Tips for Working Smarter

Cynthia L. Smith [Barley Snyder LLC, Richmond, VA] and Julia E. Hughes [McGuireWoods LLP, Harrisburg, PA] presented a session on “Working Smart: Innovative Ways to Do More with Your Day” at the recent conference of the American Association of Law Libraries in Washington DC. The session was sponsored by the OPL Section of the Private Law Libraries Section.

It looks to have been a very good session. You can get the following online: the outline, downloads of the slides, a bibliography and list of resources (with links to screencasts), and the original proposal.

URL: http://sites.google.com/site/e5workingsmart/

Recent Website Reviews on InSITE

(from Law Librarian Blog by Joe Hodnicki, Butler County Law Library, Ohio)

Law librarians at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, search the Internet for potentially useful websites, select the most valuable ones, and provide commentary twice a month via their current awareness service, InSITE.

The June 15, 2009 issue includes:
AfriMAP: Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project
American President: an Online Reference Resource
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
and the
Worker Rights Consortium

There's also a searchable database of past reviews and you can browse current and archived issues from the home page. You can subscribe to the RSS feed as well.

URLs:
InSITE home page: http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/insiteasp/default.asp
Hodnicki's full post: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2009/06/recent-website-reviews-on-insite.html

A Handful of Practice Area Blogs by Lawyers

Joe Hodnicki [Butler County (Ohio) Law Library] called our attention the these blogs in a recent post on his Law Librarian Blog. See his post at http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2009/06/recent-website-reviews-on-insite.html for details and URLs

Military Veteran Attorney Blog
Products Liability and Injury Lawyer Blog
Drug Recall Lawyer Blog
Overtime Lawyer Blog
Lemon Law Lawyer Blog
DUI Attorneys Blog
Securities Fraud Attorney Blog

Law Library Links

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries has put together a nice list of links for law libraries. Among other things, it has links to law library associations in Canada, the USA, the UK, the EU, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

URL: http://www.callacbd.ca/index.php/publisher/articleview/frmArticleID/214/

Two Blogs to Help You

Just a quick note on two blogs I just came across.

Designing Better Libraries: "Exploring the application of design innovation and new media to create better libraries and user experiences." With this cast of contributors it has to be great: Steven Bell [Temple University] Brian Mathews [Georgia Tech University], John Shank [Pennsylvania State University], Jill Stover [Virginia Commonwealth University] Jeff Trzeciak [Mc Master University] and Michael Giralo [Princeton University].
URL: http://dbl.lishost.org/

For My Information: I couldn't find out the author, he/she writes "This blog helps me keep a record of the tools I use to teach my patrons - lawyers, legal assistants and other legal professionals - about the sites, sources and techniques used to conduct research...'for my information.'" Lot of good links here.
URL: http://resevoir.wordpress.com/

HELP FOR LAID-OFF LAW LIBRARIANS

Christine Sellers, formerly a Senior Research Librarian at Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd, P.A., in Columbia, South Carolina, has created the Librarians of Leisure blog “in an effort to provide something positive to the law librarian community out of this experience….” She provides job listings, advice, and “a place to stay connected.” There was a post on LLOF about a focus group of “Laid Off Librarians” in the Law Library Society of DC.

Although it’s sad that it is necessary, this is a wonderful idea and public service. If you know of similar blogs for other areas of librarianship, let me know.

URL: http://lawlibrariansofleisure.com/

FREE & LOW COST LEGAL RESEARCH

Georgetown University’s Law Library has created a web site with great resources for legal research that are very low cost—or even free (we like free).

There are entries about and links to many resources, including case law, statutes and codes, legislative histories, and administrative regulations. In addition, there are tables summarizing features and costs of the following low-cost databases: Caselex, Casemaker, Fastcase, lexisONE, Loislaw, VersusLaw, and Westlaw by Credit Card.

What a great compilation!

URL: http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/guides/freelowcost.cfm

BIALL HAS AN OPL GROUP ON LINKEDIN

The British and Irish Association of Law Libraries has set up a group on LinkedIn just for solo librarians. Great idea!

URL: http://www.linkedin.com/e/vgh/1811987/

And don't forget to check their website/blog at http://biallsolos-omb.blogspot.com/

AALL WIKI: TOOLS FOR SUCCESS IN TODAY’S ECONOMY

The American Association of Law Libraries unveiled its new Wiki of “resources to succeed in today’s economy.” Articles are divided into 4 categories. Career tools includes article on combating burnout, continuing professional education, job seekers, leadership training, networking and salary negotiation. Financial tools cover budgeting, general financial tools, funding, negotiation, and open access. Management tools include conflict resolution, customer service, hiring and recruiting law librarians, law firm library management, general management tools and managing, and promoting the law library. Finally, there is a section of public relations tools. Most so far are from Julia O’Donnell, AALL Director of Publications, but you can join the wiki and contributed items yourself.

