RESOURCE FOR MEDICAL STUDENTS

Put together by medical student Emily Cooper, “Med-Source provides you with the resources you need to save time, excel, and get some sleep during med school.” There are many posts with downloadable resources, links to medical reference sites, medical calculators, practice questions for medical exams, and frequent updates. Interestingly, the posts are arranged by subject, not date. If you have medical students as customers, this would be a good site to tell them about.

URL: http://med-source.blogspot.com/

PUBLIC LIBRARY BLOGS: 252 EXAMPLES, BY WALT CRAWFORD

Walt Crawford has self-published a new book, Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples. From the description: “The 299-page paperback features descriptions and sample posts for a wide range of blogs from 196 public libraries of all sizes, in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. If your library is considering a blog, this book should help you find blogs from comparable libraries to consider as examples. If your library has a blog and is considering more (or revising the ones you have), this book should help you find interesting examples--the public library blogging community is remarkably diverse!"

To order the book:
Cites & Insights Books store at Lulu.com: printed on 60lb. cream book stock, http://www.lulu.com/content/1117701
After 14 September, from Amazon.com, ISBN 978-1434805591

RAND RADIUS R&D DATABASE, PART 2

I got my password for RaDiUS and did a quick search so I can tell you how it works. I entered the term “library” and got 1974 hits just for fiscal year 2006! They were listed by federal organization: the most were for Health and Human Services with over 1200. I chose one from the US Department of Agriculture.

What was in the record? I won’t give you the details because there are security issues, but it had a short description of the project, the department and division sponsoring it, the type of funding mechanism (this one was “extramural/cooperative agreement,” start and end dates, who is doing the work and their location (contact name and phone), “Average FY Federal Funding,” and “FY Actual Funding” (both Federal and non-Federal). It’s not a lot of information, but may be useful to some of your customers.

US SUPREME AND FEDERAL APPELLATE COURT CASE REPORTS

AltLaw provides the first free, full-text searchable database of Supreme Court and Federal Appellate case reports. It is a resource for attorneys, legal scholars, and the general public. As of late August 2007, there are over 170,000 cases in the database. Coverage, for most Circuits, is limited to about the last 10 to 15 years. As of yet, no state law or district court cases. The site included full text searching of the last decade or so of federal appellate and Supreme Court opinions, and advanced search options (proximity searching, Boolean, concentration, wildcards, etc.). Note: the site is still in beta.

AltLaw is a joint project of Columbia Law School’s Program on Law and Technology and the Silicon Flatirons Program at the University of Colorado Law School.

URL: http://www.altlaw.org/

(US) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE CONTACT INFORMATION

Need to contact a candidate (loosely defined) for the US Presidency? This site has the names, titles, telephone number, website URL, and media contact information, as well as for the Republican and Democratic National Committees. Nice to find this all in one spot.

URL: http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/91528.pdf

DATABASE OF (USA) FEDERAL RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

The RAND Corporation and the US National Science Foundation have created RaDiUS, “the most comprehensive database of information on federally-funded research and development.” It is free, but you have to request a password. There is a user handbook and glossary of terms—nice. Note: “Certain records in RaDiUS can only be accessed by employees of agencies of the Federal Government and/or entities that are a direct party to a contract with federal agencies, as defined in FAC 90-40, Part 2.101, or that are participating in formal potential contractor programs sponsored by federal agencies. Access to some of these records is further restricted to only employees of DOD [Department of Defense] and DOD contractors and participants in DOD's Potential Contractor Programs, while access to others is restricted to only employees of DOE [Department of Energy].”

URL: https://radius.rand.org/radius/index.html (be sure to type https)

LIBRARIAN AND MEDICAL RSS FEEDS

You can find over 1500 librarian RSS feeds at LibWorm (beta) and over 4000 “authoritative” medical feeds at MedWorm, which is divided into the following categories: publications directory, a blog directory, blog tag cloud, consumer health news, medical conditions, cancers, infectious diseases, therapies, and vaccines. MedWorm even has its own blog.

The “worms” gather updates from the RSS feeds and makes them searchable, so you can search by keywords and find actual posts. They were developed by Frankie Dolan, a Devon, UK-based IT engineer (married to a doctor), with input (especially for LibWorm from David Rothman [Community General Hospital of Greater Syracuse, New York, USA]. I’m sure neither list is exhaustive, but you’re sure to find something useful.

