our contestants and to hear genuine librarian smack talk!

Champaign Public Library has challenged Urbana Free Library to start off the season!

Celebrity Librarian DeathMatch comes to us courtesy of Eric Sizemore and Jenny Veile. If you are on Twitter, follow them @libdeathmatch. Great work, folks!

Looking forward to Ontario Library Association - Super Conference 2010

2009-11-23T22:30:00.007-05:00

I have a newly-minted personal membership to Ontario Library Association. We used to carry an organizational membership when I worked in the law firm so we could access some of the great programming. But, this coming February will be my first opportunity to attend the annual OLA Super Conference. I've been watching the conference website for a few weeks, and today the preliminary conference program arrived in the mail.

I am a veteran conference-goer, but I suspect this will be a whole other experience. So, as a first-time Super Conference attendee, I'm wondering where to start. What should I be sure to see? What social events are must-attend? Should I volunteer myself to help with something?

I would love to hear from you, the veteran OLA Super Conference attendee, with any advice!

The OLA Super Conference runs February 24-27, 2010.

New Beta Twitter Feature: Retweeting

2009-11-21T22:41:00.013-05:00

Simon Fodden asked me about the new Twitter "retweet" feature which was recently opened up to a number of us on Twitter. It is currently in beta test. I thought sharing my response might be helpful.

What is retweeting?

But first, let me explain what "retweeting" is for those not familiar with Twitter:

Retweeting is forwarding/spreading a Twitter message (or "tweet") posted by someone to your other Twitter followers.

Quite often Twitter developers will take note of a convention that spreads throughout Twitter users and turn it into an official feature. The original way to spread a message sent out via Twitter (a ''retweet") is to put the abbreviation "RT" plus the person's ID with the "@" symbol in front so the person originating the tweet gets credit for the tweet and sees it automatically in their stream of replies. For example, Simon Fodden retweeting from the Slaw.ca Twitter account:

The new retweet feature

We can still manually retweet as we have been doing, but now Twitter has added an automated feature they are calling "Retweet". It does a few different things than we are used to. It can be confusing at first. Hopefully this helps explain it:

The retweet feature replicates the entire original tweet, including the person's name, icon and source they sent the tweet from (e.g. Tweetdeck, web). So, if you retweet something a friend tweeted, everyone following your twitter stream will see your friend's icon instead of yours. This is the most confusing part of the new feature. For example, in the example below, my friend @pfanderson retweeted something from @sneakymonkey, and it is @sneakymonkey's icon that shows up. They also add "retweeted by" in the status line under the tweet:

currently we can't edit or add any information to the retweet. Previously we could edit the tweet down or add a comment as there was space with the 140 character limit.
there are some new lists of the retweets, from your right side menu ("retweets") - http://twitter.com/#retweets. Under "Your tweets, retweeted" they show who has retweeted (see the icons under each retweet):
I don't see an RSS feed listed for the retweets yet.

Other new things from Twitter

Incidentally, Twitter is opening up a lot of new features and functionality these days. Lists are one I have also been playing with. They have also integrated Twitter with LinkedIn so we can push tweets to LinkedIn status messages, and I see there is now Twitter in Spanish and some new functionality (from what I can understand) with Twitter in French. It is worth following the Twitter blog to learn about all the new features coming down the pipe.

Do you have pointers or questions about the new retweeting feature?

Holiday Law Firm Challenge: Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank

2009-11-18T10:16:00.003-05:00

A lot of people have been checking this blog for information about the upcoming Daily Bread Food Bank challenge for Toronto law firms. This year's challenge is about to start on Monday! I've just given a full write-up over at Slaw.ca: Holiday Law Firm Challenge: Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank.

Related posts:

Daily Bread Food Bank - Toronto law firm food and fundraising challenge (Nov. 29/06)
Daily Bread Food Bank - Law Firm Challenge (Dec. 7/07)
hohoTO: A Lesson in Using Social Networking for Charity (Dec. 17/08)
Duarte de Silva on HoHoTO fundraising event (Dec. 18/08)

Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals: Why I will be voting "Yes" to the SLA name change

2009-11-12T12:09:00.003-05:00

I have remained fairly quiet about the proposed name change for the Special Libraries Association until now because I have been giving it some good thought, and watching the various conversations unfold. Change is not always easy, and it has amazed me how seriously people take the names and labels we apply to ourselves.

This is why I will be voting "Yes" to the name change. Take from it what you will:

I have always found "Special Libraries Association" to be problematic. The term "special library" is not clear, and people outside librarianship do not understand what it means. I always say "specialized library" to clarify, and still that is not completely accurate. Aren't all libraries specialized in some way? I also object to it being "libraries" instead of "librarians" because it is not our libraries that are members. And even so, SLA includes more than librarians, so that would not be accurate as well. And ever since the Symbionese Liberation Army, the abbreviation SLA has had negative connotations in my book. At any rate, I have been waiting a long time for the opportunity to move on to another name.
We all can come up with a name that we prefer for the Association, but the truth is everyone else will think his/her own idea is better. We are never going to come up with a perfect name that everyone adores. SLA is just too big an association for that, and our many members are just too diverse to all completely agree. This is not a bad thing in my books--the diversity is what helps us to see things from other perspectives and makes us strong as an organization, and helps feed me as a member.
In today's world, one cannot just make up a name and go with it. There has to be availability as far as business name, trademark and domain name. And it has to work on a global level, not just in the U.S. As we know, easier said than done! I always find naming things (blogs, my company) the most difficult part of any new project, and adding this layer of obstacles makes it near impossible to come up with an original name. I am impressed that the SLA Alignment initiative took it even a step further and ran focus groups, and tested the names they came up with against the market, and found a clear winner.
The research SLA did with marketing/branding experts Fleishman-Hillard was pretty intense. For the record, I was part of one of the focus groups here in Toronto. I learned a lot about attitudes towards librarians from the others (non-librarians) who also took part. It became even clearer to me on that day that a change is needed.
It is time to open up the possibilities for ourselves. While I love being a librarian, and will always consider myself one, the name of my occupation can cut two ways. There is a lot of respect for libraries, but we are often seen as the people in the back quietly making things run. And yet, my skills are so varied I can be involved in many aspects of an organization to help it run more smoothly: library, information management, knowledge management, and records management to name a few. Why restrict ourselves to library? Where are the librarians who are CIOs?
A lot of money, time and effort has gone into this name change proposal. If we do not seize the moment and change it now, it is unlikely a chance will come around for a very long time, if at all. I highly doubt SLA Executive Boards in the near future are going to want to risk yet more rejection if we do not accept this name.
The proposed new name, Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals (ASKP), is one I can live with. Actually, I really like it. But the key is that we have to be able to live with it, even if we don't love it. The term "strategic" places me right where I want to be, leading projects and organizations in their goals and objectives, and helping them in their accomplishments. I tend to talk about "information professionals" rather than "librarians" (because my profession includes more than librarians) or "knowledge professionals" but the truth is those in IT have sewn up the term "information" so it is difficult for us to differentiate ourselves if we use that term. If we get into semantics, I see "knowledge" as building on and going a step further than "information" so this is a positive difference. While all members certainly don't work in knowledge management, we are all smart knowledge workers (as originally defined by Peter Drucker) in our own right. So, this is appropriate. And we are all professionals. This is an association of ambitious, smart people who approach their work in a professional manner. And many of us consider our work to be not just a nine-to-five job, but a vocation.

