Twitter & Podcasts

I have previously downloaded podcasts from Itunes and so I’m pretty familiar with that method of content delivery, but Twitter was new to me.  I signed up yesterday (June 22) and added a few celebs, etc. to my “following” list.  It was all very easy and straightforward and I can see that they both offer some limited utility to libraries.

Podcasts are great content delivery mechanisms as they allow the recipient to enjoy them on their own terms.  I like them.  Twitter, I’m not so sure about. 

Twitter is perhaps the best example of a phenomenon which requires decrying: the trivialization of information.  When ALL information is deemed worthy of publication, it demeans it generally.  Why does it matter that Friend A in Edmonton is having a coffee right now?  Or that Friend B in New Brunswick is reading a book?  Isn’t this the ultimate in vanity and voyeurism?  It’s excessive.  The other problem with all “social networking” generated content is that it returns us to a state where scholarship, knowledge, expertise, credentials, etc. etc. (all of which are the very reason for a university’s existence) are no longer important. 

However, while finding Twitter trivial and ultimately quite silly, I can see that it could be put to good use as a device for notifying people about things related to one’s library or their accounts, etc. so it’s not a total waste.

In the end, even though I’ve condemned it I will, in all likelihood, use it and come to like it.  Sigh.

Book launch

Eaton & Le May at booklaunch

On Monday May 25 while at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries in Halifax my book was launched.  Co-author Denis Le May and I signed copies of the book for about 40 or so folks who purchased a copy from the publisher’s display booth.  It was certainly a new experience for me.  The hardest part was figuring out what to write in each book (that was almost harder than writing the book itself!).

Tagging / Delicious

I’m madly trying to get del.icio.us to work and I’ve kind of got it working.  I registered an account and then tried to upgrade my browser (using IE 7 ) and followed the instructions.  Didn’t seem to do anything as no delicious-related stuff has appeared on any toolbars.  Perhaps when I return in June from a conference in Halifax, I’ll switch to Firefox and this might all go a little smoother.  I like the idea, however, of accessing all my links from wherever.  However, maybe I’m not very social by nature, as I prefer to do all this stuff for my own benefit and don’t really see much utility in having access to others’ tags and I’m not nuts about everyone accessing mine.

London (UK) in the snow

Putney High Street (London UK) in the snow, February 2, 2009

In early February I was in London for an aunt’s funeral.  While there I was essentially trapped in my hotel room by less than a foot of snow!   First the subway stopped running and then to my amazement the buses stopped.  As you can see from the attached photos, the roads basically stayed clear.  I was embarrassed for all of them about how this brought the city to its knees.  Eventually I went for a walk around the neighbourhood I was in and about two-thirds of the shops and restraurants, etc. were closed because staff hadn’t made it to work.  Unbelievable.

Library 2.0

It is proving very interesting and informative to partake in these exercises (kinda fun, too).  There are no fewer than 7 of us in our library partaking of the training and the most exciting thing has been the amount of discussion about the various assignments this has generated.  We’ve also found it enormously helpful to collaborate and make comparisons of the various tools.  For example, those of us using wordpress are finding it somewhat less obvious and intuitive than those using Blogger.  The entire process is proving to be very intriguing.

Eaton & Le May: Essential Sources of Canadian Law / Les references essentielles en droit canadien

Irwin Law of Toronto will soon be publishing a book I co-wrote with Denis Le May (former law librarian, Laval U.) in which we briefly describe 105 areas of law in English and in French and provide a listing of the most “essential” published sources for research into these topics.  Our hope is that it will become a valued resource for anyone needing help identifying the core texts for legal research in Canada.  We see lawyers, legal researchers, public libraries, and non-Canadian law libraries as potential users of this book.

Information can be found about it on Irwin Law’s website at http://www.irwinlaw.com/books.aspx?bookid=575

Great Legal Research sources

There are two very instructive legal research blogs with which anyone interested in the field needs be acquainted.  One is Canadian, the other American.  The Canadian one is SLAW (www.slaw.ca).  Excellent forum discussions and stimulating information emerge frequently on that blog.  The American one is technically not a blog but an omnibus source of information related to legal research called LLRx (www.llrx.com).  It is well worth a look and is very much a leader in the provision of knowledge about the art and science of legal research.

Introduction

This blog has been created in the course of learning about Web 2.0 applications for libraries.  I am Law Librarian at the University of Manitoba and as such am interested in legal bibliography, copyright, and legal research methodologies.  My personal interests are travel (almost exclusively European travel), English football (or soccer to the ignoranti), and hockey.  I’m also a freak for Canadian, American, and British history and politics.  This blog will have dollops of stuff from all these disparate areas of interest.