URLs:
LibWorm: http://www.libworm.com
MedWorm: http://www.medworm.com

FOREIGN LAW RESEARCH RESOURCE

FLARE is a collaboration between the major libraries collecting law in the United Kingdom: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Bodleian Law Library, Squire Law Library, British Library, and School of Oriental and African Studies. It is working to improve the coverage and accessibility of foreign legal materials at the national level and to raise expertise in their use. The work is currently focused on improving national coverage of the law of the transition states of central and Eastern Europe and building a distributed national collection of official gazettes. Current projects include: a series of Research Guides to the law of foreign jurisdictions, training courses on the law of the transition states, a Union List of holdings of European Legal Gazettes in major research libraries.” (from the website)

URL: http://ials.sas.ac.uk/flare/flare.htm

GREAT POST ABOUT WHAT LIBRARY BRANCHES COULD/SHOULD BE

Jenni Fry, my wonderful editor at ALA Editions, posted comments and photos of bank branch (ING) in Chicago (Illinois, USA) that would be a great model for a branch library—or even for a small library in a corporate setting. It is bright (orange), has coffee and healthy snacks, well-trained staff, free meeting space, free wifi, ten terminals, free newspapers and financial magazines, branded merchandise, and a buy four-coffees-get-one-free promotion to encourage return customers. And they don’t even require you to be a customer to use the facilities. What a super idea! Thanks, Jenni, for calling our attention to it!

URL: http://blog.alaeditions.org/2007/08/23/104/

ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE RESOURCES

UsingEnglish.com “is a general English language site, specializing in ESL (English as a Second Language).” Mostly it is British English, but there is input from the USA, Canada, Pakistan, and other English-speaking countries.

Included are resources for both teachers and students on grammar, idioms, verbs, ESL tests, quizzes, reading comprehension, usage articles, a blog, essay samples, forums, and more. There’s even an “Ask an English teacher…” feature.

URL: http://usingenglish.com/

NEW E-JOURNAL: INFORMATION, SOCIETY AND JUSTICE

Information, Society and Justice is a peer-review, open-access electronic journal based in the Department of Applied Social Sciences (DASS) at London (UK) Metropolitan University. It seeks to provide a proactive space for critical discussion of the linkages between social information, justice and democracy. It will focus on issues of equality, human rights, social inclusion, economic justice, and struggles for liberation and democratic expansion. It will focus on the role that librarians and information workers together with libraries and information services can play in safeguarding, highlighting and communicating on issues such as equality, human rights, social/economic justice, social policy, and liberation. Creative work on these themes will also be considered. ISJ is expected to be published twice a year. The first issue is expected to be published in November 2007. Articles should be submitted to Shiraz Durrani at s.durani@londonmet.ac.uk.

The Interim Editorial Board includes: Shiraz Durrani [London Metropolitan University, UK], Pawel Dziedzic [London Metropolitan University, UK], Nick Jones [Vårby bibliotek, Sweden], Ali Memon [Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand], Dave Percival [Portsea Library, Portsmouth, UK], Mark Perkins [New Caledonia], and Usman Tar [University of Maiduguri, Nigeria]

URL: http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/depts/dass/research/studentjournal/ (under construction)

FREE PLAGARISM CHECKING TOOL

DOC Cop is a service to help people detect plagiarism. It is free (registration necessary, but all they ask is your email address); they offer a one-hour turnaround for their detailed report; it is entirely web based, no installation necessary, you can exclude repetitious text such as the question itself and include your own material (e.g., lecture notes) to be checked against the text; and it offers online support and 128-bit SSL Security and promises that submitted material will not be retained or used elsewhere.

Doc Cop offers three types of checks. DOC Check evaluates up to 5 documents, with a 250,000 word maximum, against each other. Corpus Check evaluates an unlimited number of documents, up to 12,000 words each, against one another, and Web Check which compares up to 550 words of text against the Web (limited uses per day).

I tried Web Check with materials from an article in OPL. The report (which took two hours, not the one promised) was not very detailed and found no plagiarism (surprise, surprise). The service was developed by Mark McCrohon [formerly, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia]. For more information, see the FAQ on the website or read this article.
Nagel, David, DOC Cop Delivers Free Anti-Plagiarism Tools, Campus Technology, 23 August 2007, http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/49892

The site also has plagiarism news from around the world. While limited, it seems like this could be useful for its intended audience, K-12 and higher education.

URL: http://www.doccop.com/

ARE YOU ADDICTED TO BLOGGING?

Take this quiz and see. I’m only 52 percent addicted, so I guess that’s ok.

URL: http://mingle2.com/blog-addiction

TWO NEW WIKIS FOR LIBRARIANS

For Pharmacy Librarians
PharmLib Wiki is divided into the following categories: hot topics (informatics, law, cultural competence, outreach), collection development, education and training of students, professional development, research, and community (homepages of pharmacy librarians and libraries, subject guides, and related wikis). It is new, so there’s no that much here, but it looks like it will be a great resource. It is the creation of KT Vaughn [University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA].

