Articles and Columns for May 2021

• Competitive Intelligence – A Selective Resource Guide – Updated May 2021 – This guide on competitive intelligence resources on the web was first published in 2005, and Sabrina I. Pacifici has continued to edit, revise and update it over the course of 16 years. Her objective is to provide researchers with a current, well vetted, reliable, actionable subject matter specific pathfinder on a wide range of sites and services to assist in the delivery of outstanding customer service. Seasoned researchers, law librarians and knowledge managers routinely use content rich sites to effectively add value to their work products. This Best of the Web CI Guide identifies a very large range of topical search engines, portals, government sponsored and open source databases, news and subject matter specific alerts and archives, as well as sources from the academic, corporate and media sectors. The sites that Pacifici has included are benchmarks for: internet search and discovery, monitoring, analyzing and reviewing current and historical data, news, reports, analysis and commentary, statistics, and profiles on companies, markets, countries, people and issues, from a national and a global perspective.
• Review: A Short & Happy Guide to Advanced Legal Research – Jerry Lawson highly recommends Ann Walsh Long’s new book, A Short & Happy Guide to Advanced Legal Research. Long’s book offers good ideas about balancing quality, speed and expense, as well as a wealth of other insights on improving online legal research.
• Interview: Carole Levitt – This is Jerry Lawson’s interview with Carole Levitt, one of the country’s premier experts on Internet research, both legal and investigative. Her most recent book, coauthored with Judy Davis, is the second edition of her treatise Internet Legal Research on a Budget.
• The Post-Pandemic Law Practice: What Lawyers Need to Know – Nicole L. Black’s third article in a series discusses the value of an expansive new report from the ABA, Practicing Law in the Pandemic and Moving Forward: Results and Best Practices from a Nationwide Survey of the Legal Profession. The results cover a broad overview of topics ranging from the impact of the pandemic on the legal profession to post-pandemic expectations and recommendations for both legal employers and individual lawyers.
• Employees are feeling burned over broken work-from-home promises and corporate culture ‘BS’ as employers try to bring them back to the office – As vaccinations and relaxed health guidelines make returning to the office a reality for more companies, there seems to be a disconnect between managers and their workers over remote work. A good example of this is a recent op-ed written by the CEO of a Washington, D.C., magazine that suggested workers could lose benefits like health care if they insist on continuing to work remotely as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes. The staff reacted by refusing to publish for a day. While the CEO later apologized, she isn’t alone in appearing to bungle the transition back to the office after over a year in which tens of millions of employees were forced to work from home. A recent survey of full-time corporate or government employees found that two-thirds say their employers either have not communicated a post-pandemic office strategy or have only vaguely done so. As workforce scholars, Kimberly Merriman, David Greenway and Tamara Montag-Smith are interested in teasing out how workers are dealing with this situation. Their recent research found that this failure to communicate clearly is hurting morale, culture and retention.
• We spent six years scouring billions of links, and found the web is both expanding and shrinking – More than a quarter of a century since its first commercial use, the growth of the online world is now slowing down in some key categories. A multi-year research project analyzing global trends in online diversity and dominance conducted by Paul X. McCarthy and Marian-Andrei Rizoiu reveals a dramatic consolidation of attention towards a shrinking (but increasingly dominant) group of online organizations. So, while there is still growth in the functions, features and applications offered on the web, the number of entities providing these functions is shrinking.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 30, 2021 – Four highlights from this week: How to Password-Protect Your Google Search History and More; After Colonial attack, TSA issues new cyber regs for pipelines; European privacy groups challenge facial scan firm Clearview; and Google, Hospital Chain Cut Data Deal on Patient Records.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 23, 2021 – Four highlights from this week: US to ramp up tracking of domestic extremism on social media; Protecting agency assets begins with identity-centric security; Colonial Pipeline Cyberattack Highlights Need for Better Federal and Private-Sector Preparedness; and Cyber Attacks – A Rising Threat (Infographic).
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 16, 2021 – Four highlights from this week: Pentagon Surveilling Americans Without a Warrant, Senator Reveals; What’s Google Floc? And How Does It Affect Your Privacy?; Report: What City Officials Need to Know About Facial Recognition Technology; and Complete guide to selecting a HIPAA compliant email service.
• Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 8, 2021 – Four highlights from this week: Ransomeware Task Force Launches Comprehensive Framework to Combat Ransomware; SSA Inspector General: New Tactics for Government Imposters; FTC Warns the AI Industry: Don’t Discriminate, or Else; and A Better Way to Spot Deep-Faked Satellite Images.

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