MOOCs, Mobile Technologies - Their Impact on Reference Service

This online conference will focus on current and future technologies for reference services and the impact of MOOCs (massive online open courses) on the library. We will present an overview of current reference practices and offer tips and steps on specific techniques as models for the future. This conference is ideal for library directors, mid-level managers as well as front line staff representing college, university, public and corporate libraries.

When: November 7th

Where: Online, Home or Office

Time: 9 AM (CST)


Registration is available for groups or individuals: http://www.amigos.org/moocs

A Different Form of Reference Service: My Experience

After reading Betsy Chessler's article on Restructuring the Desk about the changes in her firm's reference services, I can relate to the similar process of providing research services to attorneys across the country. I worked at a global law firm and was at the Dallas location within their North American Offices. These offices were structured based on time zones:

-Eastern Zone--New York, DC and Miami

-Central Zone--Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Toronto (hard to explain why Toronto is not in the Eastern Time Zone)

-Western Zone--San Francisco, San Diego, and Palo Alto

In our system, attorneys, paralegals and staff sent an email to the librarian at their designated office needing information. There were times when one is unable to retrieve a source, that individual would send an email to their zone for assistance. On other occasions, if an attorney from a different time zone needs assitsance because their library service is closed for the day, a library staff member from the other time zone can locate information. Overall, the firm managed to provide their services to everyone across the North American region without any hassle. Even though this form of reference service does provide the face-to-face traditional interaction, our attorneys knew our library and information services were dependable.

Beyond the Shelves: Restructuring the Reference Desk

Betsy Chessler shares her experience of going from the traditional face-to-face reference service to the electronic centralized system that would provide attorneys from different times to receive information and resources at their convenience. Here is the article.

CI Resource Guide

I missed the update - the LLRX Competitive Intelligence Guide was updated March 12, 2011. Give it a browse to see what sources you could use, affirm ones you do use, and remember ones you used to use.

http://www.llrx.com/features/ciguide.htm

Data formatting tips

Greg Lambert offers some step by step instructions on converting data (like addresses) from Word to Excel. I recommend reading this if you have to do much data conversion or copy/paste to/from Word/Excel.

hat tip: 3 Geeks and a Law Blog

U.S. Statistical Abstract on the Chopping Block

Laura Orr from the Oregon Legal Research Blog has a good round up of article/links regarding the proposal to do away with the U.S. Statistical Abstract.

Gediman's response to Lamb with Lamb's comments

Back in November, Patrick J. Lamb posted a question on his blog titled "Does it pay to hire a Law Firm Librarian?" There were multiple responses to this post (see Lex Scripta entry "Responses to the Patrick Lamb post" for a list).

Now, Lamb has posted Mark Gediman's response to his post, with additional comments, at "Law Firm Librarians Defend Operating Costs". Comments are starting to trickle in on this newest post.

Hat tip to Greg Lambert cross-posting this to multiple listservs.

Views on Wikipedia

Marie S. Newman from the Out of the Jungle blog posts thoughts on Wikipedia's second decade, based on an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wikipedia Comes of Age, by Casper Grathwohl, posted January 7, 2011.

Can Wikipedia be seen as a way of getting up to speed on a topic before moving on to vetted research source?

Discuss.

iPad possibilities

These are aimed at a Canadian law audience, but I found them interesting just the same. Both posts are from the Slaw blog.

iPad toting librarians
Law on iTunes

Responses to the Patrick Lamb post

Here's brief round up of responses to Patrick Lamb's post on the ABA Journal's The New Normal Blog, "Does it Pay to Hire a Law Firm Librarian"

Who needs a Librarian anyway?

Mark Gediman
11/19/2010
3 Geeks and a Law Blog

Mark Gediman's responds to the Patrick Lamb Post on the ABA Journal's The New Normal Blog, "Does it Pay to Hire a Law Firm Librarian". Also quoted in Gediman's post: iBraryGuy, "A Grain of Salt & A Teaspoon of Sugar: Reading Patrick Lamb's Thoughts on Law Librarians"

Librarians and "Business Values"

Anonymous
3 Geeks and a Law Blog
11/19/2010

Anonymous response to the Patrick Lamb post, focusing on librarians' ability to analyze and present information.
Librarians Add Value in Law Firms

Betsy McKenzie
Out of the Jungle
11/20/2010

Betsy McKenzie picks up on the comment that librarians should work closely with marketing and accounting, but that when he comments on a survey on librarian value, he fails to cite the survey or the source.

Does It Pay to Hire a Law Firm Librarian?
Posted Nov 17, 2010 8:03 PM CST
By Patrick J. Lamb

Patrick J. Lamb, founding member of Valorem Law Group, ponders whether or not it makes sense to hire a law librarian given that so many resources these days are not print based. In it, he discusses his view of librarians as information and research professionals. Read the article and all of the comments and see if you agree/disagree with the assessments.

