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As the Oregon Legal Research blogger, I’ve stretched the scope of my “blog focus” to include writing for and answering questions from pro se patrons, public librarians, lawyers, community activists, law librarians generally, and today, for other county law librarians:

Some of these other law librarians, especially those who also work in solo-librarian or small-staff law libraries have asked me, “how do you find the time to blog?” My response is two-fold:

1) With great difficulty and often in fits-and starts. A 3-line blog posting has been known to take me all day to finish on a busy day, if a budget is due, meetings attended, a class taught, a tour given, my assistant is out, a deadline (for so many things) must be met, etc. More to the point, a lot of us work in what can only be called a Fishbowl Libraries. We’re open 8-5 and we’re ON 8-5. My door, and my assistant’s door, is open 9 hours a day, 5 days a week. Walk-in traffic takes priority, the telephone and email reference are close behind. The rest gets done when we can (which accounts for my being here on a Sunday).

You’d think we had better things to think about – but we don’t! (Actually, we do, but work with me here. “Word” people, so to speak, like this kind of thing 🙂

From Legalwriting.net which has better spacing than I’ve reproduced here:

“In Texas, we call it a court of appeals, not a court of appeal.

A recent U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, opinion on “whether the arbitrary denial by prison officials of access to materials the prison routinely made available to inmates for the preparation of legal documents consitutes a denial of an inmate’s right of access to the courts where it results in the loss of a legal claim.”

The plaintiff is an inmate in an Oregon state prison. Link to it from the Law Librarian Blog.

Library Law is doing some nice Q&A on their blog. This question caught my eye:

“May a public university stop a traveling evangelist from giving speeches on the grassy lawn outside the library?” Q&A is here.

Another question:

I haven’t laughed this much since I saw a Tofurky on the Thanksgiving dinner table. From and thanks to Ernie the Attorney for the link to “Introducing the Book.”

From the Marion County Circuit Court:

“The Court is organizing a notebook for pro se litigants containing information about local attorneys who offer unbundled legal services. To participate, fill out and submit an attorney profile form (wordperfect, pdf) to: Marion County Circuit Court, Attn: Megan Hassen, P.O. Box 12869, Salem, OR 97309. “

If you’re an attorney, willing, and able to be on the list, click on the link and fill in the form.

The 2007 OAR has arrived, for which we are grateful. For those of you who care about such things, and librarians do – no, not that is has arrived, but its COLOR – it’s Mocha (or cafe latte, cafe au lait, mushroom, sand, taupe, etc.). It looks very pretty next to the previous years’ earth color editions 🙂

If you need an excuse to go to Chicago (who needs an excuse? It’s a beautiful city, clean (much more than Portland nowadays (!), exciting, good transit, great food, incredible people, etc., etc., etc.,), then think about attending even one day at the ABA Tech Show, where they have a special set of program for solo and small law firm practitioners.

If you’re the marrying kind (ahem), tying the knot on a budget (and while keeping your sanity, your savings, and your friends) can be done in style at the county courthouse. In my library’s county, here are the details.

Happy Valentine’s Day!