Recently in Miscellaneous Category

This is my first post on LawLibTech's new platform!  While I realize you probably don't care what platform this blog is run on, I'm excited, as MT 4.2 has some new community features that can encourage more interactivity, such as discussion groups.  The folks at MT are also actively adding more social networking options practically as we speak, so there's some great potential here.  Let me know if you have any thoughts on the kind of content you'd find useful. 

The biggest downside to moving LawLIbTech is the fact that all the URLs for articles/entries have changed.  So if you've linked directly to any content, you'll need to update your links.  Just know that everything is still here, and it's readily accessisble by browsing the categories or simply searching. 

Oh, and also, if you spot any little oddities with the site, be sure to let me know.  Moves of any kind rarely happen without a few glitches here and there.

It's ironic, really. Regular reading of the blog that offers "Tech Tricks, Tips and Downloads for Getting Things Done", LifeHacker, is a sure route to information overload. I mean, come on now, if I read all of these great ideas, I wouldn't have time to get anything done! And isn't that the opposite of what they're going for?

But I can't stop. This is great stuff. Today's feature, "How to Stop Checking Email on the Evenings and Weekends" makes a very interesting point. If you want to stop getting so much email, you need to stop sending it! Of course, why didn't I think of that. The more we try to get done, the more inundated we become. Here's another piece of advice I particularly like. "Don't scan email if you can't immediately fix problems encountered." It's true, I've been guilty of taking a quick look on a vacation day, but I'm trying to break that habit for this very reason. Nothing ruins a good vacation day than reading an email with a problem you can't fix until you get back to the office.

So, you see my problem. My RSS reader says I have 414 LifeHacker entries to catch up on. How can I truly be efficient if I can't keep up with blog entries on how to be efficient?

Here's my LifeHacker-like solution. Instead of reading the entries on a regular basis, I've been searching LifeHacker when I have a question. For example, when I needed to know how to create a slideshow of my Flickr photos, off I went to LifeHacker to run a search on "Flickr" and "slideshow". I'm researching web conferencing tools, so I run a search and find an interesting entry on a free service call Yugma. Hmm, I'm definitely giving this one a try.

Browsing LifeHacker by category is another way to go, and yields some interesting stories. I couldn't resist clicking on "Pets", which is how I found a great article on a pet travel web site, Plan a Pet Friendly Route with PetsWelcome.com. This is perfect for my "other" web site, CarGoDogs. And if you're particularly interested in a specific category, you can opt for the RSS feed for future articles on that topic.

Now, where was I? Ah yes, I was researching web conferencing tools when I was distracted by LifeHacker. I've obviously digressed. So many LifeHacker tips....so little time.

I've heard a handful of truly inspirational presentations in my lifetime. You know, the ones that make you you think differently about a subject than you did before. When that subject is the future of reference, and so, the future of the library profession, we should all pay attention.

Librarians need a vision of the future. Joe Jane's keynote presentation, "Reference 2.0: Ain't What It used to Be...And it Never Will Again," should be required listening for any librarian looking past the immediate future, past the wave of baby boomer retirements, and towards the future of reference in a time when there's a great deal of information already at the fingertips of anyone with a computer and an internet connection.

As Joe points out, in our increasingly digital world, people are helping each other. For now, print is the librarian's secret weapon. There's an incredible richness and depth in our print collections, but let's face let's as time goes by, print will become less important as the percentage of digital information grows.

We need to separate ourselves from the physical lbirary. "Be somewhere and everywhere." Physical stuff needs a place. Digital stuff needs to be everywhere.

An immediate and very practical hint from Joe relates to tracking statistics regarding virtual visits. If the physical realm is becoming less important, and the virtual library more important, then our future depends upon tracking and verifying the usage of our digital resources.

Joe gave an insightful and entertaining speech. Luckily, you can recreate the moment. This speech will be available as part of the Internet Librarian CD, available within the next 4-6 weeks. It's just another example of the power of digital information!

This program was a whirlwind. Unfortunately, the speaker, Tom Reamy, ran out of time and didn't have a chance to cover enterprise tagging in any detail, which was the topic I was particularly interested in.

Recommended by speaker:
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture

You'll find my notes under "Continue reading" below.

As a follow-up to my recent entry on Google Docs, I thought you might be interested in Harry McCracken's column from PC World. He discusses the trend towards online applications, and mentions several that I hadn't tried.

• Remember the Milk is a simple, yet powerful task manager that isn't just for shopping lists. Best of all it works on PDAs and cell phones, because, after all, you won't remember the milk if you don't have your reminders with you wherever you go.
• Picnik is for those who need an easy photo editor. It works seamlessly with Flickr, and is free!
• Zoho Notebook is similar to Microsoft OneNote, but Harry likes it better. I'm rather fond of OneNote, so I'm thinking I should give it a try. I'd have access to all my notebook information wherever I go!

Microsoft should be afraid, very afraid.

I would never suggest you try to circumvent your IT department. Nope, not me. And I would never dream of doing such things myself. But in the interest of full disclosure, I would be remiss if I didn't tell you about an interesting article published in the July 30 Wall Street Journal, Ten Things Your IT Department Won't Tell You. You might want to read it, oh, just for the entertainment value, or if you're looking for something to do on quiet August work day.

