Court Documents

• CCAP - Notification of new WI Circuit Court, Court of Appeals, and Supreme Court cases by party name and/or all filings for an individual case
  
• Wisconsin Courts - All new Court of Appeals and Supreme Court opinions, oral arguments, certifications, etc.
  
• Justia - Receive new full-text U.S. District Circuit Court opinions and filings by type, keyword, or jurisdiction
  
• Seventh Circuit - Track the latest opinions released by the US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals
  
• Cornell Supreme Court Collection - Monitor recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions

Legislation & Regulations

• GovTrack - Track U.S. Congressional bills - new bills by subject or representative, or by action on individual bills
  
• Justia Regulations Tracker - Track new Federal Register documents by agency, type of document or keyword

Legal Scholarship

• UW Law Library Selected Recent Acquisitions - New items received by the UW Law Library
  
• UW Law School Media Central - Audio and video recordings of law school lectures and events
  
• Current Law Journal Content - Law journal articles by publication, author, keyword, etc.
  
• Social Science Research Network - SSRN papers by author
  
• Westlaw Watch - New results for Westlaw searches or all new content from individual titles
  
• LexisNexis Publisher - New results for Westlaw searches or all new content from individual titles [Not available to law schools]

Blogs

• Justia Blawg Search - Search engine and directory of legal blogs
  
• Google Blog Search - Create RSS feeds by keyword for content from any blog

News

• Google News - Create RSS feeds from custom new searches
  
• Madison Newspapers
  
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
  
• Milwaukee Business Journal
  
• New York Times
  
• Wall Street Journal
  

Business

• PubSub - Customized SEC filings [not currently available]

Miscellaneous

• New Books from Amazon - Customized notification of new books by subject, including law
  
• RSStalker - Track Amazon price changes, and maybe get a price adjustment

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week I gave a presentation to the UW Law School faculty and staff on the legal applications of RSS. I've posted my slides and handouts on Scribd and thought I'd share them here.

Related handouts:

• Law-Related RSS Feeds
  
• RSS Readers: Thunderbird
  
• RSS Readers: Bloglines

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

RSS aficionados will appreciate 14 "Other" Ways to Use RSS Feeds from makeuseof.com. With these tools, you can do all sorts of interesting things with RSS feeds, such as:

• filter feeds by keyword
• send feed content to email, cell phone, chat, etc
• combine multiple feeds into one
• format feed content for print
• display feed content on a Web page
• convert text based feeds to audio

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Law Library of Congress is now offering a handful of RSS feeds.

• News & Events
• Research Reports
• Webcasts
• Global Legal Monitor

Source: AbsTracked

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week I announced that MadCat, the UW Madison Library catalog, had added RSS feeds for new items from various campus libraries and subjects, including law.

I also noted that the Law Library is continuing to produce our Selected Recent Acquisitions list which is much more detailed. Customized email delivery is available and I'm pleased to announce that we've just added a RSS feed.

Unlike the previously mentioned MadCat generated feed, our Selected Recent Acquisitions feed only lists titles which are truly new. Because it is tied to our acquisitions system, the MadCat generated feed lists everything we've received, like new supplements of long held titles, older items that have just been retrospectively cataloged, etc.

So, if you're interested browsing new items received by the UW Law Library, I recommend that you subscribe to our Selected Recent Acquisitions RSS feed or customized email service.

If you would like to request one of our recently acquired titles, or any other title for that matter, you may use our Outlaw Document Delivery service. (See our fee schedule.)

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bev Butula, law librarian colleague and blogger over at the Wisconsin Law Journal, shared with me a fun story she created to illustrate how useful blogs can be to legal professionals.

The story is entitled Bella is Bewildered About Blogs. Think Wolf v. Pig, but about blogs.

All silliness aside, this story is a great way to learn more about blogs and how you, as a legal professional, can use them to stay current with a very small investment of your time. Several Wisconsin-related blogs are featured, including WisBlawg.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm pleased to report that MadCat, the UW Madison library catalog, now features RSS feeds for new items. New In MadCat is a list of books, journals, and titles in all media that have recently been cataloged by campus libraries. The list is updated every Wednesday.

You may subscribe to RSS feeds for particular Subjects and Campus Libraries.

Law-Related Subject feeds include:

* All
* America. North America
* Asia and Eurasia, Africa, Pacific Area, and Antarctica
* Canada
* Europe
* History of canon law
* Islamic law
* Jewish law
* Latin America. Mexico and Central America. West Indies. Caribbean area
* Law of nations
* Law of the Roman Catholic Church. The Holy See
* Religious law in general. Comparative religious law. Jurisprudence
* South America
* United Kingdom and Ireland
* United States

A feed for all newly cataloged items from the UW Law Library is also available. However, we will continue to produce our Selected Recent Acquisitions list which is much more detailed. Customized email delivery is available.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week, the popular blogging software, Movable Type announced that they are now open source. This means you can freely modify, redistribute, and use Movable Type for any purpose you choose. Read more at the Movable Type blog.

Source: Boing Boing

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A South Carolina District Court judge has ruled that bloggers may have the same rights as journalists, depending on the content of the blog. The complete case, BidZirk LLC v Phillip J Smith, is available at Justia. Justia rocks!

From Judge Henry M. Herlong, Jr.'s opinion:

However, in determining whether Smith was engaged in news reporting or news commentating, the court has applied the functional analysis suggested by commentators and the Plaintiffs in their memorandum in support of a preliminary injunction, which examines the content of the material, not the format, to determine whether it is journalism... In addition, the court has considered the intent of Smith in writing the article. The court agrees that not all bloggers are journalists. However, some bloggers are without question journalists.

