Reed Smith on Social Media

Reed Smith, the firm for whom I work has recently published a white paper on social media and the opportunities it offers. It’s been out a while but I have just got round to looking at it. It’s from the US offices, so their focus is slightly different, but they offer some interesting pointers:

“Every lawyer needs to take some important steps if he or she is going to be prepared for the new media revolution. Here are a few:

1. Read this White Paper
2. Surf the social media sites and read their terms and conditions
3. Join Facebook and LinkedIn and perhaps other social media sites
4. Review each site’s terms and conditions 
5. Audit your company’s social media programs. Find out what your company and your employees are doing. Do they have any customized pages on platforms like Twitter and Facebook? If so, make sure they’re complying with the site’s terms and conditions, as well as your corporate communications policies. Are they blogging? Are employees using social media during work hours? 
6. Find out what your competitors and your customers are doing 
7. Consider adopting a social media policy for both internal and external communications. But be careful to keep on strategy, don’t ban what you stop, and keep in mind the basic rules of engage, participate, influence, and monitor.
8.  Bookmark websites and blogs that track legal developments in social media”

No-one’s commented on this blog so far so I am guessing we’ve not quite implemented #5 here just yet, or at least, I’m under the radar (this may change things!)  Our London Library has its own Twitter identity so we can follow various interesting sources of information (well, if you think the BBA Libor rate is interesting).  Yet somehow I do feel guilty about scrolling through the Twitter items at the enquiry desk.  Still waiting to be challenged on what can be interpreted as a waste of time…

Filed under: Uncategorized

Online, Parliament & SLA

I spent a very pleasant afternoon at Online Information last week on the SLA stand. I enjoyed chatting with existing and potential members and it was particularly nice to be able to help promote the Early Career Conference Awards. [These have just been announced for 2010; it was strange yesterday seeing my own quote in the publicity coming in via my Loughborough University email.]

I didn’t attend any of the free or paid conference sessions; had this not been a week off dedicated to my PhD, (see progress here). I would have liked to, but thinking hard about something other than my methodology wasn’t really on the cards.  Feedback seemed positive, though, from the people I did speak with.  VIP have reported on the free sessions, many involving SLA members.

After the conference I was privileged to be included in the visit to the Houses of Parliament. Darron Chapman had arranged this for us via Rt Hon Peter Lilley MP. So rather than the standard tour we were given a highly personal account of the workings of the Parliamentary scene. Of course we did visit the Commons and the Lords; both magnificent chambers. And as I am sure everyone says for the first time, both considerably smaller than they appear in pictures. I spotted the Rt Hon Member for Maidstone & the Weald,  but also discovered that as a Radio 4 listener I am at a disadvantage; I hardly recognise anyone’s face, but I’d know their voice at a hundred paces…

It was a lovely evening and it was particularly nice to be able to help repay the hospitality that Anne Caputo had shown the four of us ECCA winners in Washington, D.C. earlier this year. Moving on to dinner, I had a great conversation about the Alignment project with Anne and Stephen Abram; we as a table of SLA Europe Board members also generally put the world to rights.  All in all, a memorable afternoon – thanks to Darron and TFPL for arranging the Westminster visit in particular, and Penny for generally organising us all.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Free vs Fee: Economist article

Further to the debate on the viability of paid news content on the internet, there’s an interesting piece of research reported in the Economist.  (Newspapers online: the promiscuity problem. December 5th, p35).  Media consultants asked people which newspapers they bought, and which they read online. Turns out people will go anywhere. Daily Telegraph readers spend more time online reading the Sun or the Mirror than they do their own Telegraph.  Given the massive investment the Telegraph made in its online publication, that’s really rather interesting.

So this has implications, does it not? If your paywall model is based on the assumption of loyalty, then all well and good. This is probably what works for the FT. But if it’s just common-or-garden news or TV, and readers will go anywhere,  people aren’t necessarily going to pay for content if there is a free alternative available.

Also covered by the Guardian. I think I am about a week late in my post on this, but last week I was buried in PhD research.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Twenty Questions to a Fellow Blogger part 2: Woodsiegirl

Laura, aka Woodsiegirl, was one of the other three winners of the SLA’s ECCA. I first met her a few weeks before we flew to Washington, DC. Since then she’s convinced me there is a point to Twitter and done sterling work helping with the technical aspects of the SLA blog. Laura is also a fellow law librarian.