The article approaches each workaround by explaining the problem, options for a solution, the risks you take if you choose to use the solution, and suggestions for how to use the solution safely. You may particularly like "How to Visit the Web Sites Your Company Blocks", since research can sometimes take us places that might be, how shall I say it, somewhat unsavory. One of their solutions is to use Google's translation services to do an English-to-English translation of a blocked web site by entering http://www.Google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=www.blockedsite.com. (Replace the "blockedsite" url with that of the web site you want to visit.) Very clever. In theory only, of course.

You may have a legitimate business need to email or receive large files, in which case, you might be interested in the tip on how to send giant files. (YouSendIt is one option.) Accessing personal email on your Blackberry could have it's uses. But I won't even go into detail on installing unapproved software, how to store work files online, or how to look like you're working.

You didn't hear it from me.

You may know Nina Platt as the Director of Information Resources at Faegre & Benson LLP. You may or may not know that she recently left Faegre to start her own business offering library consulting services. Faegre's loss is our gain, especially since she's taking this opportunity to some of her wisdom on her new blog, Strategic Librarian.

In the past few weeks NIna has set the tone with her thoughtful entries on library-related topics such as, of course, strategic planning, developing a library business plan,
the basic steps to follow in order to manage library costs, how to evaluate your firm's needs for current awareness, and more.

Nina is always has something valuable to say about library, automation, and intranet topics. I'm looking forward to getting a Nina-fix on a regular basis via Strategic Librarian.

I keep telling my significant other that he's lucky to have his own computer consultant in-house. But when his computer, one of my hand me downs still running Windows 98, started having problems, I started to sweat. His email archives had disappeared, and it was my responsibility to track them down. If I failed, my name would be mud. I managed to recover the email files, but it was a traumatic experience for both of us.

That's when it occurred to me. All he really uses is email and Microsoft Word. He needs only the most basic features. Why not have him use Google Docs instead of Word, and Gmail, or Yahoo Mail instead of Thunderbird? I'd never have to worry about lost data again! And with that revelation I better understood the threat Microsoft sees in Google.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is an online, fairly stripped down, version of Word & Excel. The features are minimal, but most of us have minimal needs, especially at home. These apps aren't suitable for power users, and to some extent, business users, but for a fairly large number of people, they might be more than adequate.

They're also powerful collaboration tools. You and a selected few can view and edit documents at the same time and changes can be tracked. This online collaboration is something that you can't do with Word.

For example, I used Google Docs to write my article for Law Librarians in the New Millennium. When I had a first draft, I gave rights to the editor, so he could take a look and see if I was on the right track. When I was done, I didn't attach and send a file, I just notified the editor that it was compete, and he could feel free to grab it from Google Docs.

When I recently worked on a joint project with some friends, we collaborated on a document on Google Docs. I created the document, then invited them to view and edit. While on a conference call, we each made changes that were immediately seen by the others. There was no need for a web conference since we were working live in the document. It was very cool.

Google isn't the only one going down this road. Zoho has a full suite, geared towards business and home use, including project management and presentation apps, email, chat, a wiki, even a database module.

If this is all sounding a little bit familiar, you may be flashing back to the '90's, when Sun Microsystems introduced their "thin client" network PC (NetPC). Data and programs ran off of a central computer using Java. Most of the computing power was on the server, not the PC . These were the days before broadband became popular, and this idea never took off, at least partially because the price of desktop PCs dropped, leaving the NetPC as only slightly cheaper and thereby negating their main advantage.

But it seems that everything old is new again. With the recent advent of Ajax for web programming, developers can make these kinds of applications work more llike the ones on on your desktop. Considering how complex personal computers have become, the idea of not dealing with backups or software upgrades starts to sound more and more appealing.

I haven't yet moved my SO to the web. He doesn't tolerate change well, and since I recently purchased a new computer, again passing along my older computer to him, things have settled down a bit. But sometime soon, I'll encourage him over to a specially selected group of applications on the web. Possible data loss won't ever come between us again.

As I've mentioned before, I love my external hard drive enclosure. Sure, I thought about buying an external hard drive instead, but the hard drive enclosure (HDE) is more flexible and on top of that, it's cheaper. So what's not to like?

The HDE is a simple box that connects to your computer via a USB port. You can install a hard drive you've removed from a previous computer, or you can purchase extra ones to use in the HDE. Just hook the hard drive into the enclosure, and your computer will see it as an additional drive. If you have other hard drives that you want to access, just swap it out. It only takes a minute or two to remove one drive and install another.

The big advantage of an HDE over an external hard drive is that you can access an endless number of hard drives rather than just one. You might choose to use one hard drive for a monthly backup that you store off-site, and one for a on-site daily backup, for example. When I was moving to a new computer, I purchased another drive from Ebay and stored an image of my old computer on one drive, and selected data files on the other. What can I say, I was paranoid about losing data! It was easy to move the files from one computer to another. I just unplugged the HDE from my old computer and plugged it into the new one. All that was left was to copy the files.

