Happy Chrismukkah One and All

Happy Chanukka, Merry Christmas, Happy Chrismukkah, and Happy Festivus for the rest of us!

New Blogger Out of Beta

It's official! The new-and-improved Blogger (the blogging software which runs this blog) is out of beta. I've received my invitation to move over. I've gone through some of the emotional stages of change, including denial and anger. I'm starting to come around. It is going to take some time to save what I have to date as a back up and then move it all over, so am leaving that to a little later in the holidays when I can better deal with any potential chaos.

So, please forgive me if things continue to look the same for now. It's just temporary until I have time to rearrange the furniture and sweep up.

More info.

Reaching Across the Generations in the Profession

Back in October I asked for ideas for my column on LLRX.com, The Tao of Law Librarianship. Bonnie Shucha obliged with a couple suggestions, including one about intergenerational communication.

I wasn't sure what I could contribute that would be new to the "generations" discussion, but I do have some pretty strong feelings about it. The result has now been posted on LLRX.com: The Tao of Law Librarianship - Reaching Across the Generations in the Profession. Thanks to editor extraordinaire Sabrina Pacifici for finding a great title for the article! I was definitely struggling with that part.

Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys the article and finds some food for thought.

Cheers,
Connie

Globe and Mail @ play: Not your grandfather's library system

The Globe and Mail published a great article on Tuesday in the @ play technology column: Not your grandfather's library system. Do have a look before it slips behind their "must pay for full article" wall.

This article outlines new technologies being used by Canadian public library systems,including Vaughan Public Libraries and Toronto Public Library.
University librarians were also interviewed, as was Stephen Abram, vice-president of innovation at SirsiDynix and a well-known figure in the library world.

I was going to quote selectively from this article, but you really should read the whole piece. I am frequently blown away by how advanced our public libraries are becoming, and this article really reinforces that opinion.

I sometimes get asked how I keep ahead of the crowd with my work, but when I look at what these and the academic libraries are doing, I really feel like I am much more of a follower than a leader.

Kudos to all interviewed for the article, and to those who make everything tick at those libraries!

Book Discussion - The Library at Night - Update

Wendy and I have had great feedback on the book discussion evening we are organizing. We are reading The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel and will be meeting the evening of January 17, 2007 to discuss it with other librarians. Thus far we have 8 people confirmed and have heard of others planning to join us.

More details--and related links with more information about the book--are available on my December 4th post.

I have given the option to register via email, but I would really LOVE to see people signing up via our post on Upcoming.org and making it a popular Toronto event. Also, if you have any librarian friends (not necessarily law librarians), please do pass the word along.

Inmagic's WebPublisher Pro V10 - RSS Publishing

The upcoming release V10 of InMagic's WebPublisher Pro --the web interface tool for DB/Textworks-- will include RSS publishing. This is great news for InMagic users, although details as to how it will work are still forthcoming. See the news release Inmagic's TextWorks & WebPublisher V10. The InMagic update is scheduled for release on December 29, 2006.

This should help add a few items to Steve Matthews' now-famous blog post Top 10 Uses for RSS in Law Firms, I should think!

Issues and Looking Forward with Law Intranets

Long story short: there is a burgeoning law intranet co-ordinators' interest group in Toronto which met for the first time last week. I attended and took a few notes which I thought others might be interested in.

Issues currently of concern with intranets:

• search
• archiving information (what is being archived, how it is being archived, and what is deleted)
• providing better access to precedents
• information is too static (not being updated frequently enough)
• intranet is not being used
• making the site bilingual for some firms
• governance issues - who "owns" the intranet
• security
• usage measurement, and what to do with the usage stats that people are collecting
• connectivity between content management system and the document management system
• connectivity between the intranet and the document management system

Projects people are anticipating looking forward:

• addition of news feeds
• adding content (especially dynamic content)
• incorporating RSS feeds
• use of wikis

Even further in the future:

• has the intranet had its time and will federated search replace the need?
• evolving into a self-service model, for example folksonomies (tagging) rather than taxonomies
• Microsoft has a lot of tools for "on the fly" collaborative work spaces that would promote the self-service model

Topics for discussion at future meetings:

• who are content publishers?
• governance
• what is the workflow and process in each organization?
• what do you archive, and what do you delete?
• training issues
• which firms have web developers or coders on staff? Are there issues around this?
• how people use the intranet?
• how are people using blogs and wikis?
• how to push information to people without email
• delivering content via RSS feeds
• issues around providing service to multiple offices
• how people use intranets for current awareness service

Lots of interesting thoughts for consideration. Are there any similar groups meeting elsewhere?

A Librarians' Book Discussion - January 17, 2007

Wendy Reynolds and I have decided to read Alberto Manguel's new book and invite along anyone else who is interested. We're opening this up to any librarians in the Toronto area who would like to join us~~

Who: All Librarians welcome!
What: Discussing Alberto Manguel's recent book The Library at Night
Where: Toronto. Venue to be announced.
Location will be selected once we have an idea of how many would like to join us.
Why: We're reading this book and would like to discuss it. Simple as that!
How: Register at Upcoming.org or by emailing us at connieblog@sympatico.ca
**This is an informal, unsponsored event.**

Related links from CBC:
The Constant Reader (Nov. 20/06)
Conversation with Alberto Manguel, The Sunday Edition (Nov. 5/06) (audio)
Interview with Alberto Manguel, Words at Large, CBC Podcast (Nov. 1/06) (audio)