Legal Research

This Week's Useful Tools

Posted on March 11, 2007
Selected bookmarks this week: Toggl - manage and track your projects,statistics and reports available. Collanos - workplace software for 'sharing documents, having online discussions, and managing tasks, all in a single consolidated space'. Zappr- 'web photo management service', like Flickr, default account allows for 25MB uploadsper month and 3 sets...

CanLII Beta

Posted on March 09, 2007
CanLII Beta* is now available for testing and is really rather special. The interface is much cleaner and farless cluttered than the old CanLII. The homepage is now dominated by asimple search form, with databases listed on the left hand side. Much better than the old homepage which was really just a series of lists [...

Reasons to be Cheerful # 1: Cite this item

Posted on March 09, 2007
Havinga hard time remembering how to cite a text? Look the title up on WorldCatand click on the 'Cite this item' link and you will get a list of ready-made references, including APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA and Turabian. A very handy cheat, found via beSpacific Bookmark to:

Intute Subject Booklets

Posted on March 09, 2007
Intute, the online gateway, has added to its collection of support materials. There is now a subject booklet for law, detailing the most usefulfree online legalresources. The booklet is available to download as a PDF and a full list of support materials is available here...

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Animal Captcha

Posted on March 09, 2007
Asirra, a new kind of Captcha, was showcased at Microsoft's recent Techfest. Captcha(Completely Automated Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is normally text based, asking users to identify a series of letters and numbers. Asirra, onthe other hand,uses picture identification to test for humaness...

Kevan vs. Charon

Posted on March 06, 2007
This week Charon interviews Tim Kevan of the Barrister Blog. Who's next? Available here or here. Bookmark to:

Must Have/Need it Now/Cant Live Without

Posted on March 06, 2007
A Pac-Man belt, of course! (found via Webware.com) Bookmark to:

Bytes and Bytes and Bytes

Posted on March 06, 2007
According to a recent survey published by IDC, 161 exabytes or 161 billion gigabytes of digital content were generated last year. Approximately one quarter of this is original content and much of itis beingproduced by individuals. IDC predict that in 3 years time 988 exabytes will be produced, 70% of which will be created by [...

Melvil Maimed

Posted on March 05, 2007
Britannica blog has an interesting post on library based murder mystery novels. Murder in the Library, Part 1: A-H includes the fantastic 'Dewey Decimated', what a title! I haven't read this, but I must. 'After accusations of a forged Gutenberg biblesurface at Washington's Werner-Bok Library, retired librarian Edward George helps piece together a tale of [...

Happy Birthday Blog!

Posted on March 05, 2007
Wow, it's been a year since I started this blog. I've learned a lot along the way and myreading list has expanded to ridiculous proportions. It has helped me keep up to date and been fun to write(and I hope not too boring to read). Happy Birthday to me! Bookmark to:

Sorry, What Was That?

Posted on March 04, 2007
Attention deficit seems to be the topic of the day. CNET reports on Seriosity's new email management system, where users are allocated currency (Serios)which they can spend on sending emails. Run out of Serios and you can't send that message. The idea being that people will have to consider the importance of their message before [...

This Week's Useful Tools

Posted on March 03, 2007
Some bits and pieces this week: FeedFlash - create a feed reader widget for your MySpace or blog. Ultra simple, with limited customisation. yoktu.com scrape feed for web pages that don't have any. Zikleis aneasy way to create an unlimited number of simple web pages...

LIS-BLOGGERS

Posted on March 01, 2007
JISCmail hasa new email list for UKlibrarians and information professionals who are involved in blogging for current awareness or user education. List owner, Duncan Chappell, says: 'More and more librarians are employing blogging and Web 2.0 technologies to develop new services and ways of reaching their readers - this forum provides an opportunity to exchange [...

Britannica Blog

Posted on February 28, 2007
The Encyclopedia Britannica is now blogging! Britannica Blog is billed as 'a place for smart, lively conversations about a broad range of topics' including law and libraries. Found via Real Lawyers Have Blogs and Search Engine Journal. Bookmark to:

Patten v. Charon

Posted on February 26, 2007
Justin Patten of Human Law recently collaborated with Charon QC for an interview/podcast. Among the items up for discussion was the future of UK law blogging. Well worth a listen, I hopethe interviewbecomes a regularfeature of theCharon podcast. Listen to the podcast over at Human Law or at Charon QC...

Does Snap Make You Snap?