Before sending my oldest computer to the hazardous waste disposal center, I removed the hard drive, and stashed it away. If for some reason I ever need some tidbit of information from the drive, I can pop it into the HDE.

If you want more information on hard drive enclosures, see the recent Lifehacker article, AlphaGeek: Turn an old hard drive into an external drive.

Amazon is getting a little TOO good at figuring out which products I might be interested in purchasing. Shortly after I wrote the previous blog on the pains of moving to a new computer, I received an email from Amazon suggesting I might want to buy the following product. How did they know?

My home desktop computer is close to 6 years old. That's eons in computer-years and it's well past time for a new one. But a new computer, now that's an experience you don't embark on lightly. It's not really the money; computers are cheaper than ever before. Not only that, but I've discovered Craig's List and found a good deal on a laptop that's less than a year old and still under warranty.

No, it's not the money, it's the time, all that time getting to know the newcomer, re-installing software, cleaning up the old stuff that isn't needed anymore, and figuring out what to do with the old computer.

I could have bought software to help me move my settings, etc. to my new computer. But I tried that last time, and it really didn't work. Of course, in 6 years, they might have figured out this data migration stuff, but I figured how hard could it be to just move a few files.

Quicken went well. Outlook, not so much. My inbox was duplicated in the file view, which was harmless enough, but I found it irritating. So I searched the web and found a solution, then worked on setting up my accounts, and an hour later, Outlook was ready to go.

The process continues. I've backed up all my data files to another hard drive that I have inserted into a hard drive enclosure, the best peripheral I've ever bought. I purchased an additional hard drive on ebay to use to backup the entire image of my old computer, just in case. It came complete with a virus. (Thank you Norton Antivirus, for catching and fixing that little problem!) I bought and installed Acronis True Image to create that image. have a new wireless router that needs to be installed. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm trying to adjust to the new extra wide monitor. I've had to tweak the settings to make it readable, and draw the shades because of the glare. I finally kept the high resolution, and set the fonts to large. Now if only someone would tell that to Movable Type. The text in this edit box is almost unreadable without the magnifier that came with my new wireless mouse.

I'm sure I'm making stupid mistakes, which is proof that this technology stuff stll isn't that easy.

You may not hear from me for a while.... :-)

Developing programs and web applications can be a difficult process with sometimes questionable results. The people that have the knowledge of the content or the work flow aren't typically the same ones that are doing the programming. What may make sense to a programmer may seem like obfuscation by the end user.

So there's a disconnect that's only getting worse. In the past a power user might have been able to put together a database or web page. A end user creating their own stuff goes through an iterative process, tweaking things until they make sense for the task at hand. With the increased sophistication and technical requirements, higher expertise is often required.

That gets me to paper prototyping. Thoroughly thinking through a project, and effectively communicating user needs to a programmer increases the chances that the goal is reached and the application used. But it's not easy to do. And programmers need to test their ideas on users before spending hours and hours toiling over their computer to create something that no one wants.

Paper prototyping can be done by anyone, technical or not, because it's as low-tech as you can get. Take a piece of paper, some tape and some scissors and start laying out a screen, analyzing functionality, and gathering input from users as to how things should work. Do all this BEFORE the programming begins, and the developers get attached to ideas that don't make sense. For an excellent introduction to the topic, see "Paper Prototyping by Shawn Medero.

If the software fairy didn't endow you with fancy-smancy software for creating library newsletters, you might want to try LetterPop, a web application complete with templates and drag and drop elements to help you make a fast and easy email, web or print newsletter. I haven't tried this, so if you do, report back to all of us.
[Spotted on LifeHacker]

It's official. YouTube has something for everybody. Here's a selection of not to be missed creative efforts that have been making the rounds of lawyers, law librarians and anyone else who cares to watch.

My personal favorite is the Westlaw Stress Toy video. Yep, you heard me. See for yourself.

[Spotted on Library Stuff]

From "referencelibrarians", here's Legal Research - The Movie. Maybe you'll see someone you know. [Spotted on Robert Ambrogli's Law Sites]

To round up this group, here's a music video that takes place in a law library. You might want to turn the volume down. Warning: Cards from the card catalog are thrown around willy-nilly. Stay calm, no cards were harmed during the making of this video, and all that information's probably in the OPAC anyway. (Thanks, Joan!)

If you'd like to peruse some of the presentations from Internet Librarian, they've started appearing on the Information Today site. If you don't see the one that you're looking for, check back later; I believe this page is a work in progress.

I have some bits of information from various programs scattered throughout my notes. Before I get to some of the major topics, let me get a few of these down.

Increasing the use of our online materials is a challenge, so I thought I'd stop by the program on that very topic. One speaker, Lesley Williams, made the point the we should always use terms that people understand. While that sounds very commonsenscical, in practice, it's easy to use labels that don't resonate with our users. For example, she suggested NOT using the word database when referring to online research services.

In addition to lists of online services such as you might have on an Intranet page, many libraries are writing subject guides in the same vein as about.com guides. Packaging information in a variety of ways certainly should help get your users to the materials they need.