The more I think about it, the more I see this name change as a positive change. I have heard so much negative feedback, I thought it was time to put in a positive voice.

For additional information, visit the SLA Name Change Info Center. If you are on Facebook and are also thinking about voting for the new name, join me on the page YES to Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals. The vote begins Monday, November 16 and ends on December 9th.

Women's Law Association of Ontario: 90th Anniversary Gala

2009-11-11T09:35:00.002-05:00

I am doing work with the Women's Law Association of Ontario, and helping to spread the word about their upcoming 90th Anniversary Gala at the Royal York Hotel on Thursday, November 26. They have an exciting evening planned, with The Right Honourable Madam Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin giving the keynote talk. Everyone is welcome: members and non-members; men and women. A link to the registration form is below.

The Women's Law Association of Ontario is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to advancing issues and causes relevant to women in the legal profession through education and awareness programs.

90 Anniversary Gala

Join Women’s Law Association of Ontario in
Celebration of 90 years as an active voice
for women in Law.

Our special guest for the evening will be

The Right Honourable Madam
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, P.C.

Thursday, November 26, 2009
at
The Fairmont Royal York Hotel
100 Front Street
Toronto

Reception begins at 5:45 pm
Dinner served at 7:00 pm

Ticket prices:
Members $160 plus GST
Member and Guest $350 plus GST
Non-member $205 plus GST
Table (8) $1500 plus GST

To register for this event or to learn more about WLAO
please call 1-888-723-8883
or visit our website - www.wlao.on.ca
Registration form (PDF)

Speaking Out for Ontario Women Lawyers since 1919

Law Librarian Podcast: Social Media and Law Libraries

2009-10-02T10:24:00.001-04:00

Today's episode of the Law Librarian podcast will be recorded at 3 pm ET or 12 noon PT on Blogtalkradio. Our topic today will be social media and law libraries. Join us live (listen via the website --headphones recommended at the office) and call in with questions, or listen to the recording later. I will be participating in this episode. Richard Leiter hosts with his new co-host Marcia Dority Baker.

Incidentally, I was away during the last recording on September 3rd but have had a listen. The focus of the episode--"What's Real in the Real World?"--was on resources used in law firm libraries, and the discussion between academic and private law librarians regarding what is needed for legal research training for law students piqued my interest.

[also posted to Slaw.ca]

Adoption of Web 2.0 by Libraries: Pivot Points of Change

2009-09-13T22:56:00.005-04:00

It's fine to learn all you can about the new technologies, but the challenge is figuring out how to practically implement them into your work, and how to adapt to the change. I like this presentation by Buffy Hamilton, High School Media Specialist at Creekview High School in Canton, GA she will be giving this week to the Georgia Public Library All-Staff Meeting.

I like that this is a fresh look at the technology, helping to make it accessible. She comforts us by letting us know that we do not have to change everything, but gives ideas on how to gradually change up what we are doing.

Pivot Points for Change: Libraries and Librarians Using Web 2.0 to Connect, Create, and Collaborate

View more presentations from Buffy Hamilton.

See also her blog post Pivot Points for Change and her wiki-licious resources page to accompany the presentation.

Updated: and this is the blog post she says started it all. Enjoy!

Introducing Canadian Book Review Annual Online

2009-09-11T15:06:00.006-04:00

On my Crosby Group blog Connection I have just announced a new client initiative, working with The Dundurn Group to get word out about the newly launched Canadian Book Review Annual Online. I am excited about this project, since this well-respected publication was last published in paper format back in 2006. For the full press release and instructions on how to take advantage of the 30 day free trial on Monday, please see my full blog post.

I had a chance to take an advance look at the preview, and am impressed. There is the choice of a one-box search, or an advanced search screen that I find intuitive while allowing for complex Boolean searches. I like that results can be sorted by any field such as author, publisher or date just by clicking on the heading name. Book reviews are helpful and succinct. One can click on publisher name, author name, and tags (informal key words indicating things such as format and subject) to find more of the same.

The free trial is only for the next month, so I encourage you to sign up and try it out, whether you are in a library or not. This is a great Canadian resource we should all be familiar with!

The Law Librarian Talk Show: Resources Used in Law Firms

2009-09-07T23:08:00.003-04:00

I'm back from a fabulous vacation where I had a chance to recharge my batteries, and am now in the process of catching up. One thing I missed was participating in the latest episode of The Law Librarian talk show/podcast on BlogTalk Radio. The latest episode recorded on Friday--What's Real in the Real World?--focusses on resources used in law firm libraries. I haven't listened to the full episode yet, but encourage you to have a listen and add your comments to the show's Facebook page or host Richard Leiter's blog, The Life of Books.

Libraries of the Future

2009-08-20T14:04:00.003-04:00

I'm heading out for a couple weeks' vacation. I have *so many things* lined up for this blog, but alas it will have to wait. In the meantime, here is an interesting video (running just over 9 minutes) about what the future of libraries will be, put together by JISC in the UK. Which side do you fall on--will we have librarians in the future?

