July 2004 Archives

The "copyright" question came up after my Adobe Acrobat session at AALL. How do you keep people from distributing the PDF to everyone and their brother, possibly violating copyright law? After all, the same copyright issues apply to the electronic version as apply to the hard copy research results.

Many libraries use a rubber stamp for photocopied articles that says: "This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code)." (See "Copyright & Fair Use - Library Photocopying" from Stanford University.) You can do the same thing for your PDF file in Adobe Acrobat 6.0 using the stamp tool.

A few selected software vendors have offered library applications (cataloging, serials, etc.) using the ASP (application service provider) model for several years now, but the idea is apparently gaining in popularity. I can understand why. Configuring and maintaining cataloging software is no trivial task, and in most law firms, it's not exactly a high priority for IT. Companies that offer hosted cataloging solutions maintain the software on their own servers, eliminating the need for technical support for the catalog within your own organization.

Spotted on Library Stuff, NPR is now offering 5 national, and 7 local, RSS feeds for NPR content. I'm excited...the only thing I miss about driving the congested Southern California freeway system to work is NPR. And that's not enough to get me off the train and back in the car!

The West Legal Directory has always suffered a bit of an identity crisis. Martindale-Hubbell is the gold standard for attorney directories, and it was always a challenge to convince firms that they should pay for another listing in WLD after shelling out the thousands of dollars for MH. When West's purchased Findlaw, the WLD, historically available free of charge, was incorporated into the other free Findlaw resources.

Thomson is hoping to provide an incentive for law firms to purchase enhanced profiles with their newly named Thomson Legal Record. They've enhanced the profile information provided by the firm, to include an attorney's "litigation history", incorporating links cases in which the attorney was involved, with the full-text easily retrievable for anyone with a Westlaw password.

It can be difficult to know how frequently the costly web research services your firm subscribes to are actually used. Many web vendors don't provide any kind of usage data for unlimited, subscription-based services. Elite Research Manager and Research Agent want to help you with that problem.

Thomson Elite unveiled their new Elite Research Manager at AALL last week. ERM is actually a licensed version of Lookup Precision, previously called Online Lookup.

ERM is designed to help recover costs by providing client validation and/or monitor usage for electronic subscriptions, such as Pacer, BNA, CCH, Westlaw, LexisNexis and LiveEdgar, just to name a few.

In addition to Lookup Precision's standard features, ERM also integrates with the Elite billing system so that cost recovery is speedy and accurate, and client-matter information is accurate and up-to-date.

Bloglines, my favorite web-based news aggregator, has done a major remodel, resulting in a more attractive and more functional interface. There are several new features that I'm just starting to explore. I'd say the most important one is the ability for subscribers to create a quick and easy "blog."

Here's a sample Bloglines blog that I'm trying out to "clip" the many good news items out there that I don't have the time or inclination to comment on in LawLibTech. While I could easily do this in Movable Type, the software I use for LawLibTech, having this feature incorporated into the tool I use for reading RSS feeds makes it even easier to handle. Let me know if you think this is useful.

Dan Brown writes an excellent article on Gmail's email management tools including, of course, searching, as well as threading, labels, filtering, and spam handling. After reading this article, I can see that I really NEED Gmail. Now if they'd only add a feature for POP email, I'd be good to go!

RSS feeds are spreading and multiplying. Keeping track of them is likely to get harder. For a continuously updated list of sources for finding law-related RSS feeds, and a good selection of the higher-quality RSS feeds available, see Genie Tyburski's RSS News Feeds for Law.

I'm excited that so many search engines, such as Amazon's A9 and Google are directing people to, of all things, books. We know that not everything is on the web, and books contain valuable information, but if they're not represented somehow in the web search engine results, all that good stuff will go to waste.

Yahoo search is now getting into the act with their recent announcement that they will join the OCLC Open WorldCat Project. Two million cataloging records are now included in Yahoo search results, complete with a list of libraries holding any particular item. For more details see Barbara Quint's Newsbreak, Yahoo! Search Joins OCLC Open WorldCat Project.

I really have some catching up to do after being out of town!

I'm pleased that LawLibTech was included in the "Eddix 50", a list of the top 50 legal blogs. The list is really quite handy, offering brief and thoughtful descriptions of each blog. If you're looking for a list of legal blogs, this is a good list of high-quality blogs.

I'm back from the American Association of Law Libraries Conference (AALL) in Boston! I thoroughly enjoyed it, and will be posting on several new products and announcements from the exhibit hall. I want to thank everyone who attended my session, "Reaching the Global Patron: Packaging Your Research with Adobe Acrobat 6.0," on Wednesday. It was one of the last sessions of the conference, and I was pleased to see there were still many hardy souls out there who were attending programs up to the very end.

As promised, I've posted my Powerpoint and the handout which includes the Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Quick Reference Guide.

Dennis Kennedy and Ron Friedmann, in a recent feature article in Law Practice Today, discuss the disappointments and difficulties of using document management systems for KM purposes, and brainstorm on other possible solutions to the dilemma of work product retrieval.

Gmail has been available on a limited release for 3 months now. If you're wondering what all the fuss is about you'll want to read Rich Wiggins' article in Searcher Magazine, GMail: Google Storms the Webmail Market. This is the most comprehensive and informative article on Gmail that I've seen, with comparisons to other web email services, a complete list of features, a discussion of Gmail's aversion to folders, and a review of privacy concerns, not to mention details on the flaws the privacy advocates haven't noticed that could open your Gmail email up to public scrutiny.

Camtasia is a handy little piece of software. I use it mainly to record training sessions, though it can be handy for presentations and for creating web tutorials as well. Because Camtasia records anything happening on a computer screen, it is also a logical choice for recording usability tests. Techsmith must have realized that's how Camtasia was being used, because they've produced another product specifically for that purpose call Morae.

Previously available via Userland, the New York Times is now offering its own RSS feeds.

[Spotted on the Shifted Librarian]

As you may already know, posting your email address anywhere on web is a sure-fire way to increase your spam exponentially. Luckily there are ways to prevent the onslaught. PC Magazine's article "Protect Your E-Mail Address" tells you how to keep the spam at bay when you absolutely, positively need to post your address to a web site.

It can be an expensive and labor intensive proposition to create a taxonomy and/or thesaurus from scratch. Though sometimes your organization's needs are unique and require a custom approach, other times a well-developed, ready-made taxonomy would fit the bill. However, it's not always obvious where to find such an animal.

Taxonomy Warehouse offers a database of available taxonomies on different topics, some of which can be ordered directly from the Warehouse.