There's been a lot of talk at this conference about social networks and Web 2.0. While I've yet to see anyone demonstrate tagging in a special library environment or Intranet, that doesn't mean it shouldn't or couldn't or isn't being done. But there are some experiments going on in the academic library environment, such as PennTags, which enables tagging of titles in the University of Pennsylvania library catalog. (For more information, see some of the blog posts about Penntags.) Tagging could add an interesting dimension to any library catalog. I hope some of the library software vendors are considering building this kind of feature into their products.

More later...

Internet Librarian 2006 started officially this morning with the announcement from Tom Hogan (President of Information Today), that this year's program, the 10th, for those of you who are counting, claims the largest attendance ever. As a practical matter, that means that those of us who like sitting on chairs need to get to thieir chosen program a bit earlier than usual.

The keynote speaker was J. Jance, the mystery writer. She was delightful. We laughed and we cried as she described her struggle to become a writer. She ended with a song, and even gave us an encore. It's hard to imagine just anybody pulling that off, but she did it. It was the most unique keynote I've ever attended. [pictures]

Picture from Flickr, wanderingeyre

It will no doubt take me a few days to catch up on my conference blogging. If you just can't wait to get a conference fix, check out the Information Today blog, and add to your RSS aggregator a Feedster search on Internet Librarian. The free wireless in the conference center has been popular amongst the bloggers, so stuff is being posted at a fast and furious pace.

I'd love to tell you all about the sessions I attended today, but I'm fading fast, and I need to be fresh for tomorrow's program. So all I can do is promise more tomorrow.

Those of you who subcribed to LawLibTech at some point in the last few years may or may not have realized that you haven't received an email notification of new content for some time. Since establishing LawLibTech.com, I've used Bloglet to deliver emails to subscribers, but for some reason, Bloglet hasn't worked for many months. It's way past time for a change! I'm now using FeedBlitz for email update delivery. If you've already subscribed, you don't need to do anything. You should start receiving email updates right away. If you'd like to subscribe, just type your email in the subscribe box on the right column of the main page, and you'll be added to the list right away!

For more information on how to receive RSS feeds via email, see RSS to Email Options.

Thanks for reading!

As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of dual monitors. There are certain tasks that I simply won't do unless I'm in my office with my laptop monitor alongside my "regular" monitor. I've heard that some people are so hooked on this configuration, they've offered to pay out of their own pocket to add the requisite video card and display to their work PC. Still, your local technology department may not be thrilled to change your workstation to a non-standard setup, even if the money isn't coming out of their budget.

Now you can attach an additional monitor without having to "open the box" to add a display card. Just use the Tritton, a USB device that let's you connect a second monitor with nothing more than the installation of the appropriate drivers.

You, too, can easily gain the efficiency afforded by two monitors!

I really enjoyed the recent article by Jennifer S. Murray in the March 2006 AALL Spectrum, 10 Steps to Releasing Your Inner Public Speaker. In tip #1, "Seek it Out", Jennifer compares public speaking to using eye drops. "It goes against your instincts." Another of my favorites, #5, is "Don't be afraid of the pause." As she points out, if you want to encourage questions, pausing can create the opportunity, and sometimes just out of the desire to fill the pause, someone will finally pop up with a comment or question. I think this is especially true in a web conferencing environment, where dead air can seem to last forever. Just remember, if there's no dead air, there's no possiblity of interaction with the audience.

"10 Steps" is short, to the point, and clever. I'll bet Jennifer's speeches are, too!

Several times I've forgotten how to do some basic, but well-hidden task, for example, turning off the notification feature in Outlook, or editing my signature, or some such thing. Sometimes a co-worker will ask a similar question about a basic application. Lately, I have often been able to find answers quickly and easily by searching the application's Help option, which provides me with information that makes me sound fairly smart and well-informed. But between you and me, it's not really me, it's Help that's gotten smarter.

We can easily forget that almost all applications come with a help option on the drop-down menu, offering instructions that some technical writer has slaved over. Perhaps it's our overall aversion to reading documentation, or it could be Help's reputation in the past for answering every question but the one you happen to need an answer to. Maybe it's the memory of Clippy, automatically popping up on your screen and providing well-meaning, but often useless assistance. At any rate, if you haven't visited the help section of your favorite application recently, you might not realize how much Help has improved in the last few years and how much time you can save by giving it a try.

Of course, the kind of questions that Help can answer are usually those geared to basic functionality. When things go awry and error messages start to populate your screen, you'll probably need more.

The newest marketing strategy is the oldest marketing strategy. It's a sign of the times that we have have to be reminded, prodded and encouraged to maximize face time with our clients/patrons. (Face Time: The Power of Person-to-Person Marketing, Information Outlook, December 2005). It's become too easy and comfortable to sit at our desks and work, taking and responding to questions via email, rather than "waste time" hand delivering documents or otherwise walking the halls of our organization. But if we don't get that face-to-face contact that's so important, we could just as easily be outsourced to some remote and distant location.

Library Week festivities are great, but it's also important to remember that year-round face time "fosters a sense of familiarity and eliminates the barriers that prevent both clients and information professionals from seeking each other out when needed."

