Libraries are bridges to information and knowledge.

Bonnie Shucha has asked us to “spead the word” about the exciting Web 2.0 Challenge that is being sponsored by the Computer Services Special Interest Group of the American Association of Law Libraries. We are happy to do so. Here is part of Bonnie’s announcement:

Are you interested in learning about applications like blogs, wikis, and Second Life, but don’t have a lot of time?

Take the Computing Services-SIS Web 2.0 Challenge!

From Goro Toshima:

I wanted to alert you to my award-winning documentary, A Hard Straight, which shows what it’s really like to make the radical transition from prison life to society, by following the post-release stories of three people in close and unflinching detail …

…One spent his childhood in foster homes, juvenile detention, and the gang life before his adult convictions. Now, the one thing he knows for sure is that he is a 2-striker and another conviction will land him in prison for the rest of his life… The second had logged more time in prison for parole violations than for his original sentence. “My friends are few, and my world is cold,” he confides, waiting on a street corner notorious for drug deals… The third, a mother whose oldest daughter had taken in the two younger children during her prison term. Life becomes very complicated very quickly once she gains her freedom. Increasing friction with her daughter comes to a head over her struggle with methamphetamine addiction.

” Let’s face it, during the reign of Bill Gates, Microsoft hasn’t exactly been Xerox Parc when it comes to inventing and creating new technologies. For the most part, Microsoft has been content to buy or copy new technologies and focus on incremental improvements to its products. But that doesn’t mean that Bill Gates and Microsoft weren’t innovative. In the areas of business strategies and cutthroat competition, Microsoft has used a combination of unique and very effective innovations to make itself the dominant tech company of the PC era.”

Microsoft”s Top Ten “Innovations”

Self-Represented Litigation Network Leadership Package Launch Conference Baltimore MD, September 8-10, 2008

In September 2008, the Self-Represented Litigation Network will be launching its leadership package entitled: Court Leadership and Self-Represented Litigation Solutions for Access, Effectiveness, and Efficiency.

Following the model of last years successful judicial conference at Harvard, the launch, to be held at the Court Solutions Conference sponsored by the National Center for State Courts, held in Baltimore on September 8-10 will provide an opportunity for groups of leaders to come together and learn about, and practice the use of leadership tools for innovation for the self-represented.

From the Introduction:

“On the Record, the report from the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, describes a new technological environment in which libraries have exciting opportunities for making information resources available and useful to new and demanding audiences. The Working Group has spent a year studying how best to exercise bibliographic control within this environment. The opening sentence of the report’s introduction sums up conclusions with which the Library of Congress agrees: ‘The future of bivbliographic control will be collaborative, decentralized, international in scope, and Web-based.”

This Response to the report was prepared under the supervision of Deanna B. Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress.

[From an article in the March 17, 2008 The National Law Journal by Tony Mauro of the Legal Times]

There’s a video out there you may want to see – a web site called “LawProse Inc” on which 8 of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices speak about answering questions, writing briefs, arguing before the Court, and their own relationships with written words. For instance, Chief Justice Roberts thinks “lengthy citations to Web sites that are now common in briefs are an ‘obscene’ distraction ‘with all those letters strung together.’ ” Also he doesn’t like overly-long briefs, “I have yet to put down a brief and say ‘I wish that had been longer.'” Justice Breyer is bothered by the same thing, “If I see (a brief that is) 50 pages, it can be 50 pages, but I’m already going to groan,” but “If I see 30, I think, well, he thinks he has really got the law on his side because he only took up 30.”

“Justice Kennedy hates it when lawyers turn nouns into verbs by tacking on ‘-ize’ at the end, as in ‘incentivize.’ Such showy, made-up words, he sniffs, are ‘like wearing a very ugly cravat.”

The complete program for A Reference Renaissance: Current and Future Trends is now available on the conference website.

This exciting two-day event features keynote speaker David W. Lewis, Dean of the University Library at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, who will talk about Reference in the Age of Wikipedia, Or Not… and the implications of the technological and social transformations brought on by Google, Wikipedia, and answer services such as ChaCha. On day two of the conference, a plenary panel discussion, Theory Meets Practice, made up of educators and library directors will highlight what’s being taught in schools of library and information science and what’s being implemented in libraries. This panel features Dr. David Lankes (Information Institute of Syracuse), Dr. Marie L. Radford (Rutgers University), Jamie LaRue (Douglas County Libraries, CO), and Carla J. Stoffle (University of Arizona).

Other sessions cover the full gamut of reference and information services in public, academic, and special library settings. Learn about “predatory reference” techniques, screencasts for distance reference, gathering meaningful statistics, the impact of serious leisure on reference services, new staff training initiatives, widgets, IM, marketing in-person services – and more! Meet and network with your colleagues from all over the U.S., Canada, and other countries, and spend time with exhibitors showcasing a variety of reference focused products.

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