URL: http://pharmlib.pbwiki.com/

For Multimedia Librarians
Multimedia Librarian is a wiki plus electronic list. Topics are: copyright; digital preservation; digital rights management; digital libraries; film, music and art media preservation; tools for interoperability and delivery of media; professional societies and associations; listservs; multimedia literacy; film industry news; critical reviews of film and music; research centers; professional resources; and blogs. This looks like it could be a very comprehensive portal for digital and media librarians.

URL: http://multimedialibrarian.wikia.com
To subscribe to the list: http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/
listinfo/multimedialibrarian-l

PBWIKI TUTORIALS AVAILABLE

Atomic Learning has posted more than 40 video tutorials by Richard Marchessault which will teach you how to do everything under the sun with PBWiki. Each about 2 minutes long and are free (for now, at least). They are grouped into the following: using wikis in an educational setting, choosing and setting up a wiki, working with PBwiki, using the PBwiki plug-in features, and working with WikiStyle.

URL: http://www.atomiclearning.com/pbwiki

AUSTRALIAN LIBRARY WINS US$1 MILLION GRANT

The Northern Territory Library [Darwin, Australia] has won the prestigious annual Gates Foundation Access to Learning Award. The award was presented to Jo McGill, Director, at the IFLA 2007 World Library and Information Congress in Durban, South Africa. “The US$1 million award recognises the library's work to provide free computer and Internet access and training to Indigenous communities and for its unique 'Our Story' database. Being the recipient of the Access to Learning Award recognises the importance of the Northern Territory Library program in contributing to improvements in the lives of Indigenous Territorians living in remote communities. It assists people to retain 60,000 years of oral tradition, and plays a part in helping our Indigenous communities to survive and prosper through improved literacy The award will be used to spread training in 'Our Story' to more communities, and expand the library's early years literacy program for indigenous children.

URLs:

Northern Territory Library: http://www.ntl.nt.gov.au/
Gates Foundation: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/ATLA

BELOIT COLLEGE'S MINDSET LIST® FOR THE CLASS OF 2011

My alma mater, Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin has released its Mindset List for the Class of 2011. Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead. The list is published to help professors understand the gap between their experiences and those of their students. At the mindset list website you can see lists from 2002 to the present. Fascinating reading (of course, I am a bit prejudiced).

URL: http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/2011.php

Below are a few of the 70 items on the list.
4. They never “rolled down” a car window.
7. They have grown up with bottled water.
10. Pete Rose has never played baseball.
11. Rap music has always been mainstream.
17. They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.
23. Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
34. They were introduced to Jack Nicholson as “The Joker.”
39. Fox has always been a major network.
45. They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.
47. High definition television has always been available.
55. MTV has never featured music videos.
66. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.
68. Burma has always been Myanmar.
70. Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.

USING THE LAW LIBRARY GUIDE NOW AVAILABLE

Using the Law Library: A Guide for Educators, by Williiam A. Hilyerd [Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA] is available either from the Journal of Law & Education (beginning with v. 33, no. 2, 2004) or at the Social Science Research Network (http://ssrn.com/abstract=970982 for Part I). The six parts are:

I: Untangling the Legal System

II: Deciphering Citations & Other Ways of Locating Court Opinions

III: Oh, Statute (or Regulation), Where Art Thou?

IV: Secondary Sources to the Rescue

V: Finding Legal Materials by Topic

VI: Working With Judicial Opinions and Other Primary Sources

Thanks to Law Librarian Blog for the info.

GREAT LAKES WIKI

If you are looking for information about the (US) Great Lakes, a good place to start is this wiki, started by students of environmental journalism, telecommunications, information studies, and media at Michigan State University (Lansing). It “explores new ways of speeding the flow of information, knowledge and news about one of the world’s greatest natural resources. [The five lakes contain over eighteen percent of the world’s fresh surface water.] It relies on the experience and knowledge of a network of citizens, including scientists, hunters, policymakers, environmentalists, anglers, lakeside property owners, boaters, business operators, and others.” Articles are grouped under Culture, Recreation, Geography, Commerce, Ecology, and Areas of Concern.

URL: http://greatlakeswiki.org

LIBRARY TIMELINE

The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) sponsored a competition in 1998 to promote the use of digital design media and the Internet in architecture. It involved “the design of a library that takes full advantage of information technology while still serving the library's inherited roles in culture and society.” One product of the competition was a Library Time Line. It starts with the Library at Thebes c. 1250 B.C. and ends in 1988 with Seattle (Washington, USA) Public Library’s US$196 million bond issue for renovation and construction.

I’m not sure how useful this may be, but it’s got some good information and is most certainly good reading.

