August 2006 Archives

Mary Whisner's column, "Practicing Reference...", (Law Library Journal) is always a favorite of mine. Now I can welcome her to the world of bloggers. In her summer column she writes, "A Blog's Life", a tale of a law school reference librarian who decides to write a blog, Trial Ad Notes, to be exact.

In the opening paragraph she says "The question of whether developing and writing this blog is a good use of my time still remains open." Trust me, Mary, probably all bloggers wonder about that! The trick may be to market it more broadly than just within the organization. I know, I know, that's the primary reason for it's being, "to support the students and faculty of the Trial Advocacy Program at the University of Washington School of Law", but others interested in the topic can help make it seem all worthwhile! Meanwhile, your main audience benefits as well if it keeps you writing.

I STILL think that it would be fun to create and distribute a customized, branded, browser toolbar. So does Bill Drew. He's been experimenting with one at the Morrisville College Library using a free online toolbar creator at Effective Brand. Does that give you any ideas?

I've been playing with wikis a bit more lately, both at home and at work, and I'm starting to really appreciate the simplicity and power that wikis can provide. They aren't complicated creatures. A wiki gives you the ability to create and edit a collection of web pages, which you can search, link to and categorize; not such a big deal, really. But if you're working with others on a project, and you want to store your collective knowledge and discoveries in one place, it's hard to beat a wiki.

As Leigh Dodds says in his article "Embracing the Wiki Way: Deploying a Corporate Wiki" (Freepint, July 27, 2006), "Creating a wiki environment is as much of an exercise in community building as it is in software installation." Dodds further explains how he used a wiki at Ingenta to create a space where the engineers could capture project requirements and incorporate documentation. He didn't stop there. He found a myriad of other ways to use wikis to enhance communication and collaboration.

Creating community spaces are certainly just as important in law firms. It's not technical data that may be stored, but perhaps instead, knowledge of a certain area of law or new legal trend. It could also related to a particular deal or client. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because it's a wiki, you have to open it up to everyone. There are levels of security available on most wiki products. Just make sure the members of the community the wiki is aimed at are allowed to contribute. There's not much point to a wiki if it doesn't engage the group that it is intended to serve.

I heard a rumor last month that OCLC Worldcat was being released to the masses sometime in August. Okay, so it was more than rumor; InfoToday's Newsbreak ran a story by Paula Hane on the topic on July 17th. But I figured, why tell you about it until it's actually available! Well, now it is, according to Librarian In Black, who has a couple of good comments on the implementation.

This isn't the small subset of Worldcat data included in Yahoo and Google searches. According to Paula, "The WorldCat.org search box will make visible all 70-plus million records in the WorldCat database—not just the smaller data subsets of 3.4 to 4.4 million currently made available by the Open WorldCat partner sites, such as Google, Yahoo!, and others."

For those of my readers who aren't familiar with OCLC Worldcat, it's a collection of library cataloging records that tells you which books or periodicals are available, and the libraries where you can find them. The number of participating libraries is monumental. There's a good chance that your local public library is included, as well as academic libraries in your area. So if you're looking for a particular book, searching Worldcat should tell you the closest library that owns it. (Private firm libraries, as well as other special libraries have probably opted out of Worldcat.org since their collections aren't open to the public.)

You can even include the Worldcat search box on your web site, if you like:

I think it's very neat how they can deep link directly into a libraries catalog. (This isn't available for all libraries.) In other words, when I searched on "Clicker Training", I can see that the Pasadena Public Library has a book with those words in the title. When I click through, I go directly to the Pasadena Public Library catalog record. I'm just loving this.

I also like the "faceted browse" panel that allows users to refine their results by categories including author, subject, format, language and year of publication. Faceted searching/browsing is becoming increasingly popular as an easy way to help users narrow their search results. Considering that most users tend to search quite broadly by just typing a couple of words into a search box, whether it's Google, or your local library catalog, the option to reduce the results to those most relevant to the user is an important one.

If you subscribe to Firstsearch for inter-library loan purposes only, you may be able to substitute Worldcat.org, though there are more sophisticated search options available via Firstsearch. Public libraries will want to maintain their Firstsearch subscription, otherwise their holdings won't display on Worldcat.org.

I'll bet you figured that by now I've written up all my AALL experiences. But how about just one more program mention?

Debbie Ginsberg did a great overview program on wikis, Let’s All Wiki Wiki! Though there's nothing like being there, her Powerpoint can give you some good information, and her handout is excellent. Both of these are available on the LawLib Wiki that she created for the presentation. While you're there, get in the spirit and create or edit a page, just to get the feel of how these things work.

While public Internet wikis, editable by anyone, can have credibility and spam issues, wikis can be great for internal use and collaboration, so don't ignore this trend!

Thanks to Genie Tyburski for pointing out the wonderful Colbert segment on Wikipedia. As a result of its airing, action was required to protect the elephant entries on Wikipedia from faithful Colbert fans. You'll have to listen to find out why.

Don't get me wrong, I think Wikipedia is great. But, well, as he points out there is a legitimate danger to an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. On the other hand, if our government can make up facts, shouldn't the rest of should have the same right?