My home state of Pennsylvania has finally joined the rest of the country in posting its statutes and legislative activity online:

http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/LI/PUBLIC/cons_index.cfm

Thanks to Genie Tyburski’s TVC Alert for the heads up!

*For those of you who need an explanation for this reference, please see http://politicalhumor.about.com/cs/georgewbush/a/top10bushisms.htm for details.

From today’s NY Times:

“How did such a nerdy profession become cool — aside
from the fact that a certain amount of nerdiness is now cool? Many young
librarians and library professors said that the work is no longer just about
books but also about organizing and connecting people with information,
including music and movies.”

 
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/fashion/08librarian.html

According to the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal, “You’re a nobody unless your name Googles well”-I introduce you to Abigail Wilson, a woman apparently so traumatized by the fact that her new married name cannot be found in Google, she is planning on inflicting the following on her soon-to-be born child:

So when Ms. Wilson, now 32, was pregnant with her first child,
she ran every baby name she and her husband, Justin, considered through Google
to make sure her baby wouldn’t be born unsearchable. Her top choice: Kohler, an
old family name that had the key, rare distinction of being uncommon on the Web
when paired with Wilson. “Justin and I wanted our son’s name to be as special as
he is,” she explains.

After all, who can be bothered with such silly things as family or religious tradition when it’s really the boys in Mountain View who we want to keep happy?

Oh please.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117856222924394753.html?mod=hpp_us_pageone

At the risk of sounding like a press release, I wanted to point out to everyone this new resource from BusinessWeek magazine.

The Company Insight Center, available at investing.businessweek.com, is designed to “pull together up to 33 pages of data, charts, profiles, and new stories on each of 42,000 public companies in the US and abroad” according to the company.

From my point of view, the most useful part of this new resource is the “people page” on the companies channel.  There you can click on board members, and then you can see other members of the board and their respective affiliations.  This is very handy for helping to see all the different relationships that are corporate directorships these days.

I’ve subscribed to BusinessWeek for years, and have always found the print edition to be full of stories of interest to me.  This new free tool is a wonderful addition to this publication.

Click on the picture to see the full view.

Just heard about this resource from Thomson Gale this a.m. on the drive into work:

AccessMyLibrary – News, Research, and Information that Libraries Trust

“…free access to millions of articles from top publications available at your local library.”

powered by performancing firefox

From Mr. Christian’s testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

The path we
chose in Connecticut is based on a longstanding principle of
librarianship – our deep rooted commitment to patron confidentiality
that assures that libraries are places of free inquiry, where citizens
go to inform themselves on ideas and issues, without fear that their
inquiries would be known to anyone else. The freedom to read is part
and parcel of our First Amendment rights. To function, the public must
trust that libraries are committed to such confidentiality. When the
USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law, our Connecticut library community,
like the American Library Association, many other librarians as well as
booksellers, authors and others, were concerned about the lack of
judicial oversight as well as the secrecy associated with a number of
the Act’s provisions and the NSLs in particular.

JURIST – Paper Chase: Librarian who challenged NSL urges more privacy protection before Senate panel

 I spend a fair amount of time with lawyers, law students, paralegals, and others involved in the legal profession.  I used to think that the aversion to technology that is widespread throughout the law was an age thing, but I’ve come to realize that it runs deeper than that.

As someone who is fairly comfortable with technology, I admit that I have a hard time understanding when others seem to have such difficulty and fear with things that seem to me to be almost second nature.  When you try to explain to someone that in the year 2007 you shouldn’t still be keeping a typewriter around “just in case” and that it sends a bad message to both clients and prospective employees, they look at you like you have two heads.

This study does a much better job than I ever could in explaining the issue:

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Lawyers Want Technology Training

I was very sorry to read tonight about the demise of another great tool that I use as part of my research arsenal on a daily basis.  The Israeli company Netsnippets announced on their website that they are going out of business, although apparently they will still be providing technical support via e-mail to current users.

I guess we should just come to expect this type of thing in the Internet age, but this marks the second time in less than a year that a tool that I had come to use daily is no longer available.  Last year Microsoft killed Onfolio ( oh wait, they “merged” it with Windows Live) and now no more Netsnippets.

The pursuit of the perfect research tool continues…

“Mr. Rakowski,



Please find your
admission decision below. Hardcopy is en route via US Mail but I urge you to
contact your graduate advisor who is noted in the How to get Started link
below. Please read this document carefully as it has instructions on what to do
next.



Congratulations and
welcome to Drexel University!”