Articles Posted in Library Organization and Planning

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.

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.

The following is from an article by Margaret Locher, published in the November 26, 2007 issue of CIO Insider. We especially call your attention to item 2 where she discusses the importance and usefulness of blogs in research:

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Professional librarians and researchers will tell you that the Web has many unexplored opportunities for finding more information on business topics. Pursue these six techniques to improve your research results:

As part of its mission, OCLC a worldwide library cooperative prepares in depth studies and topical surveys of issues and trends of interest and concern to all types of libraries, including law libraries. One of their latest reports addresses the topic of sharing, privacy and trust in our networked world .

Although this report was prepared primarily for OCLC member libraries the topic being addressed is of obvious importance to all of us, regardless of occupation, who are working in this highly interractive world of networks and are confronted daily with the necessity of reconciling matters related to information sharing, information security, and privacy. Recognizing this importance we are posting the entire document below. Since it is quite large we have created three links for your convenience. The first links only to the Introduction, the second only to the Conclusion, and the third links to the complete report in pdf format.

The report is divided into 15 sections including the following:

The following is a list of new and forthcoming hardbound books and e-books with a publication date range from 2007 – 2009. This subject search was run on Bowker Books in Print Professional on October 22, 2007:

Arkansas and Missouri DWI Defense: The Law and Practice

Author: Abele, Jon R. et al. Publisher: Lawyers & Judges Publishing Company, Incorporated ISBN or UPC: 1-933264-19-5(Active Record)

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