The Best Canadian Law Firm Website

2009-08-14T01:03:00.005-04:00

Yes, I have had my head down working. Yes, I am still alive and kicking. So many things to tell you dear readers about! Here is a quick one for now--from Mitch Kowalski at the Financial Post's Legal Post blog:

Jordan Furlong, editor of the Canadian Bar Association's magazine, The National, has rounded up a group of writers who focus on innovative legal practices and tasked them with selecting the top websites by a Canadian law firm.

I am honoured to be one of the judges.
Sites will be judged in the following categories:

1. Big Firm (national/multi-jurisdictional)
2. Small Firm/Solo
3. British Columbia (national firms excluded from the provincial/regional categories)
4. Prairies
5. Ontario
6. Quebec
7. Atlantic Provinces
8. Blogs (not the best law blog, but the law firm websites that have the best blog(s) or use blogging the best)
9. Multi-Media (best use of podcasts, videos, etc.)
10. Student/Recruiting

If you would like your firm's blog to be considered by Mitch, send it to mekowalski@rogers.com by tonight at 11:59 p.m ET (i.e. before midnight!)

Oh, did I mention? I'm also a judge. Hmmm, perhaps I should mention this over on my company blog as well.

Let the best websites win! Winners will be announced in the fall.

15 Key Observations by Bob Pearson

2009-07-07T20:08:00.004-04:00

Tonight I am attending Third Tuesday Toronto with speaker Bob Pearson, President of the Social Media Business Council (formerly Blog Council); also formerly of Dell.

http://Twitter.com/bobpearson1875

15 Key Observations about big business and social media

1. Customers are co-shaping your reputation every day.

2. Customers assume leaders will identify issues before they happen.

They have set up a "hot issues" team to try to anticipate.

3. The customer does not care where you want them to go.

We go where we find what we need. Our networks, therefore, are liquid.

4. Less than 1% of a customer's time is spent purchasing a product.

5. E-commerce will become e-community.

Customers don't want to go two places to get what they want. Sears,
Wal-mart and Dell are doing work in this area.

6. How people consume content is changing.

YouTube has become the second largest search engine. Customers go
where they want to.

7. The media world isn't changing -- it has changed.

Traditional media such as New York Times that are content producers
are find. Next successful are bloggers.

8. There isn't a destination for a customer.

If your clients are signed up for your email they may no longer be
coming to your website.

9. Syndication of content is more important than traffic to your site.

Micro-communities, video, etc. Customer-driven preference;
participation is a choice.

10. 10-20% of your customer base in a given year.

The majority are searching online, asking peers, or doing nothing when
they have a problem. Better to empower them to help each other.

11. Customers want to do three things to help each other.

12. Don't measure trust internally if you are living it.

Employees help each other.

13. We judge people by how they interact with us.

We need to speak the customer's language. How many languages can we
speak?

Put ratings and reviews right in front of customers. Be open and honest.

14. Preparing for yesterday is ineffective.

Old models and habits hold back innovation. They look and smell nice,
but hold you back.

15. Ethical behaviour is a key part of maintaining trust.

We should never support fake blog posts. Important we keep our ethics
straight.

In conclusion: "Companies that cling to the past may not realize it,
but they will lose relevance."

From the Q&A:

Websites are a great place to store your content that is syndicated,
but most people will not be coming to your site.

Virtual worlds still have a place but are not yet ready. Shopping mall
or tech support worlds would be useful.

If you get real feedback, some will be positive and some will be
negative.

Companies are mostly using old tech support models. Need to change --
companies like Comcast are heading the way.

Social media monitoring: you can see what is being said about your
brand. There could be 30 to 40 times the discussion of your brand in
social networks than you are seeing in Google.

Getting legal counsel on board: bring them in early as part of the
team. Pick one or two to be your social media experts. Same with IT:
they will set up roadblocks at first. Pick one or two to work with you.

Most people are not talking to their customers each day. Start with
free resources such as Google Alerts or NetVibes to monitor what their
clients are saying and what their competitors are doing. He's usually
working 20 steps ahead of this, but important to get clients starting
here.

Customer service and social media is a journey -- we are 10-12 years
out from finding a good way to approach this. The Social Media
Business Council is important in this respect, it allows members to
share notes and see what works, what does not work.

Search screens in mobile devices: first third of the screen is
important; bottom two thirds is not.

Inside the Council there is a private group where they share
privately. Info is shared publicly at http://socialmedia.org
and on the blog http://blogcouncil.org/blog/

If you are interested in community building, don't look at what
companies are doing, look instead at what Facebook is doing.

Note: Moblogged (live-blogged via mobile) from my iPhone with cleanup and links added afterward. Any errors or ommissions are my responsibility and not that of the speaker.

Happy Canada Day & the Story of the Six String Nation Guitar

2009-07-01T21:52:00.017-04:00

It's that time of year when we kick back and appreciate how lucky we are to be in Canada.

Not quite two weeks ago I was in Kingston, Ontario with friends attending Podcasters Across Borders, an annual conference for (you guessed it) podcasters. Each year we come from Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and further afield in Canada, U.S. and even Brazil to converge, catch up and learn. We always expect to be inspired, but on the Friday evening before things had even really had a chance to start, we were caught off guard by a very moving, emotional keynote address.

Jowi Taylor of the Six String Nation project spoke to us about the creation of a very special guitar, the Voyageur. It is made from 63 artefacts of Canadian culture and history, including Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle, Paul Henderson's hockey stick, Maurice "Rocket" Richard's first Stanley Cup ring, L.M. Montgomery's house in Cavendish, and copper from the Library of Parliament among many, many others. The guitar has been in the hands of many people including me and my friends, if you look closely at these photos by Alexa Clark above, and has been played by many famous Canadians since 2006 including Stephen Fearing, Colin James, Hawksley Workman, Feist and many others. If you watched today's Canada Day festivities on CBC, you would have hopefully seen Shane Yellowbird playing it (see photo below):

People have been learning about the Six String Nation project through word of mouth. During his talk we learned that Jowi Taylor has financed the project himself without sponsorship, which has been a fantastic labour of love that has unfortunately left him in debt. Many of us were moved by the collaborative, patriotic spirit of the project and made personal contributions.

