Articles Posted in April, 2007

“Better than Google: Libraries offer online databases with quality information – for free,” by Dan Giancaterino, from “Philadelphia Lawyer,” courtesy of Jenkins Law Library. Article here.

“One evening, my daughter’s boyfriend parked himself in front of my computer for a couple of hours, furiously typing away. Finally I asked him what he was doing. (Actually, I wanted him to go home.) “I’m trying to find a schematic for my car’s electrical system on Google,” he said. “I need to know where the heater blower resistor is located because I have to replace it. But all I’m getting is junk.” I told him to take a break and kicked him off the PC. He went to raid the fridge and I went to work. I accessed the Delaware County Library System, www.delcolibraries.org, clicked on the Auto Repair Reference Center, and typed in my card number. Once I was logged into the database, I clicked on the appropriate year, make and model of car. Then I selected the electrical system and printed out the schematic. Total elapsed time: around five minutes. The boyfriend was amazed: “Dude, how did you do that so fast?” Did I tell him? Nope … “knowledge is power.”

So go on and check out your own public library’s database subscriptions.

It was only a matter of time before the “great Plastic Coffee Cup Lid Webcomics Challenge” targeted lawyers. The April 4th comic strip does just that. Click on previous comic strip for more on plastic coffee cups (or on Archive for all previous strips). Librarians gotta do what librarians gotta do.

Another posting at LexBlog that caught my eye (this one I know I linked to from Legal Underground!), titled, “Niche Legal Bloggers Could Threaten Legal Publishers.” I don’t think bloggers are a real $$ threat yet, at least not in the near future, but the decisions made by legal publishers do tend to baffle and boggle the mind. In my law library right now, we’re cleaning up a list of the looseleafs and treatises we’ve cancelled in the past 5 years or so. We’re a small library mind you, but the list is astonishingly long. There are lots of reasons for this. The driving one for a lot of law libraries is price inflation, but there are certainly other reasons. Note that not all of these titles, in fact few of them, are available online. There’s no long tail publishing decision-making going on here – at least I don’t think so. Or is the tail invisible, curled, or perhaps a double-helix? Surely lawyers are exchanging information as much as they used to, aren’t they? So … maybe the blawgers are filling some of that gap the books have left behind? It’s a big stretch, but, there are some awful good blawgs out there. Still, I’m not quite ready to say, capisco.

It never hurts to keep these sorts of lawsuits in view if only peripherally. LexBlog posts about lawsuits against bloggers, linking to the original article at WebProNews.

As for how I got there, to LexBlog that is, and to which blogger I should give the credit, I’m not entirely sure. Coffee is still in my future. I do remember starting with Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground, but as usual, he goes boldly where some other lawyer bloggers might fear to tread. The journey is almost always worth it, but I’ve yet to retrace my steps perfectly when traveling the Legal Underground so just let your interests and your instincts guide you and don’t worry about those bread crumbs – they’re refined wheat flour anyway, which you should avoid. If you must, try leaving a trail of chocolate covered ginger (my latest local find – organic too :-).

Update: I forgot to link to this posting over at LibraryLaw: the face-to-face gathering of SF blawgers included a discussion of blawger cease and desist letters and libel law.

“We need to make books cool again,” he said. “I had a plumber come into my house, and he said, ‘Did you read all these books? I hate reading: Turn the pages, right to left, right to left.’ I was astoundedy at his militancy.

“There’s a book for everyone,” Waters added. “You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.”

John Waters on crime and librarians. I laughed, but not everyone will, so brace yourself. (It’s also not true that you can’t commit a crime while reading, but I’m not going to quibble with the sentiment.)

Thanks to Library Link of the Day for this April 2nd story link.

Part II of the League of Women Voters of Oregon report on “The Oregon Judiciary” is out (previous reports are here.) Apart from the fact that county law libraries aren’t mentioned even once in the discussion of the “unmet legal needs” of a significant percentage of the population (public libraries either and that is where a lot of people go to ask questions when they don’t go to lawyers) and that the wrong picture is used for Washington County Courthouse (it seems to be the Wasco County Courthouse, maybe?), the report is interesting.

Update: Apparently the pic for Josephine County isn’t right either (maybe Marion County) and the jury is out, so to speak, on the Jackson County Courthouse pic.

We’re a tough bunch, aren’t we 🙂

You didn’t know there was such talent amongst the lawyer-classes, did you? For a sampling, see the April First Blawg Review Prequel, which also links to our very own (Oregon, that is) David Rossmiller’s (from Dunn Carney) well crafted and respected Insurance Coverage Law Blog. And thanks to David Giacalone at f/k/a (baseball haiku and lawyer advertising news- all in one blog posting – what more could you want for a Monday morning wake-up jolt?).