What’s your all-time favourite blog?

I have over a hundred blogs in my RSS reader – my “favourite” probably changes daily! At the moment, I particularly like Stephen’s Lighthouse and Librarian in Black for library stuff; Ouseful Info and Overdue Ideas for techie stuff; Jack of Kent and 3 Geeks and a Law Blog for legal stuff; and Awful Library Books and But, Sir… for giggles.

As a blogger, what’s your proudest blog moment, all-time favourite or most commented post?

I think the most-commented post I’ve written was my post about how I got into librarianship – 27 comments! Although, a lot of those are pingbacks rather than actual comments. That’s probably also my proudest moment in blogging, as that was what kicked off the Library Routes Project.

What is your day job? Is your blog linked to, tangential or completely separate from what you do?

I’m an information assistant at a law firm. I’d say my blog is tangential to what I do – I don’t actually talk much about law librarian-y stuff, just libraries in general (and anything else that pops into my head really, I’m quite easily distracted!)

In the future of the internet and information, which will win: speed or accuracy?

Ooh, good question! I’d love to say accuracy, but I suspect most users are more interested in speed, so I think that’s the way it’ll go.

What is your favourite journey?

Literal journey? I quite like going back to see my family in Wiltshire by train – as you leave London, the grey gradually disappears and everything gets greener the further West you get. It’s not much fun if the train’s packed though, as it usually is!

What one thing (material, spiritual or emotional) would change your life for the better?

More time!

If you were stranded on a desert island, which book would you wish you had with you? (you can choose one fiction and one non-fiction)

Non-fiction: Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. Fascinating book, and one that rewards the kind of detailed attention I’d be able to give it on a desert island!

Fiction: Only one?? Hmm, ok… “The Magus”, by John Fowles. Maybe if I was stranded there for a few years I’d finally make sense of it!

What’s your must-see film?

Casablanca. Corny, I know, but I think that it’s absolutely stunning, visually. Every shot is perfect.

Which song sums up your life?

No idea. Not very good with music.

Marmite: Love it or hate it?

Hate hate hate! A co-worker has marmite on toast in the mornings sometimes; it stinks out the whole office!

How do you relax?

Reading or daydreaming.

Who is your greatest inspiration?

Both of my grandmas, each for very different reasons.

Where would you most like to visit? And where do you never want to have to go again?

I really want to visit both Florence and Venice. I can’t think of anywhere I’ve been that I’d never want to see again though.

Do you have a favourite website/ tool for work? Or for leisure purposes?

I hate to say it, but that’s probably Google. I use Google Mail, Reader, Documents, Calendar and Maps very heavily; and have just got myself a Wave account (haven’t played with it much yet though).

Do you read a newspaper? Is that online, or in paper form or both?

Well, I scan through the broadsheets daily for work! I don’t buy any print newspapers myself, although I do read the Guardian online pretty much every day.

What’s the best piece of advice you have been given? And what’s the worst?

Worst: My grandpa tells me I should retrain as an accountant every time I see him. I’m really not sure why.

Best: I’ve been given lots of good advice over the years, most of which I’m sure I ignored! The first thing that springs to mind is my sister telling me I should ditch my rubbish boyfriend (at the time) and move to London – I didn’t appreciate it when she said it, but that is what I ended up doing and it turned out to be a really good move!

Filed under: Questions to a fellow blogeer

Changing Landscape of the Information Profession

This event was my first taste of being part of a panel. I rather enjoyed myself and hope everyone else in the room did too. If you were there, I would be interested to know what you thought about the evening. Did the questions address the issues you were expecting?

One thing that we as a panel didn’t do was introduce ourselves. Although I was billed as a new entrant to the profession, unless you take 30-year tenure as the only appropriate apprenticeship, I won’t be ‘new’ for much longer. I graduated from City in 2006 and my current role at Reed Smith, where I’ve been for nearly two years, is my second professional post. I have an entry in the Library Routes wiki outlining this.