URLs:
Time Line: http://www.acadia.org/competition-98/sites/integrus.com/
html/library/time.html
ACADIA: http://www.acadia.org/

CATALOGING “SPELLCHECK”

Typo of the Day for Librarians posts a common mis-spelling every day. For instance, University of Florida at Gainsville—should be Gainesville or Mineapolis for Minneapolis. This might be useful, but it’s certainly fun to read. Written by “We are a group of librarians from all over the world with a common interest—keeping our online catalogs free of errors.”

URL: http://librarytypos.blogspot.com

WHAT WAS THAT SONG ON “ER” LAST NIGHT?

Have you ever had a customer ask this question? If so, or is you’ve wondered what the songs were on your favorite television show, heardontv.com is likely to have the answer. “Users submit songs heard in their favorite television shows, submissions get moderated and appear on the site. When available, a link to buy the song online is provided. When a song is legally and freely downloadable online, the link to download the song is available.”

URL: http://heardontv.com

IT AND THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

“TechPresident was started by Andrew Rasiej [Personal Democracy Forum, New York, New York, USA] and Micah Sifry [Public Campaign, Washington, DC, USA] as a new group blog that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa, how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign.” There will be input from blogger-contributors, a daily digest of fresh news clips, blog posts and campaign initiatives, live from-the-campaign-trail photo feeds created by voters, campaign website reviews, links to campaign ads and websites (official and unofficial), charts showing who’s winning the most friends on MySpace and Facebook and the most YouTube channel views and subscribers for each candidate, and a searchable repository of emails from each campaign” (coming).

URL: http://techpresident.com/

LIT2GO

Lit2Go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format from Florida’s Educational Technology Clearinghouse. You can download the files to your Mp3 player and listen on the go, listen to the Mp3 files on your computer, view the text on a webpage and read along as you listen, or print out the stories and poems to make your own book. You can pick your stories by the author’s last name, pick your stories by title, or download many of the selections directly into your iTunes library for either Macintosh or Windows.

URL: http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/

LEFT HANDERS UNITE

13 August was Left-Hander’s Day. To celebrate it next year, check out the official site for the Left-Handers Club. The aims of Left-Handers Day are: to raise awareness of left-handedness and the challenges caused by living in such a right-handed world; educate designers and manufacturers to accommodate left-handers’ comfort and safety in new product and building design; celebrate the strengths and advantages left-handers possess, and dispel many of the superstitions and fiction that have surrounded left-handedness in many cultures for hundreds of years, and which still create prejudice today; provide the greatest possible range of tools and equipment specifically designed for left-handers to use—making everyday tasks easier than left-handers have ever experienced, and making a positive difference to their lives; and to promote research into various aspects of left-handedness.

The site has many other resources: a life choices survey, left-handed survey, quizzes on famous lefties, left-handed products, articles on being left-handed, how left are you? left-handed history, fascinating facts, brain teasers, and helpful Guides For Left-handed Children.

URL: http://www.lefthandersday.com/

HOW THE WORLD REALLY SHAPES UP

Victoria Moore wrote a neat article in the Daily Mail (1 March 2007) showing computer-generated maps (cartograms) that show the world with each country’s size proportional to its share of categories such as alcohol consumption, HIV/Aids, house prices, war deaths, military spending, toy imports and exports, and wealth. The cartograms were produced in a unique collaboration between the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, USA) and Sheffield University, UK.

URL: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/
worldnews.html?in_article_id=439315&in_page_id=1811

ARE YOU AN INDEPENDENT LAW LIBRARIAN?

Do you work as a freelance researcher, consultant, run a filing or cataloging service? If so, Jennifer Marshall Pesetsky invites you to join the independent law librarian’s listserv to network and share information.

To subscribe, send a blank email addressed to join-pll-ill@aallnet.org. You will then receive a confirmation email; respond to it to complete the subscription process. An alternative means of subscribing, posting, and unsubscribing is to log into the AALLNET Online Discussion Center at http://share.aallnet.org/read/ and click on the PLL-ILL subscribe button. You will get a message that your subscription request was received, followed by a confirmation email regarding the subscription.

NEW MEDICAL PORTAL

MedEdPORTAL, from the Association of American Medical Colleges, offers peer reviewed medical education teaching resources, such as tutorials, virtual patients, cases, lab manuals, assessment instruments, faculty development materials, etc. These are free to the general public and are indexed using MeSH subject headings.

Note: The site’s privacy statement says that they “record submissions, searches, and viewing of resources on MedEdPORTAL for the purposes of evaluating the general use of MedEdPORTAL for potential improvements [and] providing information back to the authors so that they may have crucial information regarding usage of their materials for their promotion and tenure purposes.”