Just about every librarian will eventually get THE question, either from a patron, friend or family member, that is, "How do I catalog my personal book collection?" Okay, it's even occurred to me that an inventory of my eclectic mix of dog books, mysteries and tech-type titles might come in handy, or at least it would allow me to feel as organized at home as I am at work. At any rate, we haven't always had a good solution for our favorite bibliophiles. Until now, that is. Enter, Library Thing, a cross between a library OPAC, and Amazon.com with hints of social web sites such as Flickr and FURL.

Steve Cohen has been talking about Library Thing for a while now, and it gets his vote for his favorite tool of 2005. I can see why. There are other similar web sites out there, but as far as I can see, none of them support tagging AND LC subject headings with call numbers, offering the best of both worlds, at least from a librarian's standpoint.

It's easy to get started. An account including up to 200 titles is free. After that, the cost is $10 per year, or $25 for life. Life is a long time, perhaps not so long in the internet world, so it's good to know you can get your data out of a site as well as into it by exporting your titles to a text, csv format, which is easy to open and manipulate in Excel.

Once you've set up your account, just search by dropping in title keywords, author, possible tags, etc., just as you would in Amazon. Should you be so lucky as to have an ISBN number, you can search by that as well.

By the way, if you want to share your catalog, you can, but it's not required. You can edit your profile to keep your collection private. But that does kind of miss the point. Swapping book interests with the Library Thing community is part of the fun.

What Library Thing really needs is a circulation system. I never cataloged my book collection when I was a kid, but I DID institute a simple card and pocket . What better way to keep track of who it is that hasn't returned my recently read Sue Grafton mystery. A Christian Science Monitor article suggests using the comment field just for this purpose.

Okay, this begs the question, how about a "library" version of 'Library Thing" to make cataloging fun and easy at work as well as at home? Sorry, but I just had to ask....

Book lovers are often adamant that books, in their present print form, will always exist. That may be true. After all, I'm quite sure I'll always want a print version of Pride and Prejudice. On the other hand, I'm convinced that someday an ebook will be invented that will convenient and readable enough, that it will rival the printed book in our affections. Just because it hasn't happened yet only means that the right implementation/product hasn't come along.

I don't know if the new Sony Reader, introduced just last week, will do the trick, but it does seem to be an improvement over previous attempts. (If Sony would like to send me a "review" copy, I'd be happy to give it a spin! :-) ) The resolution is improved and the eye-straining flicker common on computer-type displays has been eliminated. It weighs less than 9 ounces, but can hold up to 80 average size books, with the possibility of more with the optional storage.

Librarian in Black, where I first read about the Sony Reader, doesn't think that anyone would buy a device for only one purpose, and points to some limited success with ebooks on PDAs. But I can assure you that I won't read a book on my PDA. The screen is just too small. Of course, you could create an larger ebook that is also a PDA, but then you're stuck hauling a larger PDA around with you when you don't necessarily need it. Sometimes creating a device for a sole purpose ensures that it does one thing, and does it well.

I don't believe the success of the e-book will be based on the fact that it's a one purpose device. The success will depend upon whether it does the job, and does it well. For me the additional critical issue is whether it would reduce the net weight of my train bag. If so, then I'm fine carrying a PDA, an MP3 player and an e-book. I could probably fit all that in my purse, and get rid of the train bag altogether!

For more information, see The plot thickens with a thin eBooks device, USA Today, Jan. 4, 2005. (Spotted on TVC Alert.)

How did we ever survive without web conferencing? Remember when we had to wait until a vendor rep came to town in order to see their new product? No more, thank goodness.

ILTA, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), formerly called Lawnet has been making great use of web conferencing by repeating, via Live Meeting, several successful programs offered at their annual meeting held in August. I attended 2 of these web programs, "Jumpstarting eLearning" and "How West KM Was Won" and they were both excellent, and included a level of technical detail that I've often wished for when attending other conferences.

If you're a member, and you missed the annual conference, AND you missed the webinar, that's okay, because they're recorded. So even if your schedule is tight, you still have every opportunity to view the session from the ILTA web site. (See "Communications - Past Meeting Transcripts.") What a great member benefit.

If you're interested in legal technology, you need to join ILTA. To join ILTA, your firm must purchase a membership, the cost of which is based on the number of attorneys in the firm, then any employee can join at no additional cost. Now if they'd just stop having the annual meeting in Florida in August!

I purchased a fairly expensive grandstand seat ticket to the Rose Parade. But when I heard the rain start somewhere around 5 am I figured, that was that, I was staying in bed. It's true. I'm a rain wimp. After all, I'm a native Southern Californian!

I finally got up just in time to watch the parade start at 8:00 am from the comfort of my kitchen. I'll admit I was curious....I knew how hard it had been raining....what DOES the Rose Parade look like in the rain? The last time it rained on the Rose Parade, I hadn't yet been born. So I watched the "floats" make their way down Colorado Boulevard, and the bands cheerfully slog through the wet stuff, smiling and playing. After about 45 minutes, the broadcast was interrupted by a flash flood warning. Then I felt a twinge of guilt. These kids were walking 5 miles in the rain, and I couldn't manage to put on my rain coat to watch. My curiosity got the best of me. Would those instruments still play after a couple of inches of rain had fallen on them? What kind of condition could they be in by the end of parade? This reporter decided to find out. After all, dogs have to be walked, rain and shine. So I loaded one up and drove to within a couple of blocks of Victory Park where the bands finish and disperse, to find out.

