For another take on the SLA Conference, see The 1998 SLA Annual Conference – Show Us the Money (Infotoday Newsbreak)

Indianapolis, Indiana.

Barbara Silbersack reports direct from the SLA Conference!

Sunday morning started with the Tax Librarian’s Roundtable where Mari Rose Coulson spoke on training issues for adult learners. Tax Analysts announced that they would be hosting a new tax librarian’s listserv. (Check the Tax Analysts Discussion Groups Page after the conference for more information.)

Sunday evening, the Legal Division celebrated its 5th anniversary at it’s annual ice cream social. The Legal Division holds the distinction of being the fastest growing SLA division.

Jenny Dam, Research Librarian at Dinsmore & Shohl attended the Monday morning Legal Division Breakfast, which included a demonstration of a new product from WESTLAW called Citelink. Citelink can automatically find legal cites in your documents, and create hyper-links to the full-text on Westlaw.com. For more information, or to download Citelink, see West Group’s Legal Tools.

Jenny also attended a program sponsored by the Solo Librarian’s Division “Using the Web for Research – Fee vs. Free”, with Mary Ellen Bates. The Powerpoint presentation for what was an excellent comparison of researching using the Internet versus commercial services, will be posted at Mary Ellen Bates’ Home Page – Bates Information Services.

More tomorrow….

Tammy Bottomly, of the Cincinnati Law Library Association reports. The first program she attended on Monday morning was “Internet Power Searching: Finding Pearls in a Zillion Grains of Sand.” Among other things, the presenter, Amelia Kassel discussed search engines in generally. Her favorites are HOTBOT, Altavista, and Northern Light. According to Amelia, HOTBOT is more current than the others, as it takes only two weeks for it’s Webcrawler to make it’s way around the entire Web. One suggested Web page is Price’s List of Lists. Watch Amelia’s Web site for a copy of the presentation.

Tammy’s choice for the afternoon was “Proposals Writing for Results.” Larry Newman suggests that when writing proposals you should:

• Ensure compliance and responsiveness.
• Maintain customer satisfaction.
• Have strong evidence.
• Have organized written backup.
• Have strong links to past performance & experience.

At Kroll & Associates, Connie typically uses 26 different online services, including DBT and Superior Information Services L.L.C. One of her favorite techniques is to use DIALINDEX to scan for any available information on the subject under investigation. According to Connie, DIALOG has many small regional papers that are not picked up elsewhere, and sometimes contain a wealth of information. When trying to find information on people with common names, Connie suggests using a news database to find a common connection that can be used to narrow your search.

Anne recommended an Internet site called Webgator: Investigative Resources on the Web. For company information she suggested NetPartners. The Environmental Protection Agency’s Homepage is also one of Anne’s favorites. It’s especially useful to check to see if a piece of property might be contaminated, but you can find almost anything there with enough patience.

Watch for both Connie and Anne’s Powerpoint presentations, which will be added to LLRX during the coming week.

Tuesday afternoon found Tammy at “Finding and Accessing State Government Information: Latest Innovations.” Among the sites discussed were Indiana’s, Minnesota’s, and Kentucky’s site, which offers access to Secretary of State information. Paul Cappuzzello, of OCLC discussed OCLC SiteSearch, software designed to help libraries integrate, manage and distribute electronic information.

To read Connie Kaplan’s speech, click here.

To download Connie’s Powerpoint presentation, click here.

To download Anne’s presentation, click here.

The Powerpoint presentations have not been converted to html because much of it is screen shots, which do not render well in Powerpoint’s html version.

You can download and view in Powerpoint.

Barbara Silbersack reporting as the Conference winds down….

News from the Legal Division Board Meeting: Larry Guttrie of Covington & Burling was appointed the Legal Division liaison to the SLA Government Relations Committee. Barbara Silbersack was name LD Bulletin Editor. The gavel was passed to Cassandra Marrow from American International Group, incoming LD chair. Tom Fleming has been elected to a position on the LD Executive Board. Barbara Beach, Director of the Law Library at Coca Cola started her year as LD Chair-Elect-Elect and Hellen
Kerr from Price Waterhouse in Toronto is incoming secretary.

At the SLA Annual Business Meeting a dues increase was proposed, to be put to a vote of the membership sometime late Summer, early Fall. The idea of a dues increase appeared to be generally well-received.

Earlier in the week, Barbara heard Michael Gorman speak on “Technology with a Human Face.” He states that we need to recognize technology for the tool that it is, and focus on our core values and strengths, such as service. He has a new book out, Our Singular Strengths – Meditations for Librarians.

Wed. morning, Barbara attended a program sponsored by the Advertising and Marketing Division, “Marketing Your Space: How to Conduct a Library Tour.” C.B. Hayden started by giving tips on how to give a walking tour of the library.

• Plan and organize your tour in advance, so that you will make sure to cover the all the high-priority points.
• Put important points at the beginning and the end of your tour.
• Consider the audience and time of day.
• Emphasize the services provided by the library, not just the physical facility.

Amy Cohen, from Credit Suisse First Boston, showed her virtual library tour. The audio/video tour is delivered to the user’s desktop via the computer network. She includes a list of services that the library provides, and explains the various products available from the library. Her video is essentially an online library brochure.

“Choosing & Using Internet Search Engines” was conducted by Mary Ellen Bates and Jian Liu. They reviewed that status of various search engines, and what matters when choosing a search engine. Liu covered trends in meta-searching including a new meta-search engine, Debriefing, which removes duplicates from the search results. He also talked about annotated directories, his favorite being the Britannica Internet Guide, but generally doesn’t believe that any of them can stand-up to Yahoo.You can view his web page for the program, Choosing & Using Internet Search Engines — an Update which includes a link to his Guide to Meta-Search Engines. Recommended reading was Search Engines for the World Wide Web, by Alfred and Emily Glossbrenner.

The last Legal Division program of the conference was a lively session, “The Great Debate: Electronic Law Libraries-Has the Future Arrived?,” featuring LLRX columnist Betsy Klampert, and Tom Fleming. They held a full discussion of the pros and cons of the virtual library. Betsy brought her “crystal ball” for help in predicting the future. Tom summed up their differences by saying that “…for Betsy, the electronic format is the back-up to the paper. To me, the paper is the back-up to the electronic.” Both stressed the importance of redundancy which ever format you depend upon as your primary source.

Editor’s Note: Another universally acclaimed program was “Intranet content in the Law Firm Library, with speakers Anne Ellis and Linda Will. Anne’s presentation included a “guided tour” of the Holland & Hart Intranet. To download this Powerpoint presentation, click here. You must have Powerpoint or the Powerpoint Viewer to view this presentation. Please be aware that this presentation is over 4 meg. in size, and will take a considerable amount of time to download. It is not recommended unless you have a high-speed connection.