Category «Technology Trends»

National Digital Library System – Early Childhood Education and Family Literacy

David H. Rothman’s latest commentary on the DPLA states his position clearly: Priority One of a national digital library system should be early childhood education, bolstered by family literacy. Other areas also count, but early childhood education is dearest to him and among those especially likely to give the taxpayers the most for their investment. We could use tablet computers and good old-fashioned tutoring and mentoring from librarians, educators, and volunteers to help the disadvantaged–parents as well as children.

Subjects: Features, Internet Trends, Libraries & Librarians, Library Marketing, Library Software & Technology, Mobile Tech, Technology Trends

“Link Rot” and Legal Resources on the Web: A 2011 Analysis by the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group

Sarah Rhodes describes and documents the work of the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group’s fourth annual investigation of link rot among the original URLs for online law and policy-related materials archived though the group’s efforts. Link rot” is used to describe a URL that no longer provides direct access to files matching the content originally harvested from the URL. The Chesapeake Group focuses primarily on the preservation of Web-published legal materials, which often disappear as Web site content is rearranged or deleted over time. In the four years since the program began, the Chesapeake Group has built a digital archive collection comprising more than 7,400 digital items and 3,200 titles, all of which were originally posted to the Web.

Subjects: Features, Internet Resources - Web Links, Internet Trends, Legal Research, Legal Technology, Search Engines, Technology Trends

Breaking Down Link Rot: The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive’s Examination of URL Stability*

This guide for researches by Sarah Rhodes focuses on the highly significant impact of “link rot”, which refers to the loss or removal of content at a particular Uniform Resource Locator (URL) over time. When an attempt is made to open a documented link, either different or irrelevant information has replaced the expected content, or else the link is found to be broken, typically expressed by a 404 or “not found” error message. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Web-based materials often disappear as URLs change and web sites are changed, updated, or deleted.

Subjects: Digital Archives, Information Management, Legal Research, Libraries & Librarians, Library Software & Technology, Technology Trends, Web Management, Web-Based Training

Deep Web Research 2011

Internet research guru Marcus P. Zillman’s comprehensive, extensive guide focuses on how expert search engines have written algorithms to mine the deeper portions of the web by targeting file formats such as .pdf, .doc, .xls, ppt, .ps. and others. These files are predominately used by businesses to communicate information both within their organization and to those outside enterprise systems. Searching for this information using deeper search techniques and the latest algorithms empowers researchers to obtain a vast amount of corporate information previously unavailable or inaccessible. Research has also shown that even deeper information can be obtained from these files by searching and accessing the “properties” information on these files.

Subjects: Features, Internet Resources - Web Links, Internet Trends, Legal Research, Search Engines, Technology Trends

The Risky Business of Information Sharing: Why You Need to Care About Copyright

Copyright is an essential tool in the spread of new ideas, and the workplace has become ground zero for infringement. Ask employees up and down the corporate hierarchy, and they’ll tell you that whisking information electronically to co-workers is integral to their jobs. Their employers will emphatically agree. But unauthorized swaps of information also carry enormous potential risk: Ordinary office exchanges, so natural to the digital world, can easily violate the copyright rights of others and bring costly lawsuits or settlements. Now the same technology that has dramatically defined the Internet age is drawing a new roadmap to compliance, with software tools that simplify adherence to copyright requirements.

Subjects: Copyright, Features, Internet Use Policies, Law Library Management, Technology Trends

Testing the Accuracy of Database Information Produced in Civil Discovery

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.

Subjects: Discovery, E-Discovery, Features, Technology Trends

Problems with Creating a Course to Help Colleagues

How many times have you wondered how to do a task or work with software? You feel wonderful once you have found a colleague who could share their “know-how” about how to complete that task more efficiently or how to implement an applications that does not have a manual that makes sense to you. Lorette S.J. Weldon focuses on four factors to consider when you want to share your knowledge on your own: cost; timing; equipment and global presentation.

Subjects: Features, Information Architecture, Information Mapping, Law Librarians, Law Library Management, Legal Research Training, Library Software & Technology, Technology Trends, Web Management

What is Open Source?

In the past few years, the term open source has been bandied about not just in library-land, but in every industry. When a term is talked about this much, some would say to the point of overuse, people start to think it’s a fad. In this and upcoming articles, Nicole C. Engard is here on LLRX to tell you that open source is no fad, and why.

Subjects: Legal Research, Technology Trends