A book has now been released to talk about the story of the guitar. It also includes stories of the pieces incorporated into the guitar, and portraits of people with the guitar. This project is bringing together and helping to define our nation in many ways. I encourage you to watch the intro video below, explore the other videos on YouTube telling the moving stories of how the pieces were gathered, and check out the website. If you are lucky to have the Voyageur visit your community, I encourage you to see it live and perhaps even try it out. It is going to be at Harbourfront in Toronto, for example, July 24-26, 2009. The schedule calendar is on the front of the website.

Photo credits (from top to bottom):

Podcasters Across Borders & Six String National guitar photo montage by LexnGer, made available under a Creative Commons license.

Shane Yellowbird at Canada Day celebrations July 1, 2009 in Ottawa playing the Voyageur, photo courtesy Six String Nation.

Connie Crosby's Top 6 Ways to Find Out What's Going On

2009-06-09T23:56:00.020-04:00

And It's A Wrap
Originally uploaded by LexnGer

My friend and colleague Wendy Reynolds recently asked me to write about how I keep up. The answer really comes in three parts:
(1) How do I find out about groups and events?
(2) What groups do I belong to or meet with?
(3) What events are coming up?

Let me tackle the first one in this post. Here are my top 6 ways I find out what's going on:

Twitter - often the people I follow are in the same groups as I am, or have similar interests. They talk about upcoming events and groups they are part of. My curiosity leads me to check out what they are talking about. Sometimes I hear about them attending events while they are there, in which case I am disappointed I have missed out. That motivates me to pay more attention, and possibly join in with the next event put on by that group.
Facebook - one thing Facebook is very good at is allowing people to organize events. The people who organize events often send messages out to their friends or members of groups to invite them. I also get invited to various groups via Facebook. I have these notifications set up to be sent to my email so I don't have to constantly log onto Facebook. That being said, I check into Facebook periodically to see what events others are signing up for in case there is something of interest. The more groups you join, or the more friends you connect with, the more likely you are to hear about events. To me this is one of the most powerful things about Facebook.
Meetup.com - A number of groups use Meetup to organize meetings. I make sure to sign up as a member of each group I am interested in. Organizers use the system to send notices about upcoming messages to the members. Periodically I am also notified about new groups falling within my area of interest, as defined by me in my profile. I also periodically check to see what groups my friends are signed up for. I used to mine Upcoming.org, a similar site, for events, but find not as many groups using it these days. And to be honest, I find since Yahoo took it over I have difficulty signing into the site to use it.
Email discussion lists - listserves, group lists, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups - yes, email lists are still thriving. I am signed up for a number in Toronto for various associations and interest groups, most of which I read in daily summary mode, and watch them for events of interest.
Get involved - I am involved in a lot of different groups, both formal (associations) and informal (communities of interest). That means frequently I have an "inside track" on events coming up. As well, I am sometimes contacted by people in other groups putting on events looking for advice or, more likely, wanting to spread the word.
Check with someone who knows what is going on - about once a week my friend Eden Spodek and I touch base and talk about upcoming events and meetings we are going to. Once in a while one of us will know about something the other doesn't (usually she is more in the know than I am). It's not something we plan on doing, but it just seems to happen when we start talking. Our interests are similar but we largely work in different industries, so do hear about different things.

People seem to use my blog in this way, too. I try to let people know about things they might be interested in, thinking about whether most people interested are on Facebook, Twitter, or a listserv. I'm a bit slow at getting upcoming events onto this blog. Last month I posted about upcoming Toronto events that were of interest to me, and probably should continue doing something like that which would also address number 3) above.

Note each of these informs the other. Quite often I hear about one event several times over in all different methods. To the point where I don't have to look to find, it almost seems to come by osmosis.

You may be surprised to see I do not check blogs or monitor RSS feeds for upcoming events. Do you? How do you find out what is going on?

Photo credit: BookCamp wrap-up, Saturday June 6, 2009 And It's A Wrap
Originally uploaded by LexnGer. Photo used under Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

SLA Toronto presents... Best of the Web

2009-06-02T10:59:00.003-04:00

I will be moderating the upcoming SLA Toronto session, a tour of four librarians' top research websites. It should be a fun evening--I hope you will join us!

SLA Toronto presents ….

Best of the Web

Join friends and colleagues for an interesting and informative evening!
Speakers from a variety of special libraries will show the top 10-20 sites in their area of research.

Speakers:

Robert Fabbro: Ontario College of Art and Design
Valerie Hatten: Ontario Science Centre
Daniel Lee: Navigator Ltd.
Frank Van Kalmthout: Archives of Ontario

Moderator: Connie Crosby

Date: Wednesday June 24, 2009

Location:

University of Toronto, Faculty of Information
Room 728
140 St. George St.
Toronto

Time:

5:30-6:00: Registration and networking. A light dinner will be available.

6:00-7:15: Presentations

Cost:

Members: $20.00
Non-members: $30.00
Retired/Unemployed: $10.00
Students: Free

Click here for Registration information
Registration deadline is June 22, 2009

50 Best Blogs for Law Librarians

2009-05-20T09:01:00.002-04:00

The folks at Online University Lowdown have put together their listing of the 50 Best Blogs for Law Librarians. Some fantastic blogs! I wanted to point out those of a few friends that have been included:

Vancouver Law Librarian Blog by Steve Matthews
Strategic Librarian by Nina Platt
law.librarians - a group blog based out of the UK, which Steve and I have both contributed to
Out of the Jungle - started by Jim Milles, written by contributors Betsy McKenzie, Marie S. Newman, Jacqueline Cantwell and Meg Kribble.
The Running Librarian by James Mullan
Meg Kribble's own blog (yay, Meg!)
WisBlawg at the University of Wisconsin Law Library, authored by Bonnie Shucha
LLRX.com owned and edited by Sabrina Pacifici
beSpacific by Sabrina Pacifici

And of course there are many friends behind the other blogs mentioned, too. Congratulations, everyone, for the mention!