URL: http://www.aamc.org/mededportal

BITE-SIZED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Marie Kaddell [LexisNexis, Burke, Virginia, USA] has a great post on continuing education on Federal Info Pro. She provides “a few tips on making those small incremental investments in yourself and your professional growth and development that will make the difference in who you are as a professional and what you can do for yourself, your organization, and those you serve. You don’t have to do them all. Just pick a few that appeal to you and add them to your repertoire.”

Keep your eyes open. Find ways to grab professional development opportunities when they present themselves.

Go local. Attend update sessions provided locally by information providers and vendors, attend local conferences even if you can only visit the exhibits for the afternoon.

Go virtual. Find programs such as SLA’s Click U and LexisNexis and SirsiDynix webinars..

Mix it up. Listen to a recording of a session you weren’t able to attend, subscribe to a listserv, plug in to a podcast, visit professional association websites, have lunch with another librarian and talk shop.

Expand your professional reading horizons. Read blogs. Branch out and read in areas that interest you beyond those focused only on library and information science.

Get active professionally. Don’t skimp on something like a membership to a professional group. It will keep you tuned in to your profession in a dynamic way.

Specialize. Join specialized divisions and caucuses..

Be a leader. Get involved in the professional association of your choice. Get on a committee and make a small contribution.

Hit the Water Cooler. Get out there and communicate with your peers. Don’t underestimate the power of a good chat with another professional around the corner or across the country.

Remember, you are not alone. Get involved in communities of practice such as those provided by SLA or ALA.

Dive in. Take a class or sign up for a workshop to really get an in-depth picture of something that intrigues you. Or go hands on—start a blog or a podcast.

Remember that you will never know it all and that’s okay. Pick even a couple of the items that are not part of your current professional development process from the list above and plug them into your routine. You will be surprised at what a difference it will make to your professional knowledge and growth. You just have to take that first step to begin your journey.

URL: http://www.federalinfopro.com/federal_info_pro/

2007/08/bite-sized-prof.html

SHOULD YOUR COMPANY BLOG?

“The Blogging Success Study was conducted by Dr. Walter Carl; the students in his Advanced Organizational Communications class (Spring 2006) at Northeastern University and John Cass and his colleagues at Backbone Media, Inc. The objective of this research was to determine the reasons, conditions and factors that make a blog successful, and to create a list of criteria to help companies assess whether and how they should engage in blogging.”

The students interviewed 20 corporate bloggers who had been blogging for over one year and who “considered their blogging efforts successful.” The bloggers were asked three questions:
1. How does the set up of a blog contribute to a blog’s success?
2. What is it about how you blog that makes the blog a success?
3. What is it about the content on a blog that makes the blog a success?

“After careful review, the research team identified five factors for success:” the ability to convey the corporate culture; transparency or openness, to establish credibility and trust; devotion of sufficient time; ability and willingness to dialogue; and entertaining writing style and personalization in order to bring humor and a human side to the blog.

Bloggers interviewed were from Adobe, Adweek, author and speaker Aliza Sherman Risdahl, BzzAgent (marketing and media), Conference Calls Unlimited, foodie blog Daily Eats, Emerson Process Management (automation and process control), Gourmet Station (chef-cooked meals), Indium Corporation (manufacturing), Landfair Furniture, Marqui (web content management), Masi Bicycles, Microsoft, Mississippi Hospital Association, MSInteractive (online research), Paperback Bazaar, PR and blogging professional Jeremy Pepper, coffee roaster Stone Creek Coffee, Stonyfield Farm (natural dairy products), and SuccessFactors (employee performance management software).

Among other things, the study found that “compelling content comes from unique experiences, industry content provides great relevancy for audiences, sometimes the most random content generates the most interest, [and] put search engine optimization marketing at the center of your blogging content strategy.”

Finally, when deciding if your company should blog, the study concludes, “Blogging is complex, and each company approaches blogging differently. If one measurement of success is reaching an audience, it is, therefore, important to choose a content strategy that is relevant to your audience. If you do not conduct a dialogue with your audience, but instead try to sell your audience something, your blog will probably not produce the traffic or links you seek. Without results, a company will either change its strategy in order to become an effective blogger or give up blogging entirely. The decision to blog, then, should be based upon an understanding of what resources are available and the commitment that is needed to maintain a successful blog.”

URLs:
Executive Summary: http://www.scoutblogging.com/success_study/
blogging_success_study/study_executive_summary.html
Download entire study (free registration required):
http://www.scoutblogging.com/success_study/download.html

THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY

I may have already blogged about this, but it is so neat that I have to do it again. The European Library website allows you to search over 150 million entries in thirty different national libraries, for books, posters, maps, sound recordings, video, etc.). The thirty libraries are Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.

