Articles and Columns for November 2020

• Managing Metadata: An Examination of Successful Approaches – If Google can deliver results across the entire internet in seconds, why do I have so much trouble finding things in my organization?” asked Jonathan Adams, Research Director at Infogix, at the DATAVERSITY® DGVision Conference, December 2019. In a presentation titled, “I Never Metadata I did Not Like” Adams outlined successful approaches to understanding and managing metadata – as reported by Amber Lee Dennis.
• 2020 in review: Legal software for working remotely – Attorney and legal technology expert Nicole L. Black has written throughout 2020 about cloud-based legal technology tools and their relevance to legal practices. Whether your law firm has already begun the shift to a cloud-based law practice or is planning to do so in the new year, you’ll undoubtedly find some or all of the software Black has covered over the past year to be useful. This article is a timely and actionable roundup of all of her articles on this topic from 2020.
• Looking on the Bright Side: Four Ways Zoom Makes Legal Research Instruction Better – As many of you have surely experienced this semester, teaching legal research virtually poses a number of challenges, but Matthew Flyntz found that it also provides a few benefits over traditional in-person instruction. In a world of negativity, Flyntz looks on the bright side and focus on those positives in this article.
• How the well-connected Panorama Project could help give us a national library endowment – David H. Rothman advocates on behalf of the Panorama Project which he says is not just an effort of librarians even though it’s benefiting from the input of Alan S. Inouye, the ALA’s director of public policy. Among the others involved have been people from the Book Industry Study Group, independent booksellers, Penguin Random House, and OverDrive, the largest supplier of books for libraries and schools. One of the recurring themes in the project’s research is that synergies can exist not only between books and other media, but also between the library and retails models. For example, among several thousand readers surveyed, “38.31% of respondents had bought a book online that they first found in a library (within the last 12 months.” Local bookstores also benefited, and the project intends to explore this further. The findings are just preliminary, but based on earlier work by researchers for OCLC and OverDrive, Rothman doubts there will be surprises in regard to synergies between libraries and retail.
• 3 reasons for information exhaustion – and what to do about it – An endless flow of information is coming at us constantly: It might be an article a friend shared on Facebook with a sensational headline or wrong information about the spread of the coronavirus. All this information may leave many of us feeling as though we have no energy to engage. As a philosopher who studies knowledge-sharing practices, Mark Satta calls this experience “epistemic exhaustion.” The term “epistemic” comes from the Greek word episteme, often translated as “knowledge.” So epistemic exhaustion is more of a knowledge-related exhaustion. It is not knowledge itself that tires out many of us. Rather, it is the process of trying to gain or share knowledge under challenging circumstances. Currently, there are at least three common sources that, from Satta’s perspective, are leading to such exhaustion. But there are also ways to deal with them.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, November 28, 2020 – Four highlights from this week: Microsoft productivity score feature criticised as workplace surveillance; Attackers Dupe GoDaddy Into Abetting Cryptocurrency Site Takedowns; Amazon faces backlash over using Sidewalk for neighborhood networks; and Avril Haines nominated as first female director of national intelligence.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, November 22, 2020 – Four highlights from this week: What is doxxing? How to protect yourself from it; #Protect2020 Rumor vs. Reality; The Best VPN Service Providers Of 2020; and Your Computer Isn’t Yours.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, November 15, 2020 – Four highlights from this week: Older Android Phones Won’t Support Many Secure Websites in 2021; Gifting a gadget? Check its creep factor on Mozilla’s ‘Privacy not included’ list of shame; Here are the IT and cyber experts helping with the Biden transition; and Move to Telehealth Strains Therapists and Their Clients.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, November 7, 2020 – Four highlights from this week: Google users locked out after 15 years’ use; Beware a New Google Drive Scam Landing in Inboxes; Cyberlaw Clinic and EFF publish Guide to Legal Risks of Security Research; and Phone and email scammers have pivoted during the pandemic – Here’s how to protect yourself.

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