Toronto Events You Should Know About

2009-05-06T19:43:00.010-04:00

I run around to a lot of great events. Sometimes I mention them on Twitter or Facebook, but if you don't happen to be following me at the time I post, you probably miss them. There are SO MANY amazing events happening in this great city, it is easy to miss some good ones. Here are some of the upcoming happenings I am aware of (click on the event name for the details):

Science Rendezvous
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Amazing event throughout the city of Toronto and beyond. Something for all ages. Sounds like a lot of fun! From the website:

Over 600 volunteers and leaders in science and technology, representing award-winning Canadian institutions and organizations across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) open their doors, offering an engaging experience and look into the fascinating accomplishments of world-class research and activities. From the serious to the fun and quirky, free events and lab tours take place on campuses across the region and in a variety of outdoor and indoor venues, engaging adults, families and children in a day of fun and exploration.

(Hat tip to JP)

Toronto Girl Geek Dinner
May 12, 2009
6:30 p.m. at the Pilot
Registration is required on Meetup.com
This month's meeting is focussing on job search and career strategy. It's filling up fast! Don't delay getting your name on the list.

SpinTO
May 15, 2009
8 pm - ??
at the Mod Club
Every year a group of keen cyclists ride from Toronto to Montreal in the Friends for Life Rally in support of the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation (PWA). The cyclists have to raise a minimum $2,200 each to participate. Many of my friends have taken part over the years, and I have been proud to give them support (I haven't ridden it myself--yet). This year a group of avid participants have gotten together to create a fundraising party called SpinTO. It will bring some of the outrageous fun they experience on the road to the dance floor, and I can't wait! Consider joining us--register now. They are also looking for event sponsors.

Knowledge Ontario Ideas Forum
May 21, 2009
8:30 - 4:oo pm
Knowledge Ontario is looking to use feedback from this day to plan out its next 3 years. I will be attending and helping with the live Twitter coverage. More details to follow--you will want to follow along online! Please also feel free to join us online in advance to talk about libraries and how we can look to the future to deliver information services to people in Ontario.

Regent Park School of Music 2009 fundraiser
Monday, May 25, 2009
Boiler House, Distillery District
Featuring the RPSM Choir and the Barenaked Ladies
(Hat tip to kurtv)

Knowledge Workers Toronto
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
at the Verity Club
Subject: Creating Space for Knowledge in Organizations
Speaker: Rivadávia (Riva) C. Drummond de Alvarenga Neto - Professor at Fundação Dom Cabral, a Brazilian business school ranked the 16th best business school in the world and the best one in Latin America according to the Financial Times Executive Education ranking 2008.
Space is limited, please register to attend.
May 7th update: Verity Club has been booked; there will be a $15 charge for this meeting due to location. Thank you.

BookCamp Toronto
Saturday, June 6, 2009
9 am - 5 pm
at the iSchool at University of Toronto
Canada's first unconference about the book and publishing industry.
Registration is free, but please register to attend.

Net Change Week
Monday, June 8 - Friday, June 12, 2009
This is a week of events dedicated to exploring the connection between social change and social technology. A number of events have been scheduled. Earlier this week I attended a brainstorming meeting of some of Toronto's social networking leaders to come up with additional ideas for the week. I look forward to seeing what comes of that.

What events have I missed that you are looking forward to??

Women’s Law Association of Ontario - Alternative Careers in Law

2009-04-23T12:37:00.001-04:00

The Women's Law Association of Ontario (WLAO) and the Law Society of Upper Canada will be presenting a program on alternative careers in law the evening of May 6th. From the program:

Not sure if your hard-earned law degree gives you what you need? Ready for a career change or just interested in learning about the hidden opportunities in and outside of law? Join us for our 3rd Annual panel of successful and influential women lawyers who have found their niche.

The panel looks outstanding:

Ritu Bhasin - Director of Student & Associate Programmes - Stikeman Elliott LLP

Mayo Moran, Dean, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

Dorothy Quann, Vice president, General Counsel and Secretary - Xerox Canada Ltd.

Anna Kinastowski, City Solicitor, City of Toronto

For more details, see the registration form.

Reposted from Slaw.ca.

LegalIT 3.0: Achieving the Paper LESS (TM) Office

2009-04-20T14:10:00.018-04:00

Liveblogged at the Legal IT 3.0 conference in Montreal. Any error or omissions are my responsibility, not that of the presenters. Target audience are lawyers in firms and counsel in organizations.

Ross L. Kodner
Microlaw

His CLE materials are available on the Microlaw website.

He doesn't actually think we will be able to achieve paperless offices in our lifetime. What he is going to talk about an approach for dealing with paper. Reduce how much time you are spending looking for paper documents, touch documents less often.

Do you scan everything or almost everything as it comes into your organization? If you haven't, since you have been practicing law, your case files are likely fragmented in many different places. You probably have not seen entire case file all in one place. Document management system, contact system, email, case file system, billing system--information is in many different places. This is dangerous. You should have the ability to see all of your client file information in one place.

If you are going to build a complete case file, it is much easier in electronic than paper form. Currently everyone prints all the emails and put them in the paper files. This is time consuming and expensive. It also does not make sense to take an electronic item that is fully searchable with complete metadata to print it out in an inefficient format (paper). Can take up to 30 minutes to get it into the file by the time you print and file.

If you are going to scan paper that comes in, who decides what is going to be scanned?

File naming conventions

need to be consistent
need to be logical
e.g. date, doctype, entity type, subject
you should be able at a glance to tell what is in a file

Scanning does not always mean OCR

scanning in the past was synonymous with having the computer recognizing text
unless a good, clean document you are going to have garbage scanned in - often faster to type something in than clean up a poor scanned document
scanning is often into PDF
make sure you know how to scan so that the PDFs are searchable
WHO is doing the scanning?? How do they know what to scan, how to scan it, how to name the files, and where to file them? Often scanning can mean more problems than they are worth. You are better to have individual assistants do the scanning rather than having centralized scanning. You will know what you have where. Get smaller scanners for the desks, use the large central scanning for the big cases.