There was no pedestrian traffic, and the only vehicles I saw were large buses waiting for their wet passengers, and perhaps a few parents picking up their bedraggled youngsters. Parking close to the park was quite easy. When I got out of the car, the first thing I heard was the sound of a band playing. Yep, it was POURING rain, they'd just walked 5 miles in that mess, there was only a scattering of spectators, and they were still playing. Amazing.

I didn't get close enough to see the floats, though I could see the tow truck pulling one through the intersection. My jeans were soaked by this time, and Cassie was looking less than pleased, so I took her home, changed into rain pants (what a wonderful invention), and took the other dog back down. The wind picked up, as did the rain. I could almost see better without my glasses than with them. We'd had about 3 inches of rain by 10:30 am. Nonetheless, more music drifted across the park. It was beautiful. But I must admit, I didn't stay long. :-)

It may not be a dry new year, but I hope it's a happy one for all!

If you multi-task your way through the day, when evening comes you may find it difficult to figure out what you actually accomplished. Multi-tasking, a skill frequently requested by prospective employers, is the enemy to personal productivity according to Paul Chin in his article "Unplugged: Information Overload Requires a Human Solution."

Chin states that "Technology alone won't solve all your personal productivity and information overload problems - it can only ease them." He also says that "Time management and personal productivity is a behavioral process; no software can teach you this." We need to take control of our behavior, our "internal causes" of personal unproductivity such as:

• Obsessive need to be "plugged in" such as constantly checking e-mail or calling the office
  
• Poor attention span and lack of focus
  
• Rampant multitasking and the inability to prioritize tasks
  

Of course, one of the reasons that librarians are proud of their multi-tasking abilities is because interruptions are impossible to avoid in this line of work, and responsiveness is most definitely highly valued. This puts us at high risk for information overload. But if you're proud of the fact that you respond to all emails within 30 seconds of receiving them, regardless of importance, you may need a 10-step plan to get you to prioritize and take control of your work.

I'm trying to do my part. Until Outlook can tell the difference between spam and an urgent message from my boss I'm keeping the darn preview/alert feature turned off. I'm not ready to turn off the vibrate feature on my Blackberry yet, though I'm trying hard to learn to ignore it. We've all got to take these things one day at a time.

According to the article "Time to Put Away the Umbrellas", the layoff of their entire library staff in the Chicago office of Baker & McKenzie was a turning point for law librarians who responded by being "more vocal about how much they do for lawyers and for the firm as a whole." Apparently it worked, or perhaps the fact that librarians can still track down information more efficiently than lawyers would have eventually become obvious regardless.

The turnaround in our prospects is clarified by statistics compiled by American Lawyer, and are included in summary form in the article. But let me summarize. Staff is up. Compensation is up. Billable hours are up.

If you're working on your budget or annual report, and want to show management the current trends in law libraries, get a hold of this article, and/or the American Lawyer statistics! Does anyone know if this article has been reprinted elsewhere so that non-Californians can enjoy it, too?

"Time to Put Away the Umbrellas: Budgets and salaries head northward as firms concede librarians importance", California LegalPro, Fall 2005

I've had an article sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks waiting to be blogged, but I couldn't find the full text on the PC Magazine web site and I wanted to wait until I could link to it. I tried again, and it's still not there. As far as I can tell, PC Magazine is no longer making all of their articles available for free, though some columns are available shortly after publication. And here I was blaming their search engine for not find the most obvious and current stuff! I did, however, find KeepMedia, where articles from PC Magazine, and others, can be purchased for a dollar. I've never used KeepMedia, but I will link to PC Magazine articles on KeepMedia when blogging them in the future so you have an easy way to get the full text of referenced articles. If you have any experience with this service, good or bad, please let me know!

I've heard people extoll the benefits of using two monitors, a configuration that became easier to accomplish with XP. But I was slightly suspicious that this setup was desired more for the cool factor than for a real, practical computing advantage. And besides, I only HAD one monitor. I had no extras sitting around that I could experiment with, and until recently, I'd never seen such a setup in action. Then, a helpful tech guy at work set up my laptop LCD and my desktop monitor in a dual configuration. The first time I moved my mouse from one monitor to the other, I was hooked.

Here's how it works. One monitor is designated as the primary monitor; that's where your start menu and toolbar resides. You can drag open windows from one monitor to the other, secondary monitor, with your mouse. If you're working with two different applications, you can see them both at one time, one on one monitor and the other, well, on the other one. It's really quite simple.

Steve Bass explains the benefits quite nicely in his Tips & Tweaks article, Two Monitors Are Way Better Than One. The ability to see two full-size windows at a time is a big productivity boast. It reminded me of what I miss about working with paper, that is, the ability to spread out and easily look back and forth comparing and referring to several different items without having to obscure my view of any one of them. Cutting and pasting from one window to another becomes infinitely easier, and you don't lose your bearings in the window that is temporarily obscured like you can when using one monitor. When I'm only working in one application, I like keeping my calendar open on one screen at all times on the second monitor in hopes that I'll keep better track of my activities during the course of a day. There are obvious benefits for legal researchers, many of whom have bemoaned the inability to easily look at two full windows at once.

