Category: Soapbox / Opinions
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Academic, County, and Law Firm Librarians: Three Sides of the Same Coin
Early on in Graduate School, I remember my Professional Adviser taking the time to sit me down and talk about the various career paths law librarians could embark on. Honestly, I was really only familiar with the law school’s library, using its vast, comfortable reading room as my command station to hammer out papers about…
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The Perils of PACER
Anyone involved in legal research is more than familiar with PACER (the name, an acronym, stands for: Public Access to Court Electronic Records). Before we delve into the glaring weaknesses and errors of PACER, let’s just step back and give thanks that there is a way for users to access docket and documents filed in…
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Majority of AmLaw 200 Firms Do Not Have Mobile Sites
Jeff Richardson at iPhone J.D. comments on Law Firm Mobile’s recent study showing only 42.5% of AmLaw 200 firms have mobile sites–this, after the ABA’s 2013 Legal Tech survey stated 90% of attorneys use smartphones. Global 100 firms fare even worse: only 39 Global 100 firms have mobile sites. This is perplexing data–the legal industry is…
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How Are Public Libraries Changing?
Appearing March 7th in The New York Times, Katharine Q. Seelye’s article “Breaking Out of the Library Mold, in Boston and Beyond” (available here) examines how renovations of large, public libraries exemplify how the roles of public libraries and public librarians have drastically changed. Public libraries are moving far away from being dusty book repositories, and…
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The Science of Social Media
The world is addicted to social media. It’s safe to assume that if you’re reading this, you probably use Facebook orTwitter—you might be obsessed with social media and post pictures of your to-be-devoured food and your workout schedule on a daily basis or maybe you dabble in it to keep tabs on your loved ones.…
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InsideLegal Lessons: Examining Technology Purchasing Trends by Firm-Size
Last week, business technology and market research firm InsideLegal put together a graphical chart detailing what various sized law firms spent their tech budgets on in 2013 (available here). The data is coming from ILTA/InsideLegal’s Technology Purchasing Software Survey, a wonderful, free, and highly informative resource both organizations collaborate on and release annually (the latest…
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What the ILTA Technology Survey Says About Mobile Legal Research
Recently released, the ILTA Technology Survey offers information professionals great insight into how lawyers are interacting with technology at their firms. The organization, made up primarily of firm IT and KM professionals, produces an annual technology survey, and, thankfully, releases it for free (the AmLaw Tech Survey and the ABA’s Legal Technology Survey Report will…
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Do All Apps Go To Heaven?
In re-researching case management apps for an upcoming presentation, I again stumbled across RLTC: Evidence. Its web-site, accessible here, lists all the wonderful features of this particular case management app: many file formats are supported, users can add annotations to existing files, the app can project onto a tv or monitor via Apple’s SVGA cord,…
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News & Reactions: The Future of Google Books Post-Fair Use
On Thursday, November 14th, Google Inc. won a major court battle regarding its Google Books project. The federal district court in New York City ruled the Google Book project falls under the protection of fair use. Google, through collaborations with research libraries across the country, has digitized over twenty million books, making large portions of…
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iBraryGuy Talks about Activist Librarians!
From On Firmer Ground: Recently while speaking at the Ark Group’s Best Practices & Management Strategies for Law Firm Library & Information Service Centers conference in New York, I said something that seemed to really resonate with the audience. I was talking about methods for driving resource utilization and optimization, when I shared my opinion…
iBraryGuy 