Where do all the documents go? Think of your server as a giant file cabinet. You store the matter files in the equivalent of a brown expandable file, and the different types of files in the equivalent of the manila file folder. Your individual documents are inside this file.

WorldDox - good for small- to mid-size firms

Sam Coppola
Borden Ladner Gervais LLP

A lot of his practice is in the film industry.

As younger people come in, the non-equity partners do want to do things the same way as others do.

Before - large firm use of paper:

39,000 lbs of paper (19.5 tons or 200 tons CO2 gases) in Montreal office
recycled 162,250 lbs of paper in Montreal
57,000,000 sheets of paper annually - half the average of use of paper by most law firms (average is 0.5 ton per lawyer or 5 tons of CO2 gases)

After - use of paper increased!

Stikeman Elliott recently announced themselves as carbon neutral. They achieved this by buying carbon credits. Coppola believes to truly be carbon neutral, we need to find ways of reducing what we use such as reusing paper.

Quebec law - paper is still required in An Act to Establish a Legal Framework for Information Technology - he can't serve someone electronically yet.

Adapting in a big firm

set a date - set aside all the old paper
get a tablet PC, write your notes into it - becomes a visual image of your notes - has more integrity
digital dictaphone
a second screen for his computer
client meetings: have the tablet PC, take the digital notes. If you have wifi, connect to your own network, automatically upload to the system - take only your computer, only use paper. That will also set an example for your client.

Paperless meeting room

e.g. Estonian ministers started meeting without paper in 2008

Document management systems

Document input
Document processing
Indexing & verification
Storage & management

Digital dictation

readily adapts to traditional lawyer workflow
transcription may not be necessary

Billing & Accounting

his accounting department still insists on printing a pre-bill and the actual bill to get his signature; he could sign electronically with his tablet
accounting assistant needs to be able to work on multiple documents at once, therefore need more than one screen - "multi-screens"
they are still sending paper reminders about bills - send by email instead. You will have to follow up with clients still.

Originals still count! Some types of documents should still be in paper

corporate formation documents, minutes of meetings
birth certificates
stocks, bonds
etc.

Signed documents

paper preferred, electronic secondary
CD or DVD format becomes easier
every time you create an electronic document, you have to ensure the integrity of the document - you could still be called to court about the process of transferring documents into digital format. You may need to answer to the process.

Not using paper document, "lose control of the paper"

you ideally want to be the one in control of the document and updating it - can be a big edge
if you do your document in Word, send it out in PDF so they have to come back to you to make changes so you can see what is being changed.

"Less we can!"

LegalIT 3.0: 90+ Legal Tech Tips in 90 Minutes

2009-04-20T11:18:00.010-04:00

Liveblogged at Legal IT 3.0 in Montreal. Some of these tips are excellent time-saving tips, others are tongue-in-cheek. I didn't catch all of them! But here are the ones I did---

Ross L. Kodner

Metadata removal - Metadata Assistant from Payne Group

Google Chrome browser

Ultimate Gear Management Clothing - carry all of your gadgets! Fill all the pockets before going through airport security

NeatReceipts - scanner plugs into PC $230 US - the software takes the receipt and recognized the information on the receipt, categorizes it, puts it into a spreadsheet that can be exported as a Quickbooks format - extremely accurate

Remote-Controlled Golf Ball - fool the people you are golfing with

Electronic charging stations for all your gadgets

Disposing of old PC systems - beware packed with confidential client information - how can you eradicate this information - "electronic shredders" delete the data - he recommends the Red Dragon Jet Torch Kits

iPhone - he thinks the keyboard has to improve before widespread adoption by lawyers

Virtual law practices - onebox.com - your staff can be anywhere, acts as your receptionist

Lifehacker.com - focussed on tips for everything useful in your life and business - worth someone 10 minutes every day in your office to monitor for tips you can use.

Document management & email management - Worldox - how much substantive content is buried in your email folder? This product is good for a firm 250 lawyers or smaller. There are other products for larger firms

Virtual Legal Assistants - LegalTypist and Virtual Paralegal Services - e.g. call in and dictate; send electronic email - trained North American legal paralegals & assistants. Typically charged by word (1-3 cents per word) [Connie's note: check out Canadian legal paralegal Halo Secretarial]

Ross Ipsa Loquietur - his own blog

YouSendIt.com - send large attachments for free, secure - comes from you, far more secure than open Internet email

Logmein.com - an alternative to GoToMyPC.com - run the programs on your office system from home

Crosley USB Turntable - transfer your album tracks to your iPod via USB

Netbooks - small laptops (9 or 10-inch screens) e.g. Lenova Ideapad - runs Windows XP home edition - incredible amount of computer power for tiny amount of money - sweet spot is around $400. Easier for travel; turn on and turn off much faster.

Long-lasting keyboards - http://www.cvtinc.com/products/keyboards/stellar.htm

Xavier Beauchamp-Tremblay

He gave a number of Firefox and Twitter tips, and also:

Zotero - personal research assistant inside your browser - add commentary to sources

KeyPass Portable - secure password manager

http://www.cba.org/abc/activities_f/code - proposed minimum technology skills base for lawyers

Simply File

Inbox Zero - tricks for reducing your email from the people at 43 Folders

Yubnub - social command line for the web - he is sing it with CanLII, for example

http://feedity.com - uses with RSS such as with Canlii - post a feed to a website

http://search-pdf-books.com - PDF search engine

PDF Hammer - edit PDF documents online

OmniFormat - "a free document conversion utility which allows dynamic conversion and image manipulation of over 75 file formats including HTML, DOC, XLS, WPD, PDF, JPG, GIF, TIF, PNG, PCX, PPT, PS, TXT, Photo CD, FAX and MPEG"

Zamzar.com - change files from any format to any other format

Evernote - capture hand-written notes, place notes onto web pages.

Legal IT 3.0 Conference - Montreal April 20 & 21, 2009

2009-03-26T10:55:00.003-04:00

I will be speaking at the upcoming Legal IT 3.0 conference in Montreal. I will be part of a panel with Steve Matthews and Kevin O’Keefe discussing how lawyers and law firms can go beyond having a website to build a better web presence.

For more information, please see my Crosby Group Connection blog post, or better yet visit the Legal IT website directly.

