Monthly archives: December, 2015

Bens Guide to the U.S. Government: Free, Educational Content from GPO for Children and Adults of all Ages

Kelly Seifert gives us a tour of Ben’s Guide to the U.S. Government, a service of the U.S. Government Publishing Office that presents educational content for children and adults of all ages on the workings of the U.S. Government and U.S. history, with a focus on civics. Recently redesigned, the site features all new site content, a device-friendly infrastructure, and a modernized look and feel that has been optimized for an intuitive learning experience.

Subjects: Business Research, Government Resources, Library Marketing, Reference Resources, Search Engines

New Job De-/script/-ions for Attorneys with Coding and Tech Business Skills

Alan Rothman discusses the growing interest in and need for attorneys who have degrees and skills from another field that serves client requirements, previously focused on areas such as engineering, business and medicine. Already well established in professions that include journalism and economics, the legal arena is increasingly embracing the skills and value added work product associated with technical coding. This is reflected in new course offerings in advanced degree programs as well as in job positions that focus on data management and data analytics.

Subjects: Continuing Legal Education, Legal Education, Legal Marketing, Legal Profession, Legal Research Training, Recruiting, Technology Trends, Training

Deep Web Research and Discovery Resources 2016

Marcus Zillman has a longstanding and comprehensive expertise pertaining to the Deep Web. The Deep Web or Dark Web covers trillions of pages of information held in dynamically generated repositories throughout the global web that remain inaccessible through popular applications and search engines. Searching for this information using deeper search techniques and the latest algorithms allows researchers to obtain a vast amount of information that was previously unavailable or inaccessible, in fields that include the sciences and maths, corporate and financial data, and data only surfaced using file sharing applications. Zillman’s new guide documents a wide range of sources to improve your research results, including articles and paper, cross database search services and tools, peer to peer and file sharing engines, and semantic web resources.

Subjects: Data Mining, Evaluation of Internet Resources, Internet Resources - Web Links, Open Source, Search Engines, Search Strategies, Technology Trends

Competitive Intelligence – A Selective Resource Guide 2015

Sabrina I. Pacifici’s comprehensive current awareness guide focuses on leveraging a selected but wide range of reliable, topical, predominantly free websites and resources. The goal is to support an effective research process to search, discover, access, monitor, analyze and review current and historical data, news, reports, statistics and profiles on companies, markets, countries, people and issues, from a national and a global perspective. Sabrina’s guide is a “best of the Web” resource that encompasses search engines, portals, government sponsored open source databases, alerts, data archives, publisher specific services and applications. All of her recommendations are accompanied by links to trusted content targeted sources that are produced by top media and publishing companies, business, government, academe, IGOs and NGOs.

Subjects: Blogs, Competitive Intelligence, Internet Trends, Legal Technology, Libraries & Librarians, News Resources, Online Legal Research Services, Search Engines, Search Strategies, Technology Trends

Solitary Confinement: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Ken Strutin’s article surveys notable legal developments, new scholarship, and recent scientific research concerning the administration and effects of solitary confinement. Strutin describes solitary confinement as punishment’s punishment. He states that solitary is where the mind is worn out by pacing the same floor, viewing the same walls, tuning in to the same sounds without relief. He documents how extreme isolation has devastating psychological and physical consequences, collectively described as “SHU syndrome.” Strutin delivers illumination to the heart of legal challenges and legislative reforms now supported by an expanding body of research into the harmfulness of prolonged human isolation.

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Criminal Law, Legal Research

Academically Supporting Entering Freshmen: High School Graduates Unprepared to be College Freshmen

In Part 5 of her 5 part series, Lorette Weldon, Librarian and Educator discusses how high school students are not guaranteed success in college when they have completed college-preparatory courses. In high school English, mathematics and science courses, students have not consistently been taught how “to draw inferences, interpret results, analyze conflicting source documents, support arguments with evidence, solve complex problems that have no obvious answer, draw conclusions, offer explanations, conduct research, and generally think deeply about what they are being taught.”

Subjects: Education