SLA will be publishing a review of the event on the official blog shortly – I’ll link to it when it’s available. For now though I wanted to give my own personal account and perhaps outline some things I didn’t say. Ever wanting the last word! The other panel members were  Liz Blankson-Hemans  representing SLA as recently elected Director to the main SLA Board as 2010 Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect,
Mark Jewell, Vice President, Integreon and  Laura Vosper, Lexis Nexis.

We talked about employers’ roles in facilitating employees’ professional development. I also chatted about this in the bar afterwards. I think the panel all agreed that it’s down to an individual to plan their own career path; no-one else will do it for us. Also, that if we expect employers to develop us, they will develop us to their own ideas. This does not necessarily fit with where we want to go – it’s unlikely that our managers will willingly pay for time out for us to train ourselves up for our next job. I have ‘made my own entertainment’ since 2006; looked for and seized opportunities. It’s involved sticking my hand up and volunteering  for things; organising events, attending meetings, writing articles, introducing myself to people I don’t know – and contributing to this blog. Why is this of benefit? Well, for example, I now have fledgling relationships with a number of vendors with whom I would have no ‘official’ contact  – when I do move into a role with purchasing power, I am not going to be starting cold. I’ve been fortunate enough to be supported at four conferences and I’ve attended a number of formal seminars and informal networking events. This is alongside developing my core subject knowledge and research skills, for me the two go hand-in-hand.

Another topic touched on was social media. I have a big concern that the quantity and accessibility of opinion is eclipsing the value of measured facts. Is this the same argument as was used at the start of the internet? That’s what Mark reckoned. I disagreed as I believe the difference lies in the provenance of the content. Yes, there were lots of online interactions between people, and lots of unofficial and pointless websites proliferated. But the print providers who went online were still providing authoritative content. We have now moved from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to Wikipedia; and these are different products. Laura claimed that there is evidence showing Wikipedia is more authoritative than the EB; I’m off to look for this. So the shift in the beginning was print content to online equivalent; now we are moving from authority to opinion and from expertise to chatter. This is something that my research project is also concerned with.

I am not a luddite; merely a sceptic and I would exercise caution before jumping on the latest bandwagon. It took me 18 months between signing up for my Twitter account and actually finding a reason to use it.

The final question I’ll reflect on was one asking whether there is any future for print books. We were divided on this. I suspect that at some point in the future I will own an e-book reader; but unless one is invented that survives being dropped in the bath, I will be hanging on to my paper books too.

In all the evening was fun, a way of introducing CIG and AUKML members to the work of the SLA as well as producing (hopefully) an informative dialogue.

Filed under: Event report, Personal narrative , ebooks, future of information profession, panel, SLA, social media

History of the internet

Something (can’t remember what, there are too many things!) pointed me in the direction of this great history of the internet today. I’m feeling rather old, though, as I remember using Netscape to visit the White House website as an undergraduate. And geekier friends making the first web pages I wrote compatible with text-only browsers.

Filed under: Personal narrative

I Googled the Law

As I mentioned earlier today, I’ve been looking Google Scholar’s new US caselaw service. This allows one to ‘find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts’ according to Google’s official blog.

I am part of an international library team and most of my research colleagues are based in the US. We in London will ask for advice if we have not been able to locate what we need (we’re fortunate in having Bloomberg). Whilst we have access to Lexis.com, there’s something about the idea of being charged £54 a search that encourages me to ask for help – particularly in the current climate where keeping costs down is a key part of our strategy. But of course, there’s a time difference – we can’t always wait for the States to wake up. Plus, not all UK lawyers will necessarily think to ask the library for help finding a case when they can just Google. So there are two reasons why I’m keen on testing this new Google Law resource.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been required to source three judgments from the US. So, armed with the correct case names and citations I tried the service out. How did I fare?

I’d say, fairly well, but with the kinds of caveats we’re hopefully all used to by now about using free legal information we find on the web.