If you can make it, I hope to see you there.

Cheers,
Connie

Third Tuesday Toronto: Talk by Mathew Ingram of the Globe & Mail

2009-03-24T18:40:00.017-04:00

Third Tuesday Toronto: Mathew Ingram of the Globe & Mail

Mathew Ingram is a former columnist, reporter and blogger. He is @mathewi on Twitter. http://www.mathewingram.com/work. He is now the communities editor for the Globe & Mail.

This is a repeat of the session he did at Podcamp Toronto but will give us lots of opportunity to ask questions.

What is the Globe & Mail doing in social media?

Public Policy Wiki: http://policywiki.theglobeandmail.com

The idea for the wiki already existed when he started, but became his project when he started. A way to let people tell them their thinking about important policies such as with regard to the federal budget and Canadian involvement in Afghanistan. They are now looking at the environment.

The LA Times Wikitorial was a bad wiki experience in newspapers - people started defacing the site, gave a bad reputation to wikis in news circles.

The Globe & Mail took a chance and still went ahead with their wiki.

Cover It Live - a Toronto-based company (formerly Altcaster) live-blogging tool - the way of doing the same things they do with a news story but in a more interactive way. Pulls in photos, tweets from Twitter, comments, etc. in addition to the newspaper's own coverage. During one discussion they had the former head of digital for Rogers take part; it would have taken a lot of effort to book him in advance.

Twitter - growing number of their writers and staff are on Twitter. Do you get someone to tweet under the company name, or do they tweet under their own names, or do you do both? They have some automated feeds (e.g. Globe technology feed), but they also have personal Twitter feeds. The reason why people like Twitter, it is the personal connection. If you make it too "corporate" you are missing out on what makes it powerful. It is also possible to track "flash crowds" on Twitter i.e. can track fast-moving opinions e.g. Motrin Moms fiasco. Tools such as Tweetdeck help to track.

Why are they doing it?

Newspapers have always been social, but conversations always take place elsewhere. Social networking tools are helping to connect them to the conversations.

Connecting with readers can benefit the readers and also the Globe. Frequently what they pick are often different than what people pick themselves to talk about. They can also get direct feedback from readers; if they can find people who are touched by a story and have information for them, they can get a better story. It becomes a win-win situation.

What have they learned?

Wikis are easy to start. Policy wiki runs on Tikiwiki, an easy to use tool. The hard part is the "gardening", keeping it going, getting people to respond and feel comfortable in sharing things there and doing things there. These tools are not hard to use, but hard to keep going.

He didn't think people would care that much about the federal budget, but they had people create 35-40 policy proposals. That surprised him. They asked for input by a certain time (a time limit), it was topical, and they set the goal of sending the 2 best policy proposals to the government.

By contrast, they had very few participants, however, for Afghanistan and the current environment issue. There isn't a tangible goal or end. He believes they didn't get a lot of vandalism because a lot of people didn't know it was there. They also purposely set it up as a very serious discussion. The vast majority have been well thought-out contributions.

Cover It Live - some people want to experience the news in a different way. Some people with a live event are okay with a bit more chaos than the typical, organized news story. It feels like they are more part of the news story. Some people hate it, they see too many people's comments, they just want to see the reporters' takes.

Twitter - people like to connect with people. Just a corporate entity - smaller number of people following it. They are trying to find a happy media between corporate and personalities.

What is coming?

They are going to try everything, regardless how silly the name sounds. Allows them to understand what their readers are using and how they are using.

They have a new Globe & Mail beta iPhone app.

More writers using Twitter.

Why not think about a story about a blog? Blogs give you a better sense that journalism is a process, doesn't really stop.

Q & A

Q: As the paper of record, how does the Globe & Mail archive all of this stuff?
A: It doesn't right now. The idea of "paper of record" is an anachronism, from a time when there was no other way to find information.

Q: How do you tell people what the value is of things like Twitter?
A: There are a lot of people who are ambivalent or actively hostile. Twitter sounds inconsequential and very hard to get past that. People are used to something important sounding important. He finds someone else who is new to it, the lightbulb has gone on, and have them talk about why they are doing it. Frequently when you first learn why it is useful, you are the best salesman. Since it is his job to promote it, more difficult for him to promote it than someone who spontaneously talks about it. There is nothing that is going to reach people if they don't see the value. He suggests they try it, and if they don't find value, stop using it. Not everyone needs to use Twitter.

Q: What are the risks of putting your information out their e.g. privacy
A: Those are important things to be concerned about, privacy is an important issue. We have lost a lot of privacy. These tools are turning everything into a small town, both in good and bad ways. People pull together and help each other out, but also you get everyone knowing each others' business, pettiness, gossip. Everyone is going to find their own place on the spectrum maintaining their privacy.

Q: In the future, are hospitals, schools, newspapers going to go away?
A: Hospitals and schools are not going to go away. Newspapers will fit in somewhere even if not as prominent as they have been, just the way fewer people now go to theatre.

Q: Was there any thought in making the leap to the communities editor role?
A: There was some trepidation about the risk, but mostly he was excited. He fairly quickly got past the fear of being visible online by writing a column online for 5 years with comments from readers. He's now beyond the point where negative comments irritates him, and he can see the jewels from someone who makes an intelligent comment. He hopes to get everyone at the Globe & Mail to that point, where they can see the value among the noise.

Q: You are a journalist, not a regular blogger. How do you manage that risk?
A: There is no existing law that says who is liable if someone makes a comment online. He argues it is the Globe & Mail's duty to get sued so that law can be developed in this area. There is a little law in the U.S., but there isn't much knowledge of what would happen.

Q: Have you ever had negative comments on a story about a company that was also a big advertiser?
A: Companies do get concerned about negative comments on the story. They explain that is how the Internet works. The Globe has gotten good over the years of separating the journalism side from the advertiser side; however, may becoming more difficult with online.

Q: What do you do to attract more interesting comments on the stories?
A: The number one thing people suggested when he started that the comments needed to improve, that the trolls and garbage had to be dealt with.

