| Renovation Project Featured in AALL Spectrum and Philadelphia Bar Reporter |
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Both the AALL Spectrum and the Philadelphia Bar Reporter have published commending articles, one of which is written by Library Director Regina Smith, highlighting our newly renovated library. They describe the improved library space, which is aesthetically pleasing as well as practical. Read about how the opportunity for renovation came about and how Jenkins Law Library has been transformed into a warm, welcoming environment for its visitors and its staff.
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Submitted by: Ida Weingram, Head of Outreach Services
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Comments (0)June 29, 2005
| Yahoo’s My Web 2.0 Beta |
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Today Yahoo announced My Web 2.0. Now I liked My Web 1.0, which basically let me store my favorite sites on the Yahoo server — rather than on my PC — so that they were accessible from any Web-enabled PC. I could even post notes about why I liked a particular site. It was OK so far as it went. MW2.0, I think, goes too far. It’s based upon the concept of creating a community of users (by invitation only) and sharing your saved sites with them. You can add searchable tags — keywords, metadata, call it what you want — to your shared pages so that others can follow your trails. Do I have the time to create and manage my own online social network? No way. Do I want all of those people to see what I’m searching and saving? Nope. Will they care? Probably not. And will I want to wade through their shared pages? Nah. So who will use it? Small workgroups, college students working on a joint project, and family members doing genealogical research all come to mind. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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June 28, 2005
| Sit Back and Let the Machine Think For You |
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Yesterday Google launched Google Personalized Search, which utilizes My Search History (which I blogged about earlier) and is not to be confused with Google Personalized Homepage (which I also blogged about before.) All 3 services are available here. Still with me? Anyway, GPS uses your click activity from MSH to anticipate You must have a Google login — something like a Gmail account — in order to use GPS. The MSH feature is interesting, but your privacy sure takes a hit. All your searches are listed for each day, along with which hits you clicked on. There’s even a monthly calendar, showing your daily activity. (Can you tell I was out of the office June 3-13 and 21 and 24?) For a more in-depth article on GPS, visit Search Engine Watch. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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what you really want when you search. For example, if you are a frequent traveller to France, the query paris hilton would return hits about the hotel instead of the actress. Or so the theory goes. I’ve only triggered it once and I haven’t been able to trigger it again.| Got 10 Mb to Spare? |
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Then you’ve absolutely got to download Google Earth, which features satellite images of cities in the US, Canada and the UK. (Major cities in other countries are also available.) After you install the free application, you can fly over the earth and zoom into a specific address … rotate or tilt the satellite view … add layers showing bars, restaurants, ATMs, and more. Local search and driving directions are available, too. Bookmark, email or print your images. This is a nifty piece of work. And if you can also spare $20, you can purchase Google Earth Plus, which offers features such as GPS integration and higher resolution printing. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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June 27, 2005
| Westlaw and Lexis: Help! |
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Need assistance with Westlaw or Lexis? Both databases have great helpdesks with experienced staff. They will work with you to create an efficient search strategy, which can save time and money. Don't forget that you can also come down to Jenkins and play around on Westlaw and Lexis for free! We always have a librarian here to help. |
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Submitted by: Nancy Garner, Assistant Director of Knowledge Services
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| Becoming Justice Blackmun : Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey |
 By Linda GreenhouseBecoming Justice Blackmun is a brilliant and penetrating study of how unsought challenge and controversy can, in the most modest of men, bring out a measure of true greatness. Library Record • Borrow it • Buy it • More Titles |
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Submitted by: Malgorzata Pawska, Digital Content Coordinator
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June 20, 2005
| More Changes to Business Sources |
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As I’ve blogged before, more and more formerly-free business sources are adopting fee-based models: I noticed today that GuideStar requires a paid subscription for items such as income, assets, etc. (The Form 990 is still available with a free registration.) Search Systems now posts an annoying nag page asking you to subscribe to their DirectPass service every time you click on a link to a public records database. You have to look at the “please subscribe” page for 20 seconds before they take you to the source you want to access. Arrrrrrrghhhh … |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Spamproof Your Site |
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Spam! We all hate it and wish we could eliminate it. Unfortunately spam is here to stay, but there are some measures you can take to cut down on spam. Studies have shown that spambots are the source of a large majority of the spam that makes it into our mailboxes. So what is a spambot? A spambot is a small program that works just like a web crawler. It visits a web page and scans the site for email addresses and links. It stores the email addresses for a later use and then follows all of the links to start the process all over again. This means that the contact page you have on your site, while helping your visitors, is hurting you. There are a few solutions to this problem. I have seen sites use images in place of email links. Personally I find this practice annoying and frustrating for the user. Other sites will provide a contact form instead of a staff directory. I find that this too can be a little user-unfriendly. Here at Jenkins we use a little JavaScript to mask our email addresses from the spambots while providing our visitors with all of the necessary information. As with any malicious program on the Internet, spambots will eventually be smart enough to crack our code, but we found that this solution works for us … for now. To learn more about Spamproofing your site, check out this article on SitePoint.com. |
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Submitted by: Nicole Engard, Former Web Manager
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| Estate Planning for Same-Sex Couples |
 By Joan M. BurdaThe legal landscape concerning same-sex relationships is changing. It is vital for lawyers to stay on top of these changes. Attorneys who represent lesbian and gay clients must provide creative estate planning that protects both parties in the relationship, their children and their future. Library Record • Borrow it • Buy it • More Titles |
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Submitted by: Malgorzata Pawska, Digital Content Coordinator
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June 17, 2005
| Yahoo Search Subscriptions |
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Yesterday Yahoo announced Yahoo Search Subscriptions, which allows you to combine an Open Web search with a search of a limited number of Hidden Web sources such as articles from Consumer Reports, FT.com, Forrester Research, IEEE Publications, New England Journal of Medicine, TheStreet.com, and The Wall Street Journal. Yahoo claims they’re going to add content from the Association for Computing Machinery, Factiva and LexisNexis in the near future. It’s great that a major search engine is trying to alert people to Hidden Web content. (A lot of students in my classes have never heard of it.) But unless you can afford a subscription to one of the services above, or get yourself to a library that has them, you can’t read the articles you’ve retrieved — the content is still hidden from you. So what’s the point? Well, if Yahoo could cut a deal with these publishers so that it could offer access to the full text of the Hidden Web content for an annual fee — say, $30 — that’d be a cool thing. I might even go for it. Thirty bucks is just about the price of the print Consumer Reports magazine. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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