Slaw home page not available

It has been a frustrating day for Slawyers... the Slaw main web page has been unavailable. Apparently if anyone has a link to one of the individual pages, those are still accessible since the web site is still available from the web. It is just the front page for some reason (the part I really like to read) that we can' t get to right now. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

Cheers,
Connie

Am I Really Stephen Abram?

Kathryn Greenhill has posted the funniest thing over at Librarians Matter. She wants to know if anyone has ever seen me and Stephen Abram in the same room together, because she suspects we may be the same person.

Too funny, Kathryn!

Cheers,
Stephen
(oops!)
Connie

Blog Anniversary Survey - There's Still Time!

Thanks to everyone who has taken my Big Fat 3rd Blog Anniversary Survey to be in on the Big Fat 3rd Blog Anniversary Draw. All who have responded to date are regular readers. What a terrific surprise--I have more than 2 regular readers! Thanks so much for your kind words, everyone. I'm glad you enjoy reading along as I learn about this great big info world of ours. We live in exciting times, I think. And I am privileged to know a lot of smart and interesting people, including many of you. I'm just a big sponge and like to learn from everyone.

If you haven't taken part yet in the survey/draw, there is still time! For details see: this post.

Cheers,
Connie

New Law Librarian Blog: All-Purpose Biblioblawg

I welcome Meg Kribble to the law librarian blogger community! This is part of a fantastic note I received from Meg today:

I wanted to let you know that I’ve started a blog, and I’ve included yours in my blogroll as one of my favorites. My introductory post is here:

http://biblioblawg.blogspot.com/2007/03/introduction.html

I realize that because of the subject matter, not all of you will be interested in reading regularly, but I still wanted to take a moment to introduce myself, and to say thank you with a bit more personalization than is possible with “blogs that link here.”

Thank you, and keep on blogging!

Regards,
Meg

I am honoured to be on Meg's original blogroll. Moreover, I would encourage you to have a look. She is just getting started but I'm sure she will be great!

Connie Crosby's Big Fat 3rd Blog Anniversary Giveaway Draw!

To celebrate my third year of blogging, I have decided to thank my friends and readers with a little informal giveaway draw. We are just in the process of setting up Cafe Press with Swag (t-shirts and maybe a couple other things) for the 4th Northeast Regional Law Libraries Meeting, Libraries Without Borders II. So, I thought it would be fun to give a few of those items away. Since that is not *quite* set up just yet, what I can say is I will be drawing for 3 items from our lineup.

To be eligible for the draw:

1. You must take my Big Fat 3rd Blog Anniversary Survey
2. You must provide me with your email address in the last survey question.
3. If you get selected in the draw, you must give me a mailing address.
4. You must be in North America or have a North American address I can send the Swag to, 'cause this is out of my own pocket.

I haven't seen the full swag line-up, but I expect prize winners will be able to choose your own groovy item from the list. Woo hoo!

Okay, click here to take Connie Crosby's Big Fat 3rd Blog Anniversary Survey! And best of luck in the draw!!

Thanks so much, everyone!!

Cheers,
Connie

Rob Hyndman Speaks to TALL About the New Media

Rob Hyndman Speaks to TALL
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Rob Hyndman spoke today at the Toronto Association of Law Libraries meeting about new media. In my usual style, I captured a fuzzy photo. This talk took place in the dramatic Arts & Letters Club (no pun intended) where TALL usually meets.

Wendy Reynolds has done a nice little commentary over at the NE2007 blog: We have met the new media, and it is us.

Rob has promised to post his presentation on his blog.

Thanks, Rob!

Happy Birthday Little Bloggy

Well, yesterday was your 3rd birthday. You are growing up pretty fast, little blog! I didn't forget about you. I have actually been working on a BIG SURPRISE for readers. I will post something more about it in the next day or so. Readers should check back tomorrow for news on how I am going to celebrate this blog's birthday!

Cheers,
Connie

Talk to Special Libraries class at University of Toronto on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

FIS Special Libraries Class
Originally uploaded by ConnieC.

Courtesy of course instructor Vicki Whitmell, I spoke to the Special Libraries class at the University of Toronto Tuesday night and snapped this pic at the end of the presentation. Considering I gave no one warning, it turned out pretty good I think.