Then I had a vision. Why stop at just two monitors? Why not more? Desk space is limited, you might say. How many monitors can you realistically have? How about smaller monitors? If we really wanted to get retro, perhaps a small "rolodex" monitor for your contacts, another small monitor for you calendar, etc., etc. I think I can see back to the future! Maybe someday...

For information on how to configure multiple monitors, see How To Configure and Use Multiple Monitors in Windows XP from the Microsoft Knowledgebase.

What? You don't have enough room on your desk for two monitors? Try this product, two monitors, one stand. What fun.

Records management is a discipline that in the recent past might have been considered by some as, how shall I say it, less than scintillating. But especially in service industries such as law, safeguarding records is a mission critical task, a fact that became even more obvious with the destruction resulting from 9/11. Technology has also had tremendous effects on records management from RFID technology to electronic records management. Lee Nemchek discusses these issues and more in her article in Practice Innovations, Critical Issues in Legal Records Management. It's a very interesting view into what's become the new world of record management.

LawLibTech has a new look, and a new home. I'm been thinking about making a move to a new web host for a while, and finally took the plunge this weekend.

Glitches after such a change are almost inevitable. Please let me know if you see something out of place, or find a page that doesn't seem to be working right.

And as usual, thanks for reading!

I guess I'll be wondering about his one for a while. Why did Amazon send me an email with a recommendation for the....

Panasonic ER411NC Nose and Ear Hair Groomer
Panasonic

Amazon.com
For fastidious groomers, this trimmer takes care of unsightly nose and ear hair for an impeccable turnout. A much safer alternative to scissors, the ergonomic stainless-steel blade retains its... Read more

Was this a result of an anonymous tip? Is there something I should know? I will simply HAVE to assume that there is something not quite right with their personal recommendations.

Let me just preface this by saying that Amazon is one of my favorite ecommerce sites, and has been for many years. I remember the early days when they even sent me Christmas presents to thank me for my business. Those days are gone, but that's okay because I still have several Amazon travel mugs in fairly good condition, and, after all, how many travel mugs do you really need?

But once or twice I felt the need to contact someone at Amazon, that is, a real person, via that old, yet still quite effective technology, the telephone. And Amazon doesn't make it easy. If you're persistent, and click around the site enough, you may eventually find the phone number, though I couldn't tell you now where. But that's a lot of aggravation at a time when you may already be a bit peeved with an incorrect shipment, etc. So let me make it easy for you. This web site contains contact information for Amazon Customer Service, and even their legal counsel. For good measure, the Ebay and Paypal numbers are included as well.

Here's another tip. If you find yourself needing to call Amazon, but you've misplaced this particular web site address, and can't remember where you read it, just Google "Amazon Customer Service". You'll find a number of people (including Genie Tyburski at the Virtual Chase) have published the number in their own efforts to point Amazon customers in the right direction.

For those of you who are non-librarians, I should probably explain that we tend to get excited about any depiction of librarians in the media that doesn't involve glasses, a bun, and oh, especially shushing. With that in mind, if you're looking for something to watch on Sunday night at 8:00, tune into TNT for The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. While it's true that the hero is described as "a bookish nerd", I can forgive that one slight, since this IS an action picture.

While we're on the topic of fiction, if you're doing any holiday shopping for your favorite librarian, you might want to consider a recent fiction release, The Librarian. But be forwarned, as one Amazon review said, this book is "not for Republicans." I haven't read it yet, but plan to, assuming that I'm someone's favorite librarian!

I've been reading a book on dog training called "Click for Joy!" It's an extremely well organized and well written. But this blog isn't about dog training, so why am I telling you this? Because I was struck by how much the organization and content was influenced by the internet.

I use the Windows XP Live Update service regularly to keep my home computer current with all the updates and security fixes that are continually pushed out by Microsoft. For the last week, the Live Update icon has been sitting in my system tray to let me know it's time to download again. Yet I hesitate. Why, you might ask, am I reluctant to update? In three words, Service Pack 2. While it's main purpose it to make your PC more secure, vigilant security comes with a price.

I'm not the only one who is concerned. Business customers are also hoping for more time to test applications for potential problems, so Microsoft provided them a workaround to delay the inevitable.

My postings have been a bit sporadic this month due to several trips to Sacramento to visit a litter of pups sired by our Belgian Tervuren, Raider. Last weekend, to Raider's utter disgust, we returned with a little girl from the litter who we've named FlashFire's Casablanca Rose, or Cassie for short.

She's been quite the distraction around here, but she has to rest sometime, so I'm trying to use nap time to catch up on my blogging or sometimes even shower. In the meantime, I thought I'd share a picture, okay, two pictures, so you can see that I'm not biased when I say she's the cutest puppy in the world.

If you use Word you need to understand the ramifications of using Word's tracking feature. While track changes is helpful for monitoring every change to a document, and is especially useful when collaborating on a document with others, it has a dark side. If you don't remove the tracking when the document is done, anyone who reads it can go back and see what you removed and changed. In legal situations this can be critical, but even with less contentious parties you might want to be more circumspect.

