Oregon Legal Research BlogHumbling, and oh, so funny ….
my blog ranking now at Alexa dot com: 8,983,3417
To put this into perspective (and I’m nothing if not perspect):
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Rank, Ranker, Rankest: Your Blog Ranking at Alexa
Articles Posted in Other
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Urban Renewal: Surprisingly interesting – and comprehensible
The Portland Tribune’s 6/12/08 article, by Steve Law, on urban renewal areas, When Will They End?, was an astonishingly good read. (Law librarians are admittedly wonkish, but still, if you want to know what an urban renewal district is, this story was riveting, and kept me occupied the length of a long morning commute (including fellow passengers who also seemed interested (maybe morning commuters are also a wonky and an alert bunch :-))
Excerpt:
“… Under Oregon’s system, cities and counties create an urban renewal district, and “freeze” the property taxes in the district going to schools and other local governments. Any property taxes derived from new development or rising property value go to urban renewal authorities….” (full story)
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Scientific American: Blogging is Therapeutic?!
Scientific American reports on:
Blogging–It’s Good for You: The therapeutic value of blogging becomes a focus of study, by Jessica Wapner:
“Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not….” (link to full story)
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Blawgers and the Six Rules of Blog Science
There’s a blog for everyone (said with the deepest and the sincerest apologies to Ranganathan*), whether you have one of your own, contribute to a group blog, think about writing one, or just read one:
Blogs are for use.
Every reader his/her blog.
Every blog its reader.
Every blog its writer.
Save the time of the reader.
The blogosphere is a growing organism.
What set me off on this post was another request to “talk about blogging” from someone who I hope will give blogging a whirl and think creatively and realistically about how s/he wants to blog:
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Creativity and the Law
Creativity must be the It word of the year – not a bad thing at all See these latest salvos in the creativity push:
1) Boley Blogs: The 100 Most Creative Moments in American Law, posted May 23rd, 2008
2) Ernie the Attorney: Know Your Brain, posted 5/29/08
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Copyright and Orphan Works: More interesting than you thought!
What are Orphan Works and why does anyone care about them? (No, this is not a post about Charles Dickens and the working orphans who populate his novels. I’m an Our Mutual Friend fan myself – see here about these digressions. Sorry.)
1) “Orphan works” described here and here.
2) Why does anyone care? The usual: Life, art, money, legislation, and Justice, Truth and the American Way.
3) A sampling of websites on the subject, though there are, as you would expect, zillions of others:
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Oregon Revised Statutes Copyright Dispute: The Copyright Comic Book (and a few more side dishes)
If you are following this dispute (and I last posted about it here), you might want to do a little reading about copyright, the history of commercial and official legal publishing, and vendor neutral citation (yes, all of these are entertwined) – unless you want to sound ill-informed (or worse) when you Comment about the issue on the various blogs and news sites that are running stories about this dispute.
1) For fun, start with Bound by Law, the copyright comic book by Keith Aoki, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins.
2) A very interesting, provocative, and readable article: “Neutral Citation, Court Web Sites, and Access to Authoritative Case Law, by Peter Martin, 99 Law Library Journal 339 (Spring 2007) will give you an idea how much and how long these issues have been debated. (Quite a few of the articles in this issue are equally provocative, including an update to one of my favorites: “Why Do We Ask the Same Questions: The Triple Helix Dilemma Revisited,” by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.)
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“Dude, what’s a CMS and how much does a website cost?”
These are not “stupid” questions. Yes, I’m sure there are “stupid” questions, but they usually come out of my mouth (why don’t people in the sun-belt and the middle-east corner the market on solar energy technology?), not the mouths of people who visit my library.
Answers to questions can be found almost anywhere, from t-shirts to novels one reads on airplanes. One place I find a lot of practical advice, simply presented, is at iLibrarian. They are masters of the Top Ten, Top Thirteen, 18 Different Ways to Do x lists. (Law librarians love finding other people who have already done half the research 🙂
These (CMS and website cost) are two questions that could be answered plenty of other places, but at iLibrarian I often read the answer right before someone emails my library with the question.
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Time to Rewrite Your Blawg/Blog’s Description?
I looked at my original blog Oregon Legal Research (OLR) description (aka header) (unchanged since I started blogging in October 2005) and gave a small shudder. I then read through a sampling of my OLR blog posts over the intervening years and wondered, “what HAS this OLR blog been about anyway?”
Here is my May 2008 rewrite (leaving room for future rewrites :-):
The “Oregon Legal Research” (OLR) blog explores the world through the (decidedly non-linear) mind of an Oregon public law librarian (and guests). Legal research tips, advice to the legal blawger/blogger, commentary on reading material (online and print), not a small amount of humor, and a few digressions will be included. A regional flavor will prevail, primarily Oregon and Portland-metro area, though the OLR bloggers reserve the right to post about places once lived and experiences savored – all with a legal research connection, of course (we can rise to that challenge!). [It has been edited a bit more to fit into the 500-word limit required by Blogger. Surely one doesn’t need more than 500!]
Do Blog Descriptions matter? Maybe. Some aggregators (e.g. here and here) include your blog’s description in their indexes, so to me, yes, it matters. Will it change the world? Probably not, but who knows? Maybe thinking about it, and asking other people to think about their own blog descriptions, will serve to raise the Blog World to new heights. (And now all I have to worry about is how to change the Old to the New on all those aggregator sites– tomorrow is another day.)
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New Blawgers: What about Comments?
As one of a small, but growing, number of Oregon legal bloggers (aka blawgers), I’m asked often to talk about blogging. (I’ve posted some of what I say here and here and here and here.)
It occurred to me that I haven’t blogged for the New Blawger about blog Comments (though I do talk about Comments when I talk to lawyers and librarians about blawging).
So, here goes: