Law Librarian Blog

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101 Best Web Freebies

Interesting post from BusinessWeek: "BusinessWeek.com scoured the Internet for the most useful free products and services available online that you probably don't know about."  Check it out!  [RJ]

Every Blog Has Its Day

Interesting article from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication:

"This study employs an online survey to examine U.S. politically-interested Internet users’ perceptions of the credibility of blogs. The article focuses on the influence of blog reliance compared to motivations for visiting blogs in determining blog credibility. The study found that blogs were judged as moderately credible, but as more credible than any mainstream media or online source. Both reliance and motivations predicted blog credibility after controlling for demographics and political variables. Reliance proved a consistently stronger predictor than blog motivations. Also, information-seeking motives predicted credibility better than entertainment ones."

Announcing the 2008 AALL/Thomson West Excellence in Marketing Awards

Greetings everyone!  It's time to show off the best of your PR and marketing efforts for the 2008 AALL/Thomson West Excellence in Marketing Awards.  These awards serve to recognize exceptional public relations efforts in raising the visibility and value of law librarianship, as well as provide examples of successful marketing strategies for all AALL members.  The contest is open to any individual, group, library, Consortium, SIS, Caucus, Chapter, or any other group affiliated with AALL.  Award categories include:

• Best Brochure
• Best Newsletter
• Best Campaign
• Best PR Tool Kit
• Best Use of Technology

For more information, check out the Excellence in Marketing Awards web site.  Click here for the guidelines, and here for the application.  Descriptions of the 2007 winners are available here. 

Entries are due February 1, 2008.  Don't be shy.  Prepare and apply!   

Please feel free to contact Julie Jones, AALL Public Relations Committee Chair, with any questions you might have at jmj45@cornell.edu or (607) 255-5858.

Rank your Google Search Results

Google Labs has a new beta feature that allows some users to rank their search results to increase relevance.  It may not go prime-time any time soon, but could be interesting.

Google has rolled out a new option in its Labs-based experimental search program which allows you to rank and re-order search results. The new experiment is reportedly showing up for select users only, but the help page says that the goal is to allow you to "influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results."

More from Wired.  [JJ]

Good for a Chuckle

Just came upon this via Feminist Law Profs Blog.  To help us better understand and commiserate with our faculty and faculty-to-be (or not-to-be, that is indeed the question).  Pretty funny - check it out!  [JJ]

Friday Fun: Librarian's Blues

Written, performed, sung, and played by Keith Johnson. For a background story about this new Blues classic, visit Blue Skunk Blog. [JH]

Just Released: The University of Google: Education in the (Post) Information Age

The University of Google is my book of the year for 2007. I have nagged colleagues and friends to read ever since I saw a manuscript copy. It will have a huge impact on everyone in higher education, helping those suspicious of new media to formulate their criticisms and those eager to adopt it better placed to introduce it appropriately. -- Frank Webster, City University London, UK

The University of Google
Education in the (Post) Information Age
Tara Brabazon

List Price: $59.95
Hardcover: 160 pages
Publisher: Ashgate Pub Co (November 30, 2007)
ISBN-10: 075467097X
ISBN-13: 978-0754670971 

Book Description: Looking at schools and universities, it is difficult to pinpoint when education, teaching and learning started to haemorrhage purpose, aspiration and function. Libraries and librarians have been starved of funding. Teachers cram their curriculum with 'skill development' and 'generic competencies' because knowledge, creativity and originality are too expensive to provide to unmotivated students and parents obsessed with league tables, not learning.

Meanwhile, the internet offers a glut of information on everything-under-the-sun, a mere mouse-click away. Bored surfers fill their cursors and minds with irrelevancies. We lose the capacity to sift, discard and judge. Information is no longer for social good, but for sale.

Tara Brabazon argues that this information fetish has been profoundly damaging to our learning institutions and to the ambitions of our students and educators. In The University of Google she projects a defiant and passionate vision of education as a pathway to renewal, where research is based on searching and students are on a journey through knowledge, rather than consumers in the shopping centre of cheap ideas.

Angry, humorous and practical in equal measure, The University of Google is based on real teaching experience and on years of engaged and sometimes exasperated reflection on it. It is far from a luddite critique of the information age. Tara Brabazon celebrates the possibilities of digital platforms in education, but deplores the consequences of placing funding on technology and not teachers. In doing so, she opens a new debate on how to make our educational system both productive and provocative in the (post-) information age.

About the Author: Tara Brabazon is Professor of Media at the University of Brighton, UK, and Director of the Popular Culture Collective.

Friday Fun Supplement: What Do Librarians Do When They Get Bored?

Long before camcorders (and when I was a student library clerk) we held book cart races.

So what do you do when you get bored on the job? Why not create a video clip during the Winter Break and post it to YouTube to show your colleagues! If you email me the YouTube link, I'll start posting the clips in January. [JH]

For inspiration, see:

What Robot Programmers Do When They Get Bored

What Graphic Artists Do When They Get Bored

The Monopoly Board of Citation Rankings

Check out Roger Alford's The Monopoly Board of Citation Rankings. Using Brian Leiter's Most Cited Law Professors by Specialty, 2000-2007, Alford assigns each of the 18 specialties covered in Leiter’s 7-year citation study a real estate value based on the 10th most-cited person in each specialty. It's a much more clever illustration than my more mundane citation density graph. [JH]

Downloading Music Illegally and the Role of the RIAA

Another great podcast from Lawyer 2 Lawyer:

"From musicians speaking out about the effect illegal downloading is having on the industry, to college students being sued, the issue of illegal music downloading is all around us. Join co-hosts and Law.com bloggers, J. Craig Williams and Bob Ambrogi, as they turn to the experts: Attorney Richard L. Gabriel, from the firm, Holme Roberts & Owen LLP and lead national counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America and Attorney Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney specializing in intellectual property issues with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. On Lawyer 2 Lawyer, we will discuss the ethics behind dowloading music illegally, copyright law, the lawsuits brought by the RIAA, the fate of the music industry and alternatives to illegally downloading music."  [RJ]