I had a canned presentation on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0, and supplemented that with more interesting visits to the websites themselves with little mini-tours. It was fun to show them the two tools librarians discovered in the past couple of weeks, Twitter and Ning. I think probably LinkedIn will be a good tool for this group in job hunting--we had fun looking at the bios of some of the people they recognized.

Thanks to the class for their interest, and for the questions during and after class. If anyone has other questions for me, don't hesitate to email! connieblog@sympatico.ca

Carnival of the Infosciences #67

Welcome to the Hangover Edition of the Carnival of the Infosciences! It was a slow week for the Carnival, no doubt because of a combined effect of Spring break, the early North American time change, and St. Patrick's Day celebrations (commemorated over at the Vincent G. Rinn Law Library blog) . We had only one submission for Carnival #67, so I am afraid you will now be subjected primarily to picks from my blogroll and maybe even some personal promotion. I'll try not to shout.


St. Patrick's day parade originally uploaded to Flickr by chidorian.


Superstar submitter Chris Zammarelli kindly submitted this post by cindiann from Chronicles of Bean: Library Agitprop . It riffs on this post by Karen Schneider at ALA TechSource: Dear Library of Congress... and takes a good, long, look at what we are doing with Library 2.0. Thank you for a fantastic submission, Chris!

Top on my list is those who have just concluded taking part in Five Weeks to a Social Library, the ground-breaking web-based course put on by the biblio glitterati:

• Meredith Farkas, Chair
• Michelle Boule
• Karen Coombs
• Amanda Etches-Johnson
• Ellyssa Kroski
• Dorothea Salo
  

I was going to list individual blog posts, but I suggest you just go over and explore the whole website, including blogs, wiki and course content. Meredith Farkas has also been blogging the experience over at Information Wants to be Free. And congratulations to Amanda Etches-Johnson for just being named one of LibraryJournal.com's Movers and Shakers of 2007!!

Turning my sights to the other side of the globe, CW at Ruminations based in Perth, Australia, discusses her trip to Margaret River to meet with a number of viticulture (wine-making) students and academic staff and provide them with some information literacy seminars and EndNote training. She talked about the trip beforehand, her plans to use Twitter to communicate with the biblioblogosphere while she was on the trip and away from blog access, and then summarized the experience in What we did in Margaret River.

One of my favourite law library bloggers, Michel-Adrien Sheppard who works at the Supreme Court of Canada and blogs at Library Boy, celebrated International Women's Day with a list of Feminist Legal Theory Resources. Michel-Adrien always picks up on the best of Canadian and international legal information.

At the cooperative group blog Out of the Jungle, Betsy McKenzie celebrated International Women's Day by taking part in Blog Against Sexism Day with a post called Letter to My Daughter. It is a touching read.

Also at Out of the Jungle, Marie S. Newman responds to a New York Times article about digitization, whether anything not digitized will be forgotten in the future, in Digitizing History.

Over at the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog, my west coast counterpart Steve Matthews created a fantastic summary called Biggest Hurdles for Law Firm RSS Adoption just before heading off to Disney.

Scott Vine, at Information Overlord based out of the UK, has shared with us his secrets for finding music in places other than iTunes: Let the Music Play On...

Since we last met, the lo-fi librarian celebrated a first blog anniversary. Happy blogaversary, lo-fi!! Keep on blogging! And check it out--each week lo-fi puts together a list of This Week's Latest Tools - March 18th list and March 11th list.

Which reminds me, Jim Milles is currently teaching a class on how to teach legal research, and he has been blogging and podcasting the content of the course over at TLR07. The students are learning how to incorporate new technology into their teaching. I strongly recommend having a look if you are involved in adult education.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the new cooperative blog we have created for the Northeast Regional Law Libraries Conference, librarieswithoutborders.wordpress.com . Wendy Reynolds has written a fantastic post called Pushing the borders of the profession . I hope you will have a look. (Okay, that is the blatant self-promotion part. I hope it wasn't too loud and painful!).

Everyone! Show the love and submit your blog article picks to the next edition of Carnival of the Infosciences using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the blog carnival wiki page. Our next host, on April 2, 2007 will be Grumpator (just missed April Fool's by one day!).