URL: http://aallnet.pbwiki.com

A BLOG FOR LAW LIBRARIANS AND A GOVERNMENT BEST PRACTICES WIKI

RIPS Law Librarian is published by the Research Instruction & Patron Services Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries. Submissions from RIPS members are highly encouraged.

URL: http://rips-sis.blogspot.com/


Mike Kujawski [Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada] has created the Government 2.0 - Best Practices wiki with the intent “to compile a central list of current initiatives (and eventually “best practices”) involving social media and government. These can be internal or external, marketing, HR or IT, it doesn’t matter.” It covers the Canadian, US, and international governments.

URL: http://government20bestpractices.pbwiki.com/FrontPage

SOCIAL NETWORKING FOR LAWYERS

Social networking has even made it to the legal profession. The American Bar Association has created Legally Minded. It has news, education, jobs, resources, and community sections and is searchable. You can "find others just like you--our people map lets you connect." Recent hot topics were careers, twitter and "mobile lawyering" (look that last one up!).

Looks interesting, but does the firm really want their lawyers checking out a social networking site instead of creating billable hours? Maybe the ABA is just following the latest "neat new stuff."

URL: http://legallyminded.com/

LET THEM KNOW WHAT YOU DO

This is a wonderful article by Lori Tarpinian [Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, PC, Boston, Massachusetts] in the December 2009 issue of AALL Spectrum (13(3):22-24). The tagline is: “Show management that reference librarians don’t just ‘look things up,’ and technical services librarians don’t just ‘put cards in books.’” Read it to find out great ways to inform your bosses just how much value you add to your organization.

URL: http://aallnet.org/products/pub_sp0812/pub_sp0812_Let.pdf

PLANNING FOR AALL CONFERENCE

If you’re planning to attend the 2009 conference of the American Association of Law Libraries in Washington DC in July, or if you’re even thinking about it, here are a couple of sessions you shouldn’t miss.

Building a Coalition of County Law Libraries: A Place to Begin
Working Smart: Innovative Ways to Do More with Your Day

See the full preliminary program in the December 2009 issue of AALL Spectrum or at http://aallnet.org/database/meeting_annual_programs.asp?meetingcode=AM2009&link=

JUREEKA! NEW TOOL FOR LAW LIBRARIANS

Jureeka! is a Firefox extension from Michael Poulshock, a public interest lawyer in Pennington, NJ. It" turns legal citations in web pages into hyperlinks that point to online legal source material. Its handy toolbar also allows you to search for source material by legal citation and to find HTML versions of PDF pages. Jureeka! is great for quickly locating statutes, case law, regulations, federal court rules, international law sources, and more. It weaves together a host of law sources into a giant mesh."

You can create tags for legal sources found on the web and Poulshock has plans for a search/recommendation feature. Now Jureeka! links to around 275 volumes from the Federal Reporter, covering U.S. federal circuit court cases from 1880-1992 (hosted at Open Jurist (volumes 1-95) and Google Book Search (volumes 96-281), to several major Canadian legal sources, including: The Constitution Acts (1867 and 1982); Supreme Court cases from 1876 to the present (S.C.R. and SCC citations), Federal Court cases from 1988 to the present (F.C. citations), Consolidated Statutes of Canada, Consolidated Regulations of Canada; and citations to U.S. state cases in the regional reporters, such as A.2d, P.2d, P.3d, N.E.2d, N.W.2d, S.E.2d, and S.W.3d from the last decade or so, made available courtesy of Fastcase's Public Library of Law and Precydent.

I’m not a law librarian, but this seems like a great tool.

URLs:

Jureeka! blog: http://www.jureeka.blogspot.com/

Download from Firefox (now version 1.5): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6636

TELL ME SOMETHING I DIDN’T KNOW—LAW FIRMS ON THE WEB

Jonathan Thrope posted “Still Loading: Law Firms Lag Behind the Rest of Corporate America on the Web” on Law.com recently. I think we all knew that lawyers are late adopters of technology, but that’s not really what the post is about. He tells us about some very innovative law firm web sites. One is from Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It has animation, blogs, and alerts. And there are more almost as good.


URL: http://www.wcsr.com/

NEW LAW LIBRARIAN BLOGS

The Law Professor Blogs Network announced two new blogs:
Career & Professional Development Blog by Susan Gainer [University of Minnesota] and Mina Jones Jefferson [University of Cincinnati]
International Law Prof Blog by a group of 4 US law professors.

