I Am Not Radical Enough

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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.