Legal Print Tools

How Much Longer for 19th Century Legal Print Relics: What legal reference and research tool titles are obsolete and when will they disappear from sales catalogs?

from:
Law Librarian Blog
November 2, 2010

Joe Hodnicki ponders issues regarding how much longer print tools like digests, advance sheets, and legal encyclopedias will exist.

Print and electronic resources

Greg Lambert has a post over at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog titled "Tying Print & Electronic Resources - Is It Too Late To Save Print?" dated 8/3/2010.

In his post, Greg wonders if more researchers would use print resources if there were some sort of link or icon in our favorite online legal resources showing that the print version were available in the library collection. This is an interesting twist to current practices of linking our catalog records to electronic versions of treatises, periodicals, etc.

Interesting.

FederalRegister.gov goes live

FederalRegister.gov is now online, in time to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the publication. This new web site has a number of ways to find items in the FR:

• Search
• Browse
• Section
• Topic
• Agency
• Dates
• Current issue
• Notices
• Proposed Rules
• Rules
• Presidential Documents

Each individual document can be seen in HTML, with links to PDF and XML versions. Further, the HTML version has a nice box on the right showing official citation, date, type, document ID, and shorter URL.

Check it out and add comments to this entry on what you think of the new site.

From an email posted to law-lib from Andrew Zimmerman - he has a blog now in addition to his famous research guide.

The ZRG Blog

http://zimmermansguide.wordpress.com/

Zimmerman's Research Guide
http://law.lexisnexis.com/infopro/zimmermans/

MapQuest reinvents itself

MapQuest has reinvented itself - check it out at http://new.mapquest.com/. The first thing I noticed was a link for live traffic conditions - I'll be watching this over the next few days to see how traffic is before leaving work.

To find other features, you have to look for the tiny MapQuest link at the bottom right corner. I almost missed it. This opens a box with links to their blog, mobile, toolbar, licensing, etc. You can also add pushpins to mark locations - similar to GoogleMaps. Has anyone else tried this yet?

Fastcase iPhone app

Yup, there's an app for that.

Fastcase has announced their iPhone app for searching cases and statutes. Details at http://www.fastcase.com/fastcase-releases-first-legal-research-app-for-iphone/

One of my fellow librarians, Riva Laughlin, sent me a short list of reviews:

• Robert Ambrogi's review:
• http://www.legaline.com/2010/01/exclusive-first-look-fastcase-iphone.html
• Legal Geekery review:
• http://legalgeekery.com/2010/01/29/fastcase-iphone-app/
• iPhone J.D. review
• http://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2010/02/review-fastcase.html

I've downloaded it and am testing it for a few days. This is something we should all be aware of since our attorneys will probably load it and ask for help later.

Area codes

I found an area code look up this morning from Verizon. If you go to http://www22.verizon.com/areacodes/, you can search by area code or by state.

Attorney licensing information

I saw this article at LLRX.com and thought it might be of some interest.

A Compilation of State Lawyer Licensing Databases
By Andrew Zimmerman and Trevor Rosen, Published on January 19, 2009

[Editor's Note: This article was updated on January 19, 2009]

Every U.S. lawyer is licensed to practice in some state, but very few lawyers are licensed to practice in every state. As a result, the question often arises…is attorney X licensed to practice in state Y? Traditionally the answer would be found by calling the relevant state's licensing authority. That still works although, now, it may be faster, easier and cheaper to find the answer by searching that state's relevant online database. These databases have multiplied quickly. Virtually unknown in the 1990s, there were approximately thirty lawyer licensing databases by December 2001. Today there are 45.

(cont)

Summaries of SLA

Nicole C. Engard runs the What I Learned Today blog (http://www.web2learning.net/) and had three good entries on the SLA 2008 conference in Seattle. Here's brief blurbs from each - and I found the one on what the iSchool at the University of Washington the most fascinating.

SLA Going Green for Annual

So, I thought it sounded like a great idea - no bottled water, no handouts and several other changes to have the SLA Annual conference put a smaller nature killing footprint on Seattle and the world. I was wrong!! (cont)

SLA2008: The Promise of 2.0

Olaf Ernst, our speaker for this talk, mentioned right off that integrated econtent is king - without having your content online you can’t have added value to your content - at least not the kind of added value he was talking about today. (cont)

SLA2008: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in … Library School?

This panel was very very insightful. The panelists were all recent grads of the University of Washington’s iSchool. They were Alex Berta, Rebecca Blakewood, Ann
Glusker, Elizabeth Gould, and Beth Sanderson. Joe Janes and Nancy Gershenfeld professors at the iSchool gave us an intro.

University of Washington was the first school that decided to call itself an iSchool. So what does iSchool mean? For the U of Washington, it’s something that allows them to make their programs stronger because so many disciplines are all learning together. They have information science, information management, library and information science and others all in the one school. (cont)