Bloggers to go backstage at Live 8

Reported on Technorati: Become one of 50 bloggers to go backstage at Live 8. Unfortunately Toronto doesn't seem to be included in this deal. Richard Branson is also donating one of his planes to fly crew from New York to Edinburgh and back, and to blog the trip. Sweet. Of course, as I read on, "the goal of this is also to get millions of bloggers posting about Live 8..." D'oh! Just got suckered in. 8-)

Enjoy Canada Day, any Canadians reading this blog, eh!

The Law Buzz

I just came across this chat room for the Canadian law community: The Law Buzz. It looks to be a simply-structured bulletinboard style chat room. Topics are in the areas of "legal community" (news, gossip, humour), "legal career" (including salary discussion), and "student career", talking about law schools, articling and the like.

I'm marking this for myself to go back and read through some of it.

Blog University: Weblogs for Libraries - Sept. 18, 2005 - Arlington, VA

I picked this tip up from the Dysart Jones blog: Blog University is a one-day mini-conference running prior to the two-day Websearch University.


Check out the prominent BlogU Faculty:

Blake Carver, LISnews.com

Steven M. Cohen, PubSub Concepts Inc. & Librarystuff.net

Jane Dysart, Dysart & Jones Associates

Amanda Etches Johnson, Reference & Instruction Librarian, McMaster University, & Blogwithoutalibrary.net

Sabrina Pacifici, Law Librarian, Editor/Publisher of LLRX.COM

Aaron Schmidt, Thomas Ford Memorial Public Library & Walkingpaper.org

Michael Stephens, St. Joseph County Public Library & TametheWeb.com

Jill Stover, Instructor, Research & Reference Services, Virginia Commonwealth University, & Librarymarketing Blog


Registration for Blog University on its own is $295 US (early bird $265 US before August 26th).

The Canadian Privacy Law Blog

Canadian privacy lawyer David T.S. Fraser has changed the name of his blog from "PIPEDA and Canadian Privacy Law" to "The Canadian Privacy Law Blog" to better reflect the current content of his blog. He will soon be changing to his own domain, privacylawyer.ca .

Same-Sex Marriage Bill C-38 Passes House of Commons

Bill C-38, the same-sex marriage bill, passed tonight in Ottawa. See: Yahoo! News Full Coverage.

Correction made on June 29/05: Bill C-38 has passed through the House of Commons only; it still has to go through the Senate.

Thanks to Kay for pointing this out to me! Thus is the danger of going only by news sources that don't necessarily understand or properly describe the legislative process. Kay has suggested this link for both tracking the progress and linking into the Hansard debates: Library of Parliament LEGISInfo Status of Bill C-38.

Whew! Good thing I have people looking out for me!

TALL 25th Anniversary - Welcome Speech

TALL 25th Anniversary - Connie's welcome speech
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Thursday, June 23rd, I welcomed 180 members, former members and their guests to the 25th Anniversary dinner for Toronto Association of Law Libraries, held at Arcadian Court.

The evening was a terrific success thanks to the organizing committee and many others. It was a thrill to be in the room as friends reunited after many years.

Thanks to Kay and Stuart for the photo!

leddie's log

U of T library school student Le Dieu Tran is currently on a student exchange in Finland. She is keep a blog of her experiences.

See: leddie's log

Before she left she wasn't sure what kind of work placements she would be getting, but it looks like she has managed to work in a library. She also plans to visit a number of other libraries in her travels. Very exciting!

New Listserv - PRESERV-L - Preservation Needs of Law Libraries

A new listserv addressing preservation in law libraries is being created by the CALL/ACBD (Canadian Association of Law Libraries) Preservation Needs of Law Libraries Committee. The message sent out recently to the CALL-L listserv is below with instructions on joining PRESERVE-L (reprinted with permission).

Dear colleagues:

At the St. John's Conference meeting of the Preservation needs of law libraries committee I agreed to establish an open, global listserv(PRESERVE-L) for those interested in discussing preservation projects, problems, and issues (print, digital or multi-media). The only restriction to this list is that you must subscribe to post messages and receive postings. I do not intend to maintain an archive unless there is demand...I depend on those interested to archive those postings which they feel are of interest to them.