You can search the entire list; just maps, atlases and cartography; photographs, posters and images; portraits; children’s literature; digitized books; newspapers and periodicals; manuscripts; music collections; religion; scientific articles; thesis and dissertations; or collections from just one country.

What a wonderful resource!

URL: http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/index.html

LIST OF LAW CONFERENCES

Legal Conference Watch is a service of the reference department, Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington (Seattle) School of Law. It will not cover continuing legal education (CLE) or local bar association meetings and is limited to programs that are at least a day long. As expected, the listings will be mostly for the US and Canada, but selective other conferences will be included if of broad interest. It starts with September 2007.

URL: http://depts.washington.edu/lawref/confblog

TWO PORTALS: ONE SCIENTIFIC, ONE GLOBAL

New Scientist magazine is online. Subjects and features covered are: space, technology, environment, jobs, news, and blogs on space, technology, “short sharp science,” environment, and invention. There are also special reports, an archive, a RSS feed, and e-zine, exclusive features, a picture gallery, video exclusives, and podcasts.

URL: http://www.newscientist.com/home.ns

The Globalist “provides a daily account of the key issues before the global community. Combining cutting-edge analysis with first-rate storytelling, [it] covers the most important issues, people, companies and organizations shaping the global economy, politics and culture. We focus on what unites and divides countries, societies and cultures, what challenges they face in the global era—and what solutions they offer to the global community. Through cross-country comparisons, our features provide the key to understanding our common future.” Globalization Topics covered: Children, Companies, Culture, Development, Diplomacy, Economy, Environment, Finance, Health, History, Markets, Media, Music, People, Politics, Religion, Security, Sports, Technology, and Women. Also included: Today in history, Quote of the day, Fact of the day, and Link of the day. Available in English, French, and German.

URL: http://www.theglobalist.com/

LOCATE POLITICAL FEEDS AND PODCASTS FOR POLITICIANS

Political Feeds is a portal to news feeds and podcasts by our about politicians. Categories include Asia, Australia, Canada, China, Philippines, UK (blogs and politicians), USA (left-leaning, right-leaning, conservative, independent, liberal, Democratic, Green Party, Independent Party, Libertarian, Populist, Republican Party), local and state government, and by states. A RSS feed of feeds is available.

URL: http://www.political-humor.net/

FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS

ReadyWeb is a project of the Early Childhood and Parenting (ECAP) Collaborative, College of Education, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It “provides a Virtual Library of the full text of documents and articles, and hyperlinks to documents and articles, on various topics related to school readiness. ReadyWeb also provides bibliographies of documents and journal articles from the ERIC database. These bibliographies are updated quarterly.” Categories include: Tips for Parents, Research, Statistics, and Definitions, Getting Schools Ready for Children, and Public Policy Issues and Initiatives. It is searchable.

URL: http://readyweb.crc.uiuc.edu/index.html

FOREIGN LAW TRANSLATIONS

The Institute for Transnational Law

This site is a resource for French, German, Italian, Austrian and Israeli legal materials in the fields of constitutional, administrative, contract and tort law. The English translations of decisions from Germany and France include cases from the Reichsgericht, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, the Bundesgerichtshof, the Conseil Constitutionnel, the Conseil d’Etat and the Cour de Cassation. From the University of Texas at Austin Law School, funded in part by the MD Anderson Foundation.

URL: http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/transnational/work/

TWO OTHER GOOD SIGNS

Hunger and Thirst for Knowledge, but please enjoy food and beverages (wherever you designate).

Kindly set your cell phone to manners (vibrate) mode, and, when taking calls, speak quietly.

From a post on LIBREF-L electronic list.

BLOG ON LIBRARY SERVICES TO SENIORS

Senior Friendly Libraries is the personal blog of Isabelle Fetherston [Tampa-Hillsborough (Florida) Public Library). She focuses on "resources and discussion about library services to older adults." I've not seen much blogging in this area, so this is a great addition to the blogosphere. Great work, Isabelle!

URL: http://seniorfriendlylibraries.blogspot.com

A GOOD SIGN

Stephen Abram and Michael Stephens point out a great sign at Buckham Memorial Library in Faribault, Minnesota. They’re “trying a new campaign, taking down all of our ‘No’ signs and replacing them with one that explains, ‘We promise not to shush you if you promise to be considerate of your fellow library users.”

See the sign at http://www.flickr.com/photos/buckhamlibrary/1042888147/.

HOSPITAL LIBRARIANS SHOW GREAT MARKETING INITIATIVE!

