The following is a question regarding alternative approaches to library funding and a summary of responses to that question.
QUESTION
“The perennial issue – law library funding. Beyond civil filing fees, has any law library tried other avenues for funding, for example, a portion of the attorney registration fee, or other vehicle? I am interested whether or not the attempt was successful.”
View Letter from the Working Group – November 30, 2007 [PDF, 41 KB]
Read Draft Final Report of the Working Group [PDF, 315 KB]
The period for public comment on the report is open until December 15, 2007. Comments can be submitted via the Web site at http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/contact/. Electronic submission of comments is encouraged. Please note that public comments are a vital part of the Working Group’s deliberations and may be available for public access either online or in print.
The following is an excerpt from a December 7, 2007 article by Jacob Liebenluft posted on Slate
“When it does battle on the Web, Google rarely loses. Last year’s closure of Google Answers, however, marked a rare setback for the search giant. An even bigger shock is that Yahoo! succeeded where Google failed. Yahoo! Answers-a site where anyone can post a question in plain English, including queries that can’t be answered by a traditional search engine-now draws 120 million users worldwide, according to Yahoo!’s internal stats. The site has compiled 400 million answers, all searchable in its archives. According to the Web tracking company Hitwise, Yahoo! Answers is the second-most-visited education/reference site on the Internet after Wikipedia”
“The blockbuster success of Yahoo! Answers is all the more surprising once you spend a few days using the site. While Answers is a valuable window into how people look for information online, it looks like a complete disaster as a traditional reference tool. It encourages bad research habits, rewards people who post things that aren’t true, and frequently labels factual errors as correct information. It’s every middle-school teacher’s worst nightmare about the Web.”
Library Technology Reports 43:6 2007 By Brad Eden
Excerpts from ALA TechSource publication announcment:
“As library technologists and librarians are well aware, since the advent of the Internet, the relationship between the user and his/her library has changed”.
Wsll @ Your Service, an E-publication of the Wisconsin State Law Library is now available. It contains an interesting variety of news under heading such as: What’s New, This Just in, Tech Tip in Brief, Learn @ the Law Library, and Odds & Endings. Those who are concerned about the conversion to Digital TV on February 17, 2007 will find the information and links in the Tech Tip in Brief section especially valuable.
To see the entire issue click here.
For librarians and others who are interested, the December 2007 issue (Volume 33 Number 2) issue of the AALL Technical Services Law Librarian has been published. To see the issue online, click here.
STEVEN ESSIG
Recently, Cassidy Cataloguing Services announced a partnership with Thomson-West that would make available to law school libraries MARC 21 cataloging records for Westlaw items. In the words of Cassidy’s Donna Rosinski-Kauz “The Cassidy-Westlaw MARC21 records collections will be an expansion of the very popular “WLX E-Treatise Collection,” which was originally created and distributed by Cassidy Cataloguing. The new Cassidy-Westlaw MARC 21 records collections will be released in phases. All legal content of Westlaw will be covered by these new collections when they are completed.”
Already available from Cassidy are cataloging records for E-treatises, most Canadian titles, and directories published by Westlaw. The second phase, “Law Journals and Law Reviews”, is due out by January 2008. There is a “monthly update service” that informs user libraries of any dditions, deletions and other changes, while Name and Subject Authority Control is run on all records. “Authority files are available for purchase separate from the collections.”
All questions and answers will remain anonymous.
QUESTION
“I have had a request from our Reference Department, to classify as much of our collection as possible, in the K and KF range, instead of A-JZ and L-Z. This would make our collection more browser friendly.
We were happy to receive the following in an e-mail from Karen Selden and would like to share it with our readers:
University of Colorado Law Library
Cataloguing Philosophy
Criminal Law Library Blog