One problem is a tools problem - their publishing system is older and doesn't necessarily do what they would like it to do; they need to add tools so that people can vote and elevate the good comments. They want to incorporate a reputation management tool so that people who do not identify themselves are at the bottom; people who jump through certain hoops get elevated and receive incentives for writing better quality comments. Currently they are doing the equivalent of giving them a blank wall and a spray can. He is actually surprised at the number of thoughtful comments that do get posted. The other problem is an attitudinal problem.

When they close down the comments to a discussion, so people just tend to move the conversation. They need to find a better way to explain why they close comments, and to keep the conversation on the site. The need to deal with it better.

Q. How do you decide when to cut your losses and move on to the next thing?
A. They haven't given up on anything yet. The Policy Wiki isn't super busy, but if it became a ghost town they would shut it down or turn it into something that would bring people. He doesn't see how Twitter is ever going to fail unless people move on to something else.

When he says "do everything" he does not necessarily mean use every tool every time. They have to think about what the tool does, what they want to achieve, then try it out. They may use it differently next time.

Q: How are the number of people reading online changed compared to reading the print newspaper?
A: Online readers have definitely increased. They have roughly the same number of people who just read online as who just read in print. There is a growing number who read both. He doesn't expect in his lifetime to see no printed version of the Globe.

Q: What about internal use - is social media being used internally to collaborate on stories?
A: Not really in a great way or terribly effective way. They have a wiki-type-thing (MS Sharepoint) and they are trying to do it, but not working that well since people don't know it is there, don't care, don't feel comfortable with it. They are battling the same types of issues internally as they are externally. He is trying to evangelise inside the Globe as well as outside, trying to show people why these things are valuable.

Q: Are you watching what conversations are taking place about your stories?
A: Yes, if they watch the traffic and keep stories on the page longer. Do they report the stories differently? Not always, but possibly. He remembers the comments affecting how they covered a story when someone pointed out they only covered one side of the story. The reporter added another interview to get another perspective. She could have seen the commenters just as trolls, but she used it as valuable feedback. Another example just after they launched the comments, someone in the comments gave an essential piece of information for a story that they wouldn't have otherwise gotten.

Q: When you first started at The Globe, your job wasn't well defined. How do you know you have been successful?
A: He still has a job. A job is the new bonus. He doesn't know how to measure whether what they are doing has an effect yet or not. Does his posting a link from Twitter affect readership--would they have found the story anyway? How does he know he has any affect at all? Their biggest story to date, he couldn't find any large site that he can give credit to. He thinks it was due to Twitter and blogs, but he can't prove it.

They are trying to measure engagement. How do you measure that? Time spent on a page, clickthrough, feedback? You measure all of those things.

Q: Would people be able to engage reporters online to make comments to articles?
A: He can't think of any example specifically, but if you are part of the conversation, you will be part of what they take into account when writing a story. If you are putting a spin on something, you will probably rate lower in the mix.

Q: How does the speed of things affect the old style of journalism?
A: He feels things are actually now better. Two benefits of how we are doing it now:

it is a lot easier to find things and do investigation now. Now everyone is online, so it is easier to find key people
news should be much more of a process; stories develop, get updated, new information comes to light. You are not pretending the story is whole and shaped in a certain way and will never change.

Closing thoughts

People have been hinting at what the benefits for The Globe or any company. They have customers (readers), reaching those people is good. There are going to be things they don't want to hear, but the process is good for them and for companies in general.

Live-blogged at Third Tuesday Toronto. Any inaccuracies or omissions are solely my error made during my note-taking and should not reflect on the speaker. Thanks to the Berkeley Church Heritage Event centre for the free wifi so I could liveblog this!

March 25 update: Rannie Turingan, who also took my current bio photo on this blog, took outstanding photos from the evening. See them on his website www.rannieturingan.com including this one of me in action liveblogging this post!

Ada Lovelace Day 2009: Dr. Margaret Ann Wilkinson

2009-03-24T07:30:00.006-04:00

I decided to take part in the first Ada Lovelace Day by writing about someone who we rarely (if ever) hear about in the blawgosphere, but who had done work in librarianship, information, intellectual property and technology law and is a fellow Canadian: Dr. Margaret Ann Wilkinson.

Back when I was doing my Master of Library Science at the University of Toronto, my library management professor John Wilkinson told me if I was interested in law librarianship, I should meet his daughter. It turns out that Dr. Margaret Ann Wilkinson had both a library and a law degree in addition to her PhD, and had just started teaching for both the library and law faculties at the University of Western Ontario.

Now a full-time professor at Western Law, she is currently Director of the Area of Concentration in Intellectual Property, Information and Technology Law. Dr. Wilkinson still teaches LIS 9868 Ownership and Governance of Information at FIMS (Western's Faculty of Information & Media Studies) and is listed as a PhD supervisor for FIMS. She is also an Adjunct Professor at The Richard Ivey School of Business.

Dr. Wilkinson writes in a number of areas concerning IP law including copyright, privacy and personal data protection. She wrote Chapter 12 "Filtering the Flow from the Fountains of Knowledge: Access and Copyright in Education and Libraries" in Irwin Law's groundbreaking work In the Public Interest, edited by Michael Geist. She has also written on ethics, professionalism, and librarianship.

Looking through her list of publications, I also smile at “Genie in the Bottle: Intellectual Property and the Flow of Information," Canadian Law Libraries 28: 206-211 which she wrote in 2003 following her talk at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries 2003 annual conference at the invitation of the program committee I worked on. Our theme had to do with wine bottles (we were holding the conference in Niagara, after all) and she gracefully worked with the unusual title we pinned on her session.

Students who have taken courses with Dr. Wilkinson speak very highly of her. She has been an important part of two important faculties, and has had an influence on many library and law students over a number of years. Thank you to Dr. Wilkinson!

What is Ada Lovelace Day?

From the Ada Lovelace Day website:

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless.

Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. That’s a relatively simple problem to begin to address. If women need female role models, let’s come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to. Let’s create new role models and make sure that whenever the question “Who are the leading women in tech?” is asked, that we all have a list of candidates on the tips of our tongues.

To see a list of all Ada Lovelace Day 2009 blog posts worldwide, see: http://ada.pint.org.uk/list.php.