Cheers,
Connie

Call for Carnival Submissions - due this Sunday!

I'm a bit late posting this reminder: I am putting together this week's Carnival of the Infosciences. Please get your submissions in by tomorrow night latest! I've only received one submission so far so I really need to hear about what good things have happened in the biblioblogosphere in the past two weeks. Bring me the best and the brightest!

Details here on my previous post.


Cheers,
Connie

NE2007: Libraries Without Borders II - Now Blogging!

I mentioned it somewhere in a past blog message, but thought I would mention this again more formally We are now blogging about the 4th Northeast Regional Law Libraries Meeting (affectionately known as NE2007) over at the new blog Libraries Without Borders II which happens to be the conference title! For anyone who would like to link over to it, the URL is http://librarieswithoutborders.wordpress.com . The main website (which will soon be nicely updated) is still http://www.librarieswithoutborders.net . But do check out that blog for the inside scoop on everything that is happening.

Later this week we will be releasing initial conference details to help everyone with conference attendance planning. Woo hoo!

Cheers,
Connie

Can You See the Wind Rushing Through My Hair?

In my usual style, I am over-committed and should be committed! Too many things on the go, doing my best to do them all somewhat brilliantly.

I just finished penning an article on trends in legal research training for the National, the Canadian Bar Association magazine. Whew! It is overdue and they have been very very patient with me, so it is good to have that finished.

We have also been working on NE2007, the planning of which has been heating up to a frantic pace. I had been anticipating it being this busy in June/July, not already in February/March. Meetings and email messages galore, and a growing concern that we are not getting enough information out to people in a timely fashion. That is being addressed this week. We are going to put out some "hard" details for people by next week and I have started up a blog for us so we can start talking about what it really is we have been doing. Have a sneak preview at http://librarieswithoutborders.wordpress.com.

Work has been a flurry of large projects including research outside the office, and the redrafting of our business continuance plan for the whole office. This time we are taking into account a pandemic scenario since that was not on the radar back in--what?--1999 when we last put some elbow grease into this thing.

In my spare time I have been thinking about and talking about podcasting and video podcasting, figuring out what I want to do. I definitely want to do something.

Oh yeah, and I have been taking a fabulous survey course through the PLC on Web Site Management and Implementation. My group project is to create a website for a real legal aid clinic. I have enjoyed being the liaison between the clinic and the rest of the team. I have also been working on the project report we have to submit, giving the team feedback on the site we have been creating, and being all-round cheerleader. Heh.

And I still have to create a personal site for myself in the next week. We have been creating one as we have gone along in class, but mine managed to somehow go awry and I have to start over. I am envisioning something that will incorporate my blog, a CV which I can update as I complete my growing list of professional activities, and a schedule so people can see what I am doing next. It would also be nice to have a place to post documents, such as presentations I have given, and maybe links to my various web presences. Tall order, but would be very useful!

Oh, yeah, and my next LLRX.com column has to be on the radar too. The plan is to write it on networking. Not the computer kind, but the people kind. It is something I am always coming back to somehow in the column, but haven't addressed it specifically as a topic. I met a bunch of super-networkers at Podcamp and learned a thing or two about networking, so am itching to share it.

So, enough about me. What have YOU been up to?

Carnival of the Infosciences #67 Coming!

Carnival of the Infosciences #66, hosted by Joshua Neff at The Goblin in the Library has now been posted!

That can only mean one thing: Carnival of the Infosciences #67 is on its way. And yours truly Connie Crosby is hosting it here! I am scheduled to post it on Monday, March 19th. Please submit your suggestions for infosciences blog posts by Sunday, March 18th. I need you to keep open all your eyes and ears! Find and send me the best, brightest, most exciting blog posts you see in the next two weeks. You can either send your submissions to me directly at connieblog@sympatico.ca or via the Carnival's submission form. Woo hoo! The Carnival is coming!

Online Tools for the 21st Century

Online Tools for the 21st Century - "an espresso hit of Web 2.0 with Wayne MacPhail". What a great idea! The first episode was on Meebo (which I have yet to explore) and the second episode is on Twitter which I am just trying to figure out now (if you are reading this from my blog website, you will see a Twitter screen I have added to the toolbar on the right).

Way cool.