I struggled a little to find the first one – plenty of links to commentary, but not to the correct judgment. (Commentary for this search mostly seemed to be from our friends at HeinOnline).  I searched for this in the way I had searched for the case when I’d originally been asked for it (Can I have a copy of The Prestige please?). Now, if this was a UK case about a vessel, the vessel name would be part of the case name, and it would be a useful search term. It seems that shipping cases are the ones that are usually referred to vaguely. When I had no luck with the usual searches then I did try a general Google – this gave me some references to the incident and enough information to know that the action was American not British. At this point I asked my US colleagues to check whether what I’d found a reference to (the country of Spain suing the American classification society) did in fact happen.  It did, and I was provided with a copy of the judgment from 2008.

The case didn’t show up in the first 5 pages of results when I just searched Google Law for ‘Prestige.’ I added ‘Spain’ in as a search term and the 2008 judgment was the 8th in the hit list. So pretty good – but only if I knew this additional piece of information. And an earlier report was higher in the search results. Once I’d found the case, I could read, but not print the case – so it would be useful up to a point.

The second case I looked for had initially been given to me as a hunt for unreported case – we found a reference to it, courtesy of pne of the Philadelphia team. Google Law didn’t have what I wanted. This may be an artefact of the different indexing, but I also struggled to translate the search term I’d been given (universal music) into that which is part of the case name (UMG). Might be obvious if I worked with this a lot, though?

My final case was easy peasy; found it in the first page of results.

I think this will be a useful service – perhaps more so for finding the key argument of a case if a lawyer doesn’t need an official copy of a document. I wonder whether there will be a bit of circularity to the finding of cases – if I have little information I won’t know whether I have the right case, but with more information I could be more certain, but to gain that extra information I might need search terms I don’t know. It doesn’t feel as intuituive as Google normally does, but that could be down to my relative unfamiliarity with what are ‘good’ cases and documents. I’m still likely to check other free sources like RECAP (if I could access it) or Justia (though I think Justia now supply Google too?) or WorldLII But it’s another source to check, and one that isn’t going to cost anything other than my time.

John DiGillio, our US research team manager, has written on this on his LLRX column today too.

PS I’ll add the case names in soon, hopefully – just had to leave for a fire alarm and now about to head off to the Supreme Court visit.

Filed under: research , case law, Google, US

Google law, Supreme Court & forthcoming SLA Event

A heads up for some forthcoming posts.

Google have announced that they now have US law available – this is an interesting development for those of us who have regular need for the laws and judgments from the US where the paid services we have access to are relatively expensive. I have not had a proper look; I will give this service an assessment and post an opinion shortly.

This evening (18 November) I will be part of the CLIG team running a visit to the Supreme Court – I’m quite excited about this!

And I am excited and also suitably nervous at the prospect of speaking as part of the panel at the next SLA event: The Changing Landscape of the Information Profession. Again, more on that later.  

Filed under: Committee, Event report , Google law, SLA Europe, Supreme Court

Questions to a fellow Blogger: Paul Burgin from Mars Hill

Paul Burgin writes the Mars Hill  political blog. I am blatantly half-inching the ‘Twenty Questions’ concept from him, and so it is only right that he should be up first for a return leg of the questioning.  Thanks to Paul for agreeing to kick off this part of the Uncooked Data experience.

What’s your all-time favourite blog?

That’s a hard question, but Iain Dale’s Diary, LabourList and LabourHome, Rupa Huq’s, yours, and Kerron Cross’s (when it existed) are/were must reads.

As a blogger, what’s your proudest blog moment, all-time favourite or most commented post?

That’s a bit difficult. I am proud of my actions during the Draper/McBride affair & the MP’s expenses scandal, because not only did my posts get noticed and I made my views clear, I did not stop to look and see if many people agreed with me or not. Sometimes you can come across an issue which is so black and white in it’s morality that you have to make a stand.

What is your day job? Is your blog linked to, tangential or completely separate from what you do?

I work as a Supervisor at a bookshop, so apart from the fact we sell some political books (at reduced good prices I might add), then no.

In the future of the internet and information, which will win: speed or accuracy?

I don’t want to even consider that. Information I hope, but the rise of a media over the past century which relies more on sensationalism does not inspire me with hope.

What is your favourite journey?

I like the Cambridge/King’s Cross train journeys, apart from the occasional delays and crowding, but I enjoy flights as well (apart from sustained turbulence and just before take off), as I rarely get to go on a plane.