The Health Sciences Library Association of New Jersey sponsored a table display at the Organization of Nursing Executives of New Jersey Research Day held on June 22, 2007. Over 100 members of ONE/NJ stopped by the table to talk to one of nine librarians. There were demonstrations of various databases, bookmarks with contact information stickers attached so that the attendees would know how to reach the librarian at their institution, and fact sheets created by HSLANJ members describing the evidence-based nursing resources available for demonstration at the booth. In addition, the nine health sciences librarians each worked with one breakout group of nurse executives to create working documents to develop strategies for improvement in New Jersey of evidence-based nursing research and practice in the hospital setting, and for the improvement of nurses’ knowledge of, access and use of hospital library services and evidence-based information resources.

Way back when I was working for a living, I had an exhibit at the Instrument Society of America conference one year. I had posters from other corporate libraries in the instrumentation field—our competitors—and Mike Yuen from DIALOG did database searches for anyone that stopped by. I think it was very helpful in raising customer awareness of what their library can do—and, perhaps, to send some of the attendees back to their management to ask, “Why don’t we have a library?”

Go to the Middle Atlantic Region, National Network of Libraries of Medicine website to read more and to see a photo of their display. Then, make plans to do something similar at a conference that your customers attend.

URL: http://nnlm.gov/mar/blog/2007/07/26/in-the-region-hslanj-

participates-in-onenj-research-day

FREE MARKETING RESOURCES FROM EBSCO

There are some very interesting and potentially useful resources available for free from EBSCOhost.

First, there is free access to their Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) database. You can search academic journals separately from the strange category of “magazines” (which includes The One-Person Library). However, access is only to the abstracts, not the full-text, which I found to be very frustrating.

Then there is the Customer Success Center, which has success stories, funding guides, marketing tools, suggested reading, and success tools, including assessing library success and professional development. The success stories can be accessed by subject or type of institution (corporate, academic, public, etc.)

These are definitely worth a look.

URL: http://www.epnet.com/

STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

This is a good, short article from Barton Strong [McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada]. It is posted on Educause’s website. You can download it as a pdf or HTML document for free.

URL: http://connect.educause.edu/library/abstract/StrategicPlanningfor/
44837?time=1186594916

FIND “TOUGH” US GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS

PowerPoint presentations from a presentation on Tough Government Documents at the recent American Association of Law Libraries conference are available at http://washalr.pbwiki.com/toughgovdocs. The presentations are:

National and State Park Government Documents, Brent Johnson [Widener University, Wilmington, Delaware, USA]

Combative and Military Government Documents, Andrew Pulau Evans [Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas, USA]

and the interestingly titled Dangers of Open Water Swimming that One Can Avoid (sites on oceanography and weather], Sarajean Petite [Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA]

FREE INTERNET TUTORIALS

Intute in the UK has just released eight new free Internet tutorials for the Arts and Humanities in the Virtual Training Suite. The tutorials, authored by university subject specialists, are designed to help students develop Internet research skills for their university or college work, and can be used by lecturers and librarians to support their courses.

Architecture, by Sarah Nicholas, Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/architecture

Art and Design, by Rosemary Shirley Birkbeck, University of London, http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/artdesign

Media and Communication, by Jez Conolly, University of Bristol, http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/media

English, by Dr. James A J Wilson, University of Oxford, http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/english

Fashion and Beauty, by Sara Hall, Manchester Metropolitan University, http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/fashion

History and Philosophy of Science, by Dr David J Mossley, et al, Leeds University, http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/hps

Learning Languages, by Dr Shoshannah Holdom, University of Oxford, http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/langs

Music, by Sarah Taylor, Manchester Metropolitan University; formerly of the Royal Northern College of Music, http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/music

EXEMPLARY HEALTH SCIENCE LIBRARY WEBSITES

Jason Young [Genesis Medical Center, Davenport, Iowa, USA] collected these from members of the Medical Library Association’s Hospital Library Section via their electronic list.

Hospitals
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, http://massgeneral.org/library
The Cleveland (Ohio) Clinic, http://www.clevelandclinic.org/education/library/default.htm
St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center Paterson, New Jersey, http://www.sjrmclibrary.org/
Mercy Regional Medical Center, Durango, Colorado, http://mercydurango.org/medlibrary/libraryhome.html
Lowell (Massachusetts) General Hospital, http://lowellgeneral.org/library
St. Francis Medical Center, Peoria, Illinois, http://library.osfhealthcare.org/
Overlake Hospital, Bellevue, Washington, http://medlib.overlakehospital.org/
Kaleida Health Libraries, Buffalo, New York, http://library.kaleidahealth.org/
Good Samaritan Hospital, Dayton, Ohio, http://www.goodsamdayton.org/mp-overview.htm
Maine Medical Center, Portland has blog at http://mmclibrary.wordpress.com (a feed from the blog appears on the library page).