I would ask that those of you who belong to other lists where there would be an interest in preservation issues, please forward this message on.


To Subscribe, please send the following email to: LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UNB.CA


subscribe PRESERVE-L.


Omit your signature and DO NOT ENTER A SUBJECT LINE.


If you have problems subscribing to the list please contact me acrocker@unb.ca


C. Anne Crocker
Law Librarian
Gerard V. La Forest Law Library
University of New Brunswick

2005 AALL Annual Meeting - Notes of Interest

I won't be attending the 2005 AALL Annual Meeting since I am a little "conferenced out", but I will be following what happens in San Antonio, July 16-20th.

Some interesting items in today's e-mail reminder to American Association of Law Libraries members:

• A blog is being created, and all members are being given the opportunity to post. Here is the description of the blog:
  
  

  AALLamo Blog
  
  Featuring short articles, announcements, room change notifications, pictures, reviews of programs and events, and comments – the blog will also serve as a source for articles that may be included in the conference daily paper AALLamo News.

  It will be opened on July 1st.
  







• The Hot Topic has been announced:
  
  

  Hot Topic is Announced!
  
  The Annual Meeting Program Committee has selected this year’s Hot Topic program, scheduled for Tuesday, July 19, at 4:00 p.m. Thanks to all those who offered suggestions!
  
  H-2: Hot Topic: Identity Theft and Personal Identifying Information
  
  Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the country. Librarians are in a unique position; we rely on databases containing personal identifying information to do our jobs, but the very information we use can also make us potential victims of identity theft. The news is full of stories everyday about lapses in security surrounding sensitive consumer data. As a result, legislators at all levels of government are drafting legislation to better protect this information. This program will focus on identity theft, protecting yourself, what to do if you are a victim and what our responsibilities are as information professionals

  
  

I look forward to watching the blog and hearing about this session after the fact!

List of librarians - Wikipedia

Is your favourite law librarian in Wikipedia? Take a look at the List of librarians for the bios that currently exist. I only see one librarian I've actually talked to (via e-mail) listed here. Won't you help me add more?? 8-)

New Canada Gazette website

I missed seeing this change in April: the Canada Gazette has revamped its website. See news release: Canada Gazette Launches New Web Site (April 1, 2005).

I like that the information most people need immediately, the latest issues, are available directly from the home page.

Current documents needing consultation are available under Consultation from the toolbar on the left.

Lots of other additional information also presented an a readable format, such as "Learn more about the Canada Gazette" and publishing information.

TALL AGM - Monday Night

I am just putting the final touches on my "closing address" for the TALL AGM tomorrow night. If you happen to be a member of the Toronto Association of Law Libraries, I hope you will join us and urge your colleagues to as well! This time around we are doing a "no registration fee" meeting 4:30 - 6:00 pm Monday June 13th. Details currently posted on the TALL News & Events page.

It will definitely be sad to step down as president, but I am very much looking forward to seeing what Wendy Reynolds will bring to the table for all of us. When I served under her when she was TALL Publishers Liaison Committee chair, we did some pretty terrific stuff.

Cheers,
Connie

List of SLA 2005 Bloggers

Okay, he has already pointed to it in one of the comments here, but Richard Akerman has created a nice List of SLA 2005 Bloggers on seekwiki.com for us. So I can stop listing them individually as I find them here.

Cheers,
Connie

Paper Now Posted - Establishing a Weblog on Your Organization's Intranet

Thanks to Sabrina Pacifici for letting me know the presentation that she and Dennis Hamilton presented at SLA, "Establishing a Weblog on Your Organization's Intranet," is now available on LLRX (click on the presentation name to go directly to the 42-page PDF).

My discussion of it is here.

Photos by Carolyne

Wow! The hits just keep on comin'!

More photos, these from Carolyne: Special Libraries Association (SLA) Conference Toronto June 2005 - a photoset on Flickr.