What one thing (material, spiritual or emotional) would change your life for the better?

A number of things, am sure. A stronger faith would help go a long way and, like many other thirtysomethings, marriage, children, and a place of my own. But if these things do not come about, then it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

If you were stranded on a desert island, which book would you wish you had with you?

Apart from The Bible and The Complete Works of Shakespeare, which I would want to take? The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis and a decent biography. Nearly took Susan Howatch’s Starbridge Novels which are good, but there are six volumes.

What’s your must-see film?

A Bond movie, or Gandhi. Now there is a contradiction for you

Which song sums up your life?

Tough questions, but possibly Amazing Grace

Marmite: Love it or hate it?

Love it, but appreciate a lot of people hate it

How do you relax?

Watching TV, reading, and going for walks

Who is your greatest inspiration?

Is it cheesy to say Jesus Christ?

Where would you most like to visit? And where do you never want to have to go again?

I’d like to do a grand tour and revisit the US and Canada, with Ireland as a stopgap either on the way there or coming back. I can’t think of anywhere I’d never want to go back to. That said I had a miserable time doing school work experience at Hitchin Library. It took me ten years to even consider re-entering that building, and even now on the rare occasion I do, I feel very uncomfortable. The woman who ran the place at the time (nearly twenty years ago) was quite vile towards me and her report to the school made them gasp with shock and almost reduced me to tears.

Do you have a favourite website/ tool for work? Or for leisure purposes?

Is it sad to mention the BBC News Website, the Doctor Who Website, and Facebook for social!

Do you read a newspaper? Is that online, or in paper form or both?

I read The Guardian and The Independent in paper form, and The Sunday Times, although I do sometimes go for The Observer. I tend to read individual articles online more than the newspaper itself

What’s the best piece of advice you have been given? And what’s the worst? 

Best piece of advice to always think of others. The worst must have been so bad that I can’t remember

Filed under: Questions to a fellow blogeer , Mars Hill, questions, marmite

Free vs Fee: The future of news

SLA Europe’s panel session on 3 November brought together producers, licensors and aggregators of news content.

Andrew Hughes (Newspaper Licensing Agency) described their approach to licensing B2B use of online content. NLA claim that 31% of online content is not published in print. I’d like to know whether that’s 31% of actual news, or whether it’s counting opinions/ features or even the user-generated comments on websites. If the latter, is that really what business will pay for?

Laurence Kaye (Laurence Kay Solicitors) rattled through 10 key legal points (Neil Infield has recorded these here). He says that an effects-based approach to regulation would deal with a number of the issues; what is actually being done with the infringing information and how is that affecting the legitimate owner?

Laurence C. Rafsky Ph.D (Acquire Media) presented a hierarchy of ‘free.’ At the top: that which is professionally produced, & intended for gratis distribution. At the bottom: that which is not intended to be free but is taken anyway. User-generated amateur content in the middle. He also voiced concern about content that’s free for some, but not others. We were cautioned that just because Google says it’s free content – that doesn’t necessarily equate to actually being free.  We are referred to one author’s side of the story.

Jeremy  Lawson (Dow Jones & Company) also was present and his opening statement affirmed Dow Jones fully supported publishers’ rights.

Pertinent points raised in the subsequent Q&A session were…

• Around 2/3 of traffic to online newspapers arrives via Google news
• Business models are based on the paper-based technology. If we designed a news delivery system today from scratch we’d have very different ideas on what to do.
• How do individuals have a sense of differentiation, between their use as a consumer (reading the FT on their commute) and as a businessperson (copying the article to a client later)?
• An aggregator-driven increases in website traffic is not necessarily the answer to problems in a newspaper’s online business model.
• Publishers will find ways to leverage their investment in the content production. 

There were no hard and fast answers to be given; some strong speculation and some interesting ideas. Chatting to other attendees over a glass of wine in such a lovely venue was a great way to round off the evening. I consider it a success when I don’t quite get to speak to everyone I wanted to! So thank you to the panel members, SLA Europe, and Dow Jones for their kind sponsorship.

Filed under: Event report, SLA Europe , copyright, intellectual property, licensing, news, NLA