Category «Libraries & Librarians»

2021 Update to Choosing Law Librarianship: Thoughts for People Contemplating a Career Move

AALL Gallagher Award recipient Mary Whisner, Public Services Librarian, University of Washington, Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, has updated her 2008 guide about choosing a career in law librarianship. With more than 30 years of experience in the profession, Whisner discusses important topics to review when considering a career as a law librarian.

Subjects: American Association of Law Libraries, Education, Law Librarians, Law Library Management, Legal Research, Libraries & Librarians, Reference Services

Non-Library Jobs & Advice on How to Get One: an introduction to INALJ’s series of interviews

Naomi House was inspired to do this series because of the drastic changes to the availability of traditional library jobs during this pandemic. She highlights library and information professionals who work outside libraries but use their skills as well as many who have lost their jobs or been furloughed. These interviews are an introduction to transferable skill sets as well as resources for those looking for work in those fields.

Subjects: Business Research, Education, Job Hunting, KM, Librarian Resources, Libraries & Librarians

Why Informal Information Sharing is Holding Your Organization Back

This article by Mary Ellen Bates is an excerpt from her recent presentation “The Strategic Value of Copyright Licensing Solutions,” to which she also provides a video link. Bates discusses ways published information is being used throughout organizations that you may not have considered, and the impact on copyright compliance.

Subjects: Communications, Competitive Intelligence, Copyright, Information Management, KM, Libraries & Librarians, Technology Trends, Training

Black and Hispanic people more ‘engaged’ with books than most Americans are: New report from Panorama Project

David H. Rothman, cofounder of LibraryEndowment.org, discusses the new Panorama Project report that covers a variety of topics, ranging from piracy to synergies between books and other media. Specifically significant to Rothman is the report’s data indicating that avid book engagers (4+ books/month) are more ethnically diverse and younger than the general survey population.

Subjects: Education, KM, Libraries & Librarians

Online Research Browsers and Data Visualization Tools 2021

This guide by Marcus P. Zillman focuses on free and feed based research browsers and data visualization tools for research and analysis. These resources can be used to support legal research, legal marketing, business and competitive intelligence research, knowledge management and knowledge discovery, and data mining.

Subjects: AI, Big Data, Communications, Competitive Intelligence, Digital Archives, KM, Legal Marketing, Legal Research, Libraries & Librarians, Search Engines, Search Strategies, Technology Trends

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.

Subjects: Communication Skills, Continuing Legal Education, KM, Legal Research, Legal Research Training, Libraries & Librarians, Reference Services, Technology Trends, Telecommuting

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.

Subjects: E-Books, Economy, Education, KM, Libraries & Librarians