InfoToday Blog - even more SLA 2005

Thanks to Library Boy Michel-Adrien for pointing this site out: InfoToday Blog. Since then I have noticed a number of other bloggers from the non-legal fields of librarianship covering other sessions. So, many voices for you to choose from! Another innovation might be to pull all blog feeds discussing one conference/event together onto one page for everyone's convenience. Just tucking these conference ideas away for future reference....

In the meantime, you have the wonderful opportunity to get to know us individually.

Cheers,
Connie

Librarians as tech-savvy sleuths

Finally, some local media coverage of the SLA conference, this article in today's Globe & Mail "Globetechnology" section: "Librarians as tech-savvy sleuths" by Anthony Reinhart.

Thanks to SLA Toronto for pointing this out and posting it to the SLA 2005 Conference blog.

SLA - Gazing into the Future

SLA - Gazing into the Future
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Last day, and my most intense session-wise. I attended the closing address, then three inspiring programmes from the Legal Division. Included: "Gazing into the Future: Envisioning the Law Library Ten Years From Now."

I will post more from these sessions a little later, likely tomorrow.

For other conference details, I encourage you to view the SLA 2005 Blog and Michel-Adrien Sheppard's great postings on his blog Library Boy.

Cheers,
Connie

SLA - Info Booth Wednesday 4:35 p.m.

SLA - Info Booth Wednesday 4:35 p.m.
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

The brilliant volunteers from the info booth have finally headed home.

SLA - Doesn't Compute

SLA - Doesn't Compute
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Wednesday late afternoon. Someone forgot to tell those in line for web access that the conference was over...

Toronto - A Fond Farewell!

Toronto - June 8, 2005
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

End of the day in Toronto. We say a fond farewell to our U.S. colleagues!

(This photo taken from the end of my street tonight. No, really.)

Establishing a Weblog on Your Organization's Intranet

Today's talk by Sabrina Pacifici of LLRX.com and beSpacific.com fame and Dennis Hamilton, Information Services Manager, KZF Design was very interesting. Rather than a laundry list of blogs, they gave a dynamic talk on why we should blog, whether we should blog, and how to go about blogging inside an organization.

Dennis is from a 90 person organization, and he is the sole blogger. Inside his corporation, he blogs about the life and culture of KZF, including:

• announcements


• employee news, including photos of people who have had accomplishments


• facility news


• community-related items


• relevant internet sites


• media coverage of the company


• project-related news
and

• new jobs

He showed us examples of some personal notes and photos that he has posted to his blog. This really looked to be a great way to capture the life and culture of a firm, make an on-going bulletin board of internal happenings. It would be of particular use to anyone new joining the organization, since he or she would be able to read through past postings and get a feel for the culture. It would also reduce the need to hang onto the myriad of e-mail messages that buzz around a typical organization in any given day, and allow people to post in more detail.

Dennis spends about 15 to 30 minutes a day posting, with the aim of posting something every day. He calculates he is currently posting on average 3 1/2 posts per week.

He advises not to forget the bottom line, that you may need to justify your time spent on this project. And of course remember things like confidentiality and not being critical of the organization for which you are blogging.

He reviews each post numerous for content, writing, grammar, and correct information before posting since he wants each post as perfect as possible before it goes out.

While not every senior person has been supportive of his blog (some see reading it as a "time waster" for staff), overall he has had excellent feedback and had an enthusiastic response from his organization. It has a real "human face" to his firm.

Sabrina, on the other hand, writes a number of very highly focussed blogs that cover specific practice groups in her law firm (areas in which the lawyers practice). She may post to each many times a day. She is a "solo blogger" in a large organization. She keeps it all very text-based and fact-oriented, pointing her lawyers to the documents and allowing them to make up their own minds about things, as she also does for legal researchers with her public blog beSpacific.com.

I quite like her analogy: she sees her blogs as "live things that need to be fed all the time." She needs to continually feed them content. In other words, good, current content is what makes a good blog.