Posted on February 26, 2007
Snap Previewisone awfully dividing piece of code. When it first appeared everybody was pretty excited, but there is a growing and vocal backlash against those little pop ups.And this iscrux of the matter, for many people that's exactly what they are, unwanted and intrusive pop ups...

International Court of Justice

Posted on February 26, 2007
Today the International Criminal Court (ICJ) ruled that Serbia was not directly responsible for genocide during the Bosnian war, but that it had failed to prevent the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica and therefore had violated international law. 'In the ruling, Judge Rosalyn Higgins, said: 'The court finds that the act of genocide at Srebrenica cannot [...

This Week's Useful Tools

Posted on February 23, 2007
Bookmarked this week: rCache - 'a personal research repository', lets you create your own archive of online material. MindMeister - create mindmaps with the very easy to use MindMeister. Currently in private beta, but you may get an invite by signing up to their newsletter...

Digital Maoism

Posted on February 23, 2007
Jaron Lanier*, who popularised the virtual reality concept in the1980s, has attacked Web 2.0 for its mob mentality. 'We have these designs on the internet where are whole bunch of people work together anonymously - a mob, in my opinion - in order to do something ...

Trust Assurance and Safety

Posted on February 22, 2007
Yesterday the Government published a white paper concerning the regulation of healthcare professionals and includingproposalsunder whichdoctors would lose the privilege of self regulation. Trust Assurance and Safety (cm.7013)proposes, among other things, the setting up of an independent tribunal to deal with disciplinary discussions...

Exposing Unrighteousness

Posted on February 22, 2007
A man who posed as an expert forensic psychologist and got away with it for 27 years has been found guilty of a range of deception charges. Gene Morrison gave evidence as an expert witness inapproximately 700 cases,but the only qualifications he had were those he purchased from affordabledegrees...

Perceptions

Posted on February 21, 2007
Ian Snowley, CILIPs president-elect, reviews Underneath the Lintel in today's Guardian G2 supplement. The play, currently on at the Duchess Theatre, London, tells the story of a librarian on a quest tofind outwho anonymouslyreturned a book 113 years overdue...

Flaming aka The Online Disinhibition Effect

Posted on February 20, 2007
Today's New York Times features an article on flaming or to use its fancy name, 'the online disinhibition effect'. Psychologist John Suler identified several psychological factors that can lead to flaming: the anonymity of a web pseudonym; invisibility to others; the time lag between sending a message and recieving feedback; an exaggerated sense of self [...

Publishers RSS Feed or Lack Thereof

Posted on February 19, 2007
The most recent installment of Connie Crosby's Tao of Law Librarianship on LLRX, 'Using RSS feed for new titles - calling all publishers', struck a chord. The overwhelming trend among legal publishers in the UK is to alert people to new titles and editions via fliers, and lots of them...

Libraries in Space

Posted on February 19, 2007
Billionaire Charles Simonyi is set to become the fifth ever space tourist and while thatmust beexcitement enough, Simonyi would ideally also like to see some libraries while he's up there. 'Everywhere where humans are I thinkthere should be a library' ...

New Blogs on the Block

Posted on February 18, 2007
There are quite a few new and newish blogs that have been brought to my attention recently (mainly by Pupilblog).Links and vital statistics below: BabyBarista - is a fictional account of pupillage. Blogging since October 2006. Especially like the Library Lifepost...

Weblog Matrix

Posted on February 18, 2007
Weblog Matrix allows you to compare weblog tools and discover which is the right one for you. Services can be individually selected and compared or users can search from a range of features to find the weblog that exactly matches their needs. This is currently still a work in progress and volunteers are invited to [...

This Week's Useful Tools

Posted on February 17, 2007
Bookmarks this week include: myFeedz - create a 'social newspaper' courtesy of Adobe Labs. myFeedz, whichhas been released as a preview version,allows users to select tags which will then be used to filter RSS feeds. Wikipatternsis a 'collection of patterns and antipatterns, and a guide to major stages of wiki adoption that explores patterns that apply at [...

Trial Bundles

Posted on February 16, 2007
District Judge Paul Mildred has written an amusingpiece on court bundles in this week's Solicitors Journal. He emphasises the importance of a tidy bundle, particularly with trials being timetabled on the basis that the judge has pre-read the case, and recounts a few horror stories...

Anna Nicole

Posted on February 15, 2007
I'm not going to post about legal battles or the ever increasing list ofopportunists declaring 'Tis I,the child's father'. I wanted to mention something slightly less dramatic. I spotted a story about a not terribly successful biography of Anna Nicole: 'Great big beautiful doll', which is now flying off the shelves...

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