PC Magazine's article, "Revealing Codes", details what can go wrong, and tells you how to avoid revealing more than you intended by using Word configuration options and tools. However, they don't mention one alternative that seems simple and reliable; don't send the document to the recipient in Word format, instead save it to PDF, especially if it's going outside the firm.

OCLC Worldcat contains detailed information on more than 53 million books, serials, tapes, videos, etc. held by thousands of libraries, essentially pointers to hard copy materials and where they can be found. Though OCLC was originally conceived to help libraries share cataloging information, it's also a very valuable research tool. Even Google thinks so! They plan to include 2 million Worldcat records in their search results in the near future.

In the March/April issue of Online Magazine, Peter Jasco discusses how to use Worldcat to answer the question "Which is the best book on __________________?" He suggests searching on a topic, then sorting search results by the number of libraries that hold each item, showing the most popular titles at the top of the list.

Spotted on Inter-Alia, you can now search Findlaw's Directory of Lawyers from within Word 2003's research pane. Hmmm, that's nice. It saves the trouble of opening the browser, which I usually have open anyway. But hey, Microsoft, how about allowing us to dump search results from the directory into Access or Excel? THAT would be handy.

Are you looking for a free high-quality legal newsfeed for your Internet or intranet site? Jurist's Paper Chase, the continually-updated legal news weblog edited at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law by Professor Bernard Hibbitts and his volunteer staff of over 30 law students is now making legal news headlines available free to legal, educational, and governmental websites and intranets. The headlines can be added to your site by incorporating an rss feed (with clear attribution to Jurist), or just grab the ready-made html code.

Marshall Breeding will present Where is the Industry Headed? Top Trends to Watch in 2004 on Feb. 11, 2004, 8 AM to 9 AM Pacific as a Dynix Institute Seminar. It's a free web seminar so you don't have to travel any farther than your desk!  If you miss the live presentation, not to worry, I see an archive for past presentations.  You've gotta just love web conferencing!

I have a confession to make. Every time I open up my computer, even to do something simple like install a modem, I break into a sweat. The insides of the darn thing scare me. I attribute my computer hardware phobia to a summer evening in 1991 when a luckless telephone service representative tried to walk me through upgrading the memory on my Packard Bell 386 computer. In those days tiny jumpers had to be re-set in patterns unintelligible to man, woman and computer geek. It eventually took an experienced PC service rep several hours to figure it out.

So my computer is now two years old and I've never cracked the case. It may be time for me to screw up my courage, bite the bullet, and just do it. Why here, why now?

The option to post comments on lawlibtech.com hasn't been available for a week or so. I had to disable comments due to a spamming incident on the site. Comments are back, but I will be approving all comments before they are actually posted to ensure no spam creeps in. So please be aware that there will be a delay of up to a day before your comment appears. But don't let that discourage you! Please DO comment!

New Year's Day is always exciting when you live in Pasadena, whether you go to the Rose Parade or not. I was able to watch the 8:00 am fighter jet flyby from my front yard. They were a couple of miles away, but for a few seconds I had a clear view. Later in the day I got lucky when the three planes in formation flew directly over my house. I'm not sure where they were headed. Maybe they were on their way to the Rose Bowl. Regardless, it was an unexpected treat.

It's shaping up to be a bad flu season. Just another reason to stay away from that germ factory called a mall. And since it's also the holiday shopping season, I thought a few Amazon shopping tips might be in order.

I'll warn you in advance, this post is totally off-topic, but all work and no play, etc., etc.

Those of you living outside California may not be familiar with the "Happy Cows" commercials. Luckily, you can view a few recent ones on the California Cheese web site. I just saw the newest one and it's great fun. Click to get past the splash screen, then choose "Happy Cows", "Happy Cow TV", then "Big Sheep". Enjoy.

Books have been getting a lot of attention on the web this week. And for good reason. There is, obviously, a tremendous amount of information contained in books. But finding out which book has the information you need has almost always involved getting your hands on a copy of it. In this electronic age, this is not very efficient. Whereas journal information has been accessible in full-text electronically for many years. My guess is that, for that reason, journal literature gets much more use.

Leave it to Amazon to be the first to offer full-text searching of books.

After many years of waiting, Pasadena finally has train service to downtown Los Angeles! I love taking the train to work. It gives me another hour a day to read! So I'm doing better keeping up with my professional reading.

This morning I read Knowledge Services and SLA's History: An Interview with Guy St. Clair, in SLA's Information Outlook, September 2003. I know, it doesn't sound like fascinating reading, but I was on the train and figured why not. Turns out, the entire interview is worth the read. But what particularly struck me was his description of the differences between special librarians and "other" (academic-type) librarians.

Violation of copyright in the for-profit environment became a difficult to control problem with the advent of the photocopy machine. But now that many newsletter-type publications are available in electronic form, it's even easier than for a recipient of copyrighted material to "duplicate" the material by sending it on to small or large groups of people, without permission of the publisher. And, in fact, there are still publishers who are reluctant to issue electronic versions of their newsletters for that very reason.

So this news should strike fear in the heart of all risk-management types.