Some additional pointers from the speakers:

• they both use Movable Type


• everything you see externally on the web can be used internally


• RSS can be sent internally to people; you can create topical RSS feeds based on a taxonomy


• Movable Type can allow to send out postings by HTML e-mail


• reduce images to 72 dpi using an application such as Adobe Photo Shop or Photo Shop Elements


• store photos as .jpg files and graphics as .gif files for best results


• great way to brand yourself, market yourself and show your expertise


• encourage other employees to contribute


• Wall Street Journal has made available on their website several articles on blogs a week for the last while

June 11/05: The full presentation is NOW available here: Establishing a Weblog on Your Organization's Intranet. There is lots more content than what I've posted here, so it will be worth a read!!

SLA Conference Blog Picking Up Steam!

I'm loving the SLA Conference Blog. They have incorporated some great ideas for a conference blog, which will give us a good benchmark for future conferences.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the photos and the variety of personal comments. Interesting idea to post the room changes here also. Too bad people don't have more connectivity in the conference hall. We almost need the blog up on a big screen, scrolling through periodically for those of us without access in the conference hall!

SLA Welcome

SLA Welcome
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Welcome to the 2005 Special Libraries Association conference, in Toronto!

SLA Info Booth

SLA Info Booth
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Shot from the Exhibit Hall above, this picture is of the Information Booth, with volunteers in action!

SLA Exhibit Hall

SLA Exhibit Hall
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

From a distance I could sort out where to go first. The Factiva booth (in green) first, perhaps?

SLA Market Place

SLA Market Place
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

In the Exhibit Hall, SLA's own "Marketplace" with SLA goods, books by the various speakers (courtesy of my favourite Books for Business), and some fun conference paraphernalia. Note the white balloons (with green birds on them) nestled in the green balloon "trees": these were in honour of the new "Click University" being launched by SLA. The unique display made it by far the most visible booth in the Exhibit Hall.

SLA Opening Address

SLA Opening Address
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Several thousand people attended the opening address Monday morning.

SLA Blogging and RSS session

SLABlogging&RSS
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

The Monday morning session on Blogging and RSS was packed! I took this photo from the front of the room (where I was sitting on the floor). Apologies to my colleagues at the front who (subtly) tried to hide from the lens.

If you look closely, you will see it is standing room only at the back and sides. For Tuesdays session on blogging, they would put it into a room about 6 or 7 times this size.

SLA Canadian Reception at Original Motorcycle

SLA Canadian Reception at Original Motorcycle
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Monday evening:

The Canadian Reception was held at Original Motorcycle (recently called Indian Motorcycle). This is it at the corner of King St. W. and Peter St.

SLA Canadian Reception

SLA Canadian Reception
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Monday evening:

I managed to take photos of the Canadian reception just after the doorprizes were handed out...and a number of people had made a quick exit.

SLA Canadian Reception

SLA Canadian Reception
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Monday evening:

The party just as it starts to wind down. And it was still light outside!

SLA 2005 Delegates Enter Exhibit Hall

SLA 2005 Delegates Enter Exhibit Hall
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Tuesday: The escalator up the Exhibit Hall was a continuous stream of people. Fortunately the view up was quite spectacular, facing at the delightful CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) building across the street and allowing for some joyful sunlight.

SLA 2005 Delegates - Escalator and Internet access

SLA 2005 Delegates - Escalator and Internet access
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Tuesday: This shot shows the Internet "cafe" under the escalator--a very popular spot! In this day and age of connectivity we are still having to go where the connection is, rather than having the connection come to us.

Blogging/RSSing the Librarian Way - Part I

Today's session on blogging was interesting, but could have been more. Two of the billed speakers were present: Marie Kaddall, Information Professional Consultant for LexisNexis and Catherine Lavallee-Welch, Associate Librarian, University of Florida-Lakeland. Unfortunately Jenny Levine, "The Shifted Librarian", was a no-show, citing a family emergency earlier the week before. Despite her definitely being the main attraction, I was pleased to see people stay put for the session; indeed the room was jam-packed. I was fortunate to have a seat with lots of room, albeit on the floor at the front.

Tidbits from Marie Kaddall's talk: "Trends in Blogging and RSS"

Kaddall largely gave an overview of the state of blogging and a brief run-through of RSS use:

• From a perseus.com Blog Survey, 98% of bloggers are under 30; only 2% of working adults are blogging
  
• blogging is the democratization of the press
• blogs can be created for the "nanoaudience" such as family, co-workers, friends
• leading blog hosts are Blogspot (used by Blogger), Xanga, and LiveJournal

She talked about different types of blogs, and different types of people who are blogging. Aimed particularly at teenagers: AOL Red blogs and bolt.com.

