Nicole C. Engard continues her series on best practices for libraries to leverage open source tools with a guide on publishing tutorials for using library resources. Rather than creating a printed pathfinder, she suggests creating a video tutorial instead, as the learning experience is often more engaging and has deeper impact when users see something done versus reading about it.
The “craft” of legislative history construction is practiced with unique and outstanding expertise by law librarian Rick McKinney. This history is designed in a streamlined fashion so as to allow users to more easily check when provisions in the law got into bill and then check for related remarks concerning those provisions. It also has links to earlier legislation related to different titles of the Act, to the Administration’s proposed legislation in 2009, to related CRS reports, and to various summaries and commentaries of the law on the Web.
Special Librarian Montrese Hamilton shares effective ways an electronic document reader may be used to provide customers on-demand access to new content. Beyond instant access to material, e-readers can: reduce the need for Interlibrary loans, help grow the collection without adding shelf space, and eliminate processing required for physical matter.
Laura Soto-Barra introduces us to Blank on Blank, a nonprofit media partnering with journalists, publications and publishers to turn excerpts of unheard reporting into a living, audio archive of the American interview.
Steve Matthews enumerates some of the issues that merit attention with respect to Google’s recent implementation of this default setting search query application.
Nicole C. Engard reviews several open source tools she recommends not only for their usability and reliability, but also for the cost to value ratio when compared to mainstream applications outside our ever narrowing budget requirements .
Lorette S.J. Weldon continues her series with a discussion on how to interpret and document the requirements of an organization or a specific department in order to develop a successful SharePoint site.
Conrad J. Jacoby identifies the trend that increasingly electronically stored information (“ESI”) requested in litigation discovery originates in databases or other structured data repositories. Previously, this data was stored in discrete e-mail messages, spreadsheets, and word processing files that have long made up the bulk of most ESI document productions. Businesses creating and managing their accumulated information have discovered that they are able to extract far more utility if they store their data in a single repository and in a standardized format.
Not long ago, the law library was “a place”. It housed printed materials and staff and provided work space for research. Lawyers went there to use books and consult librarians to locate and complete assignments. Today Eleanor Windsor and Ron Friedmann report that the notion of a modern law library is very different, shaped by the skills of specialized researchers and information managers rather than by bookshelves and bound volumes.
This article explores the corner of the Internet landscape that concentrates on legal research. For the most part, these databases and search tools are free, although some might require a library card. Essentially, this is a short list of “go to” sites that most researchers will find useful. Before delving in, author Ken Strutin also examines a few time tested research concepts for the Internet age.