Academic
Georgetown University, Washington, DC, http://dml.georgetown.edu/
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, http://www.mayo.edu/library/intranet-development.html
University of Minnesota Bio-Medical Library, Minneapolis, http://www.biomed.lib.umn.edu/
Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/
University of Wisconsin, Madison, http://ebling.library.wisc.edu/
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, http://www.hsl.unc.edu/
University of Colorado, Denison Health Sciences Library, Denver, http://hsclibrary.uchsc.edu/

Other
Medical/Health Sciences Libraries on the Web, http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/hslibs.html
Library Success: Website Design, http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Website_Design
How to Design Websites to Maximize Usability, Elsevier, http://www.elsevier.com/framework_librarians/LibraryConnect/lcpamphlet5.pdf

ANOTHER LEGAL RESOURCE

"Mondaq is one of the most comprehensive electronic resource of professionals' knowledge and expertise...supplied directly by hundreds of the world's leading professional advisors from over 80 countries." It covers "commentaries, analysis and news updates concerning legislative, regulatory, and business issues related to international trade and investment..."

Categories include: antitrust/competition; banking and financial; construction, property and real estate; corporate/company, environmental and energy; European Union and international; finances, accounting, and consultancy; government and public sector; immigration; information technology and telecommunications; insurance and transport; intellectual property; labor and employment; litigation, arbitration and dispute resolution; media and entertainment; offshore; pharmaceutical, healthcare and life sciences; taxation law;and press releases.

Access and free personalized news alerts are free. It is supported by the "Big Four" accounting firms.

URL: http://www.mondaq.com/

FIVE SUPERFLUOUS SITES

“NowPublic is a participatory news network which mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world…with thousands of reporters in over 140 countries—”now listing over 121,000 members in over 4000 cities. Stories fall into these categories: local, politics, culture, entertainment, life, places, favorites, and newsroom. Other features are “24hrs of photos and videos,” “Now on NowPublic,” and “good members.” There’s an RSS feed. Its parent company is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
This seems to me to be yet another newsline, albeit with user-generated stories. I’m not impressed, but you may find it useful.
URL: http://www.nowpublic.com/

“Truemors is a web site that enables you to “tell the world”—within the bounds of good taste and the law anyway. You can post your rumors, news, and sightings….” It is the product of Nononina, Inc., of Palo Alto, California, USA. Its categories are latest, greatest, auto, business, crap, entertainment, food, gaming, health, news, odd, politics, science, sex, sports, and tech. It, too, has an RSS feed available.

I like this one a bit more, but still don’t see a real need for it.

URL: http://truemors.com/

“LinkedIn is an online network of more than 12 million experienced professionals from around the world.” I like it because all fields in one’s profile are searchable, so you can find a classmate, fellow librarian, etc. It is free, but, of course, they also offer a paid version with more bells and whistles.

URL: http://www.linkedin.com/

Wikiseek searches only Wikipedia pages and sites referenced within it. The interface is extremely simple, like Google, and “as you type, Wikiseek will suggest categories related to your query term.” But aren’t the contents of Wikipedia findable from Google? Is there a real need for this service?

URL: http://www.wikiseek.com/

GlobalIncidentMap is more than unnecessary; it could be dangerous. It maps anything and everything that might possibly be related to terrorism. The categories are: airport/aviation incidents, arson/fire incidents, biological incidents/threats/anthrax hoaxes, bomb incidents/explosives/hoax devices/ chemical incidents, dam incidents, radiation incidents/smuggling/proliferation, chemical attack (how is this different than an incident), other suspicious activity, shipping/maritime/ports/cargo/waterways security, assassination/assassination attempt, railways/train stations, bus stations/bus security/bus related incidents, bridge/tunnel incidents and security, shootings/sniper incidents, terrorist arrests/captured/killed locations, general terrorism, and oil gas infrastructure: incidents/threats/news. It is a produce of TransitSecurityReport.

It is up-to-date: the Minnesota bridge collapse is included. This is a perfect example of why I call this a dangerous site. The collapse had nothing to do with terrorism. Two other examples: a crew leaves a train unattended—it could be hijacked and a theft of a chemical that could be converted to the poison ricin. Not only are these not in the same league as bombs attacks in Iraq (which are also mapped), but they could make people even more paranoid than they are now. I do not recommend its use.

URL:http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

SEARCH ENGINE FOR LAW FIRM NEWSLETTERS

Linex Legal is a new search engine that allows you to search the newsletters put out by "over 1,000 leading law firms and government organisations" in in ten countries: Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, and the USA. Specialty areas include: product liability, international arbitration and mediation, employment, health and safety, pensions, property, planning and construction, and European Competition law.

This looks to be a very useful and unique tool--and it is free.

URL: http://www.linexlegal.com