Types of blogs I hadn't heard about yet:

• dashblogs and linkblogs: blogs that just point to info on the web or websites (what this blog would be if I wasn't also summarizing sessions and adding the little comments now and then!
• kLogs: knowledge management blogs (I'm not clear how this differs from the other blog types)
• Plogs: password protected project management blog (presumably used for individual projects)
• podcasting
• social podcasting: for example www.sparkcasting.com

other applications:

• Doppler, iPodder, iPodderX are all software for downloading podcasts
• Airtight is a taxonomy developed for tag browsing Flickr (Flickr being one of Yahoo's applications for storing and showing photos on the web)
• social bookmarking e.g. http://del.icio.us/ and http://www.blogmarks.net/
• bridge bloggers e.g. Global Voices from Harvard Law
• new blog search engines e.g. http://www.icerocket.com/
• Wikis, which she billed as "the wisdom of crowds" to tie in with another LexisNexis talk later at this conference - e.g. http://en.wikinews.org
  

Regarding RSS

This part of the talk seemed a little glossed over I thought. RSS was mentioned, as were feedreaders/aggregators. She mentioned that some browsers such as Mozilla and Foxfire incorporate feedreaders. She mentioned various other RSS applications, and I believe mentioned bloglines in particular as a favourite of many.

Blogging/RSSing the Librarian Way - Part II

Tidbits from Catherine Lavellee-Welch's talk "Blogs and Professional Development"

Lavellee-Welch spoke on how reading blogs fits in well with other professional development such as subject reading, conference attendance and networking. She spoke about specific criteria she and others have been developing for a paper to be published later in the year. The criteria help to establish which blogs are good for professional development reading, and briefly include:

• titles convey the blog's topic or focus


• posts are updated regularly (no less than once a month)


• posts are brief and contain links to other resources (I'm doing my best to keep them short!)


• posts are consistent with blog's focus


• posts are archived chronologically and by subject (well, Blogger does have its limitations with regard to subject...)


• site contains a search engine (Hint: to search this blog, go to the advanced Google screen and pop conniecrosby.blogspot.com into the domain to search only this blog. Then search the terms you like)


• site uses good graphic design principles (again, I do my best with the application I am currently using...)


• blog's lifespan exceeds one year

Other criteria as determined in Weblogs and Libraries by L.Clyde (2004) included:

• Authority


• Purpose of the blog aligned with the needs of the reader


• reliability

Following the criteria, she had picked out several examples of good blogs including (among others) beSpacific.com, librarian.net and Peter Scott's Library Blog.

She listed a few directories and feeds for locating and reading blogs.

To combat information overload from blogs, she suggested pinpointing specific topics of interest and finding one or two blogs covering those topics particularly well, and then use the aggregators to view them; there is no need to read the full blog, only posts of particular interest.

Overall

I found both talks interesting and covering a lot ground. Even though I already know a lot of this, it was good to be pointed to websites I haven't viewed and tools I wasn't aware of. I would have liked to see more about the use of RSS in various ways, however. It seemed more of an afterthought in the presentations, whereas it was billed equally with blogging. I can only imagine that perhaps Jenny Levine would have covered this?

Special Librarians Week

In honour of the SLA conference, Toronto Mayor David Miller proclaimed June 3-8, 2005 as Special Librarians Week: City of Toronto Proclamation.

I know I keep upping the ante, but most recently I heard delegate numbers are closer to 5,500. Definitely the largest convention I've ever experienced.

More blogging on Tapscott's talk

The SLA 2005 conference blog has a number of posts on Don Tapscott's talk this morning, including this particularly good one by John Adams: Tapscott: New Roles for Info Professionals including photo of our speaker in action.

Inspiring Words at First Day of SLA

Opening General Session today was with speaker Don Tapscott, President of New Paradigm Learning Corp. He is known for his recent book The Naked Corporation and for coining various phrases including "the paradigm shift".

