Articles Posted in Information Technology

On Thursday November 6, 2008 the Law Library Association of Greater New York (LLAGNY) presented in conjunction with the Electronic Legal Information Access and Citation Committee of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) a program at the New York County Lawyers Association in New York City regarding how findings of the 2007 authentication report published by AALL and its ELIAC Committee can be adopted in the State of New York.

The program consisted of a panel of representatives of AALL, its Electronic Legal Information Access and Citation (ELIAC), and two agencies of New York state government, the New York State Reporting Bureau and the Office of General Counsel of the New York State Department of State discussing the AALL Authentication Report, published in 2007 and approaches, strategies, and challenges to adopting its findings to authenticating and otherwise validating in accordance with accepted standards New York State primary source legal information published on the web.

The following are links to the opening remarks of the moderator, David Badertscher, Slides frm the presentation of Mary Alice Baish,and a summary of the program kindly provided by Theodore Pollack, Senior Law Librarian at the New York County Public Access Library, who attended the program, and to the program announcement from LLAGNY. Other links will be added if they become available.

The EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008 is available at http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERS0808/RS/ERS0808w.pdf.

Although this study was done with undergraduate students, it provides useful information relevant to all students in all fields at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Of particular interest to lawyers and law librarians might be Chapter 4: Ownership of, Use of, and Skill with IT; Chapter 5 IT and the Academic Experience; Chapter 6 Social Networking Sites, and the Bibliography included at the end of the study.

FROM THE OFFICES OF LESLEY ELLEN HARRIS Copyright, New Media Law & E-Commerce News

NOTE: THIS CONTENT IS BEING REPRODUCED FOR NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSES ONLY.

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PC World has named its ‘5 Sites That Will Boost Your Political Awareness.’ Included on this list are some very useful Web sites that many of you are probaly familiar with. Here is their list as posted by the American Association of Law Libraries Washington Blawg along with some helpful comments.:

Sabrina I. Pacifici Founder, Editor, Publisher:

**LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips – We’re All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age http://www.llrx.com/columns.bookreview11.htm

Heather A. Phillips highlights attorney John Gant’s contention that one’s title, income, and employer are at best side issues in determining who is a journalist in the day-to-day realities of issuing press passes as well as in larger policies such as the extension of shield laws.

Vembu, Sridhar, “Annother View: Why Google Won’t Focus on Business Software”, Government Computer News. (September 27, 2008).

“So what is Google’s plan? It is fairly obvious the company is in it to put Microsoft on the defensive on its home turf, to diminish that company’s offensive capability in the Internet. It is also perfectly clear why Microsoft wants to be an Internet player: as Google has shown, it is a higher-margin business even than its monopoly-profit core business.

So why is business software so much less profitable than the Internet? I can think of two reasons: 1) purchasing departments that know a thing or two about supplier margins and specialize in putting the squeeze on them and 2) sales and support costs, particularly support costs. When you sell software to businesses, they have all kinds of support expectations, which add to headcount. A search engine or a news portal isn’t expected to provide any customer support…”

Legislator’s Son at Center of Sarah Palin Hack Talk, Report Says
“Tennessee Rep. Mike Kernell says that his son, David Kernell, is at the center of speculation about the identity of the hacker who gained access to Palin’s account.”

From: CIO Insider News, September 2008

One of the historic functions of libraries has been preserving and providing access to information in various media. In many ways, digitization of information has positively altered the information landscape. However, with the dynamic nature of such information, vital information preservation issues arise.

In a timely September 13, 2008, New York Times article by Robert Pear that is entitled “In Digital Age, Federal Files Blip Into Oblivion,” the issue of institutional preservation of digital information is addressed. The author maintains that many federal records created by email, word processing, or posting on the Internet are being lost to history. This is due to federal employees failing to preserve such material due to the incredible volume being generated. Dramatic examples of these preservation issues include, the appearance of non-functioning links on government websites and removal of important reports such as those critical of the Bush administration.

There is another concern about information loss not addressed directly in Robert Pear’s article. The issue Mr. Pear raises regarding the apparent failure of federal employees to implement adequate procedures to preserve the huge amounts of significant digital materials being generated may also relate to the ongoing necessary maintenance of such information to keep it trustworthy and authentic. No matter how carefully information in digital formats is maintained on an ongoing basis there is always a possibility that it may become corrupted or otherwise tainted, making it untrustworthy and therefore “lost” in terms of its value and relevancy to users. The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) is very concerned about this issue because the trustworthiness of all online legal resources, including federal. is fundamental to permanent public access and is inherently a matter of great concern to the legal community

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