Thanks to the Law Librarian Blog for letting us know about these.

URLs:
Career & PD Blog: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/lawcareer/
Intl Law Prof Blog: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/international_law/

FOR SOLO LAW LIBRARIANS IN THE UK

If you are an OPL in a law library in Britain or Ireland, you are in luck. BIALL (the British & Irish Association of Law Librarians) has a new group just for you. The One Man Band/Small Teams Group has just been organized. "It is proposed that the primary method of meeting will be email and voice conferencing, with a session also being scheduled for the BIALL Conference. The aim will be to use the available technology to allow individiuals to participate in the activity of the group with a minimum expense of time and money."

There is a BIALL-SOLOS mailing list, too. If you want to be added to it, email with the message SUBSCRIBE BIALL-SOLOS.

URL: http://www.biall.org.uk -- click on OMB/Small Teams under Groups in the left column.

PS. Check out the results of their May 2004 survey on Budgeting and Marketing; Increasing Value in Hard Times.. There are some interesting numbers and some even more interesting comments under case studies.

THREE INTERESTING RESOURCES: One for law librarians, two for medical librarians

Real Lawyers Have Blogs: Law Blogs, Blawgs, Law Firm Marketing is produced by Kevin O’Keefe, founder of Lexblog, Inc. and former trial lawyer. His goals in blogging are: “to get people the legal help they need, to connect people in need of a lawyer with the most appropriate lawyer, to help lawyers, and to improve the image of the legal profession.” It’s a very professional looking blog, with legal news, links to “in-depth information on blogs and their marketing potential,” and links to other law and lawyer blogs. Although it isn’t aimed at law librarians, it’s one you should at least add to your RSS feed.
URL: http://kevin.lexblog.com/

The MLA Essential Guide to Becoming an Expert Searcher, by Terry Ann Jankowski, Neal-Schuman, 2008, ISBN 978-1-55570522-7, US$65.00. I haven’t seen a copy yet, but it looks like it would be a good resource for almost anyone. It includes a self-evaluation tool to “find out where you are on the novice-to-expert continuum,” an interview checklist, examples of librarian-user interactions, “practical guidelines for deciding what resource to start with,” tips and tricks, reviews of health-related databases, and exercises.
URL: http://www.neal-schuman.com/bdetail.php?isbn=9781555706227

Also new from Neal-Schuman and MLA is Answering Consumer Health Questions by Michele Spatz (2008, ISBN 978-1-55570532-6, US$65.00). “Spatz outlines the most common inquiries and behaviors of health information searchers and the most useful go-to resources.” There are “templates and forms and tips on everything from setting up the reference desk to encourage confidential inquiries to using body language to signal your availability….” Spatz also includes sections on ethics; legal issues; email, virtual, and telephone reference; marketing, and even job stress. Again, I haven’t seen the book, but it looks really great.
URL: http://www.neal-schuman.com/bdetail.php?isbn=9781555706326

INSITELAW: BLOG AND NEWSWIRE

I just discovered InsiteLaw, a site with both a blog and news "designed to focus on legal news and law blogs." It is a product of Mike Semple Piggot [Semple Piggot Rochez, London, UK] who also co-founded "the world's first Internet law school" (BPP Law School).

The newswire has an editorial, features, law reports, podcast interviews, news flashes, links to the blog (to allow participation), and practice/personnel notes.

URL: http://www.insitelawmagazine.com

RESOURCES FOR US NATIVE AMERICAN LAW

Out of the Jungle has a post with Free Online US American Indian [Native American?] Legal Resources. They include:

American State Papers, v. I & II, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwsplink.html#anchor2

Kappler’s Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/

9 Early Recognized Treaties with American Indian Nations, http://earlytreaties.unl.edu/

Indian Land Cessions in the United States, 1784-1894, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwss-ilc.html

Native American Constitution and Law Digitization Project, http://thorpe.ou.edu/

Native American Rights Fund site, http://www.narf.org/nill/triballaw/onlinedocs.htm—including Basic Indian Law Research Tips I and II, http://www.narf.org/nill/bulletins/lawreviews/articles/coloradoLawyerArticle-fed.pdf and http://www.narf.org/nill/resources/guide2.pdf

Department of the Interior’s Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians, http://www.ost.doi.gov/

and

The Tribal Court Clearinghouse (for current legal issues), http://www.tribal-institute.org/

URL: http://outofthejungle.blogspot.com/2008/04/free-online-us-american-indian-legal.html