He spoke about transparency in organizations, and how changes in four major areas are converging to cause this move towards transparency:

1. technology

New tools: Google, blogs, wikis, the "hypernet" (highly linked Internet), RFID, WIFI, WI-Max, increased bandwidth

2. economy

companies are going through the biggest change, in that vertically integrated corporations are becoming unbundled. What used to be inside the boundaries of the corporation are now outside the boundaries, being handled between the corporations. There is a need for transparency between organizations.

3. demographics

The first generation to grow up digital is now coming into play. Among other things, they are great at detecting insincerity and false statements; they are a huge force for transparency.

4. socio-political

Increasing global interdependence; while we have no world government, there are several global corporations that drive a good part of the world economy. It is only "civil foundation" that is keeping this balanced.

Tapscott outlined several obstacles to transparency, but overall he says that librarians (information professionals) can play a leading role in driving this transparency. We can inform those in our organizations, especially with regard to who their stakeholders are:
- employees
- business partners
- customers
- shareholders
- communities

I particularly enjoyed Tapscott's Canadian examples (he works in Toronto) and his dynamic speaking ability.

Did anyone else have other impressions of the talk? The room was quite amazing--thousands of librarians, and four large screens running the talk. Overall they say there are at least 5,000 attendees at this conference. Biggest one I've ever been to!

Special Librarians Taking Over Toronto!

To give you an idea of the number of people descending upon Toronto over the next few days for the annual Special Libraries Association conference, take a look at this SLA Press Release 2005-12. Pre-registration was at 3,600 people. Compare that to the 3,800 who attended the conference last year, we are talking over 4,000 people for this one event.

It is no wonder attendees arriving at customs saw the "Welcome SLA" sign.

SLA Dilemma

So, I kind of wanted to attend some of this year's SLA conference. I mean, it IS in Toronto, after all. How could I not?? I could have just purchased a nominal ticket to visit the exhibit hall, but I would really like to attend sessions and see colleagues. So, I registered for the conference.

As soon as I signed up, I was immediately barraged with vendor invitations in the mail, e-mail, and even by telephone: "Visit our booth!" "Come to our demo!" "Join us for breakfast!" "Come to our reception!".

So, if I attend all of these things (or, actually, just selected ones that look of interest), my time for the actual conference will be minimal. But if I hadn't signed up, I wouldn't have been added to the vendor lists to be contacted.

I could have saved the $275 US I paid on my early bird member conference registration and just done the freebee stuff....

Plus it is all a little overwhelming. What sessions to go to? Do I have to preregister? Is there an additional cost? Is there a better session at the same time? Is there a better session on the same topic later??

It hasn't even started yet, and already I'm tired of it.... 8-)

Magpie RSS - PHP RSS Parser

For my future reference: Magpie RSS - PHP RSS Parser. Magpie is a platform that allows for inclusion of feeds onto your own webpage. Mentioned in the Blog from CS-SIS Blawgs Committee (part of AALL).

List of Law Library Blogs

Bonnie Shucha is putting together a comprehensive list of law library blogs. See: Shucha List. Thanks to Eric for pointing this out. I am happy to see this blog included, and I note this new list has significantly boosted the number of people visiting my blog today. I have submitted one blog I noticed missing, but otherwise think it is relatively comprehensive.

TPL - Sunday shifts available

For anyone in Toronto looking to supplement your income and/or experience, the Toronto Public Library is looking for library staff to cover Sunday shifts from September to January. See: Toronto Public Library Employment Opportunities. Shifts are every Sunday or every second Sunday, 1:30 - 5:00 p.m. for librarians, senior library assistants, and public service assistants.

I tell you, if I wasn't doing so many things already, I would consider it. This would be a great way to add a few new skills, especially with regard to dealing with the public. Plus meet library staff from other industries. It looks like possibly the teams go to different locations, also.

Greater Toronto Area Bloggers

I just discovered the blog of the group the Greater Toronto Area Bloggers. Looks like it might be an interesting group; they appear to be organizing a get-together Sunday afternoon for bloggers attending the SLA conference. I've started the process of getting registered with them. Cool.