Source: What I Learned Today...

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Real Lawyers Have Blogs has some good advice on converting a law firm newsletter into a blog.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is a new e-book available called Law of The Blog, which according to author Nicholas Carroll, is "about bloggers' legal rights and risks in the U.S.A." The table of contents is available on the Web site.

Source: Slaw

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Wisconsin State Law Library routinely offers a great slate of workshops. Looks like there is a new one coming up in November called, "Using Blogs to Promote Your Law Practice."

Here's the description:

Blogs can be used to inform, communicate and network. How can you use a blog to connect with clients? Learn how attorneys and law firms are using blogs and how easy it is to maintain a web presence without a website, or enhance an existing website. Attend this two hour session to learn how to create and market your blog. Watch a demonstration of how to set up a blog using a popular blogging tool.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

NewsGator, a company specializing in information delivery via RSS, is offering a free Webinar titled "Enterprise RSS for the Legal Profession" on August 21st, 2:00 ET.

I expect they will be demoing NewsGator Enterprise Server which according to their Web site "helps organizations take news and updates from the Web, the blogosphere, premium content providers and internal applications and systems and automatically deliver it to places where their employees can easily find and use it ? portals, mobile devices, their desktops or preset folders in Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes."

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the last few years, I've featured a number of online collections produced by the UW Digital Collections Center, such as Wisconsin Blue Books, the State of Wisconsin Collection and the University of Wisconsin Collection. Now you can find out about new collections directly with the UWDCC's new RSS feed.

About the UWDCC: In the spirit of the "Wisconsin Idea," the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center (UWDCC) creates and provides access to digital resources from a variety of original formats including books, photographs, archival materials, audio, and video. These resources are freely available to the general public via the World Wide Web.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This Monday marked the release of BlawgWorld 2007, an eBook featuring the best posts from "77 of the most influential blawgs." I'm very honored that WisBlawg was selected for inclusion again this year.

I have to admit, though, that I until today, I didn't really see the point of BlawgWorld - of gathering tiny snapshots of blawgs into an eBook. That's why I read with interest Robert Ambrogi's "BlawgWorld 2007: I Still Don't Get It" post over at Law.com. Ambrogi echoed my thoughts:

But the premise of this book is that is serves as the best way for lawyers to discover legal blogs and choose the ones they might regularly read. I still don't see how it does that. Myself, I am able to evaluate a blog only by reading several postings over a period of time.

But then I read Ross Kodner's comment to Ambrogi's post and I finally understood the value of BlawgWorld:

What I find is that the majority of lawyers still barely know what a blog is, no less subscribe to multiple blogs and actually learn from all the valuable content that's out there. So the point I think you didn't bring up is that the 77 essays - cherry-picked by their authors to represent self-perceived "best of" content - present a tremendous amount of useful information that thousands of lawyers and their staff will read and benefit from.

I still have the sense that some bloggers are still so caught up in the mechanism of blogging and being part of the blawging world that it's easy to forget what I personally think is the only thing that matters: education.

Education - Bingo! So BlawgWorld is all about educating non-blogging legal professionals about blogs. What are they?; What do they have to offer?; Which ones match my interests? Hopefully, then, some of these readers will be intrigued enough to venture out into the blogosphere. As a someone who has devoted a lot of effort to educating legal professionals about blogs, I feel almost embarrassed that I didn't get it before now.

So, if you haven't already looked at BlawgWorld 2007, I highly recommend it. If you're new to blogs, it will introduce them in an easy to use eBook format. And, if you're a blog expert, you may still find a few new ones that you'd like to read.

BlawgWorld is completely free to download - no registration hassles. I warn you that it is quite large and will take a while to download. You can also watch the press conference video which consists of three parts: (1) a behind the scenes look at what makes this eBook noteworthy, (2) a guided tour of the eBook and its features, and (3) a Q&A session with those who attended the press conference.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Do you or your organization offer any RSS feeds? If so, take a look at 5 Tips to Increase RSS Subscribers which I learned about today over at LibrarianInBlack.

The tips include:
1) Make it stand out
2) Offer a full feed
3) Subscriber count
4) Multiple buttons
5) Email Subscription

I agree with LiB that they are all good tips except for #3. I'm not big on subscriber counters either. If you have a high number of subscribers, it just seems like you're showing off. If your subscribers are few, it just looks sad.

But I can enthusiastically endorse the others, especially tip #5. Not every potential reader is into RSS so it makes tons of sense to offer an email subscription option also (it's really easy - check out FeedBlitz). More than half of those who subscribe to WisBlawg do so via email.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A collaboration between FindLaw and Justice Talking brings us Today in Legal History. This blog shares a daily legal history factoid along with links to related resources.

Source: Law Dawg Blawg

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wisconsin Union Blend is a new blog where "members of the UW-Madison teaching and instructional technology communities to come together and talk about the campus issues that impact our respective fields."

I learned about it this morning when my "ego feed" picked up a comment about WisBlawg. So far the posts have centered around Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, podcasting, RSS and wikis. Explanations and suggestions are offered on how to use these technologies for instruction.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Proof and Hearsay is a new blog from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "devoted to law-and-order issues in Milwaukee and throughout Wisconsin, with occasional ventures farther afield for legal matters relevant to the way justice is carried out around here."

Check out yesterday's post, CCAP hints and tricks #1: Mass searches made easy. Two tips are offered: how to figure out a courtroom's schedule on CCAP and looking at all the new prosecutions filed each day.

If you're looking for search capabilities beyond what is offered on CCAP, check out the fee-based CourtTracker service.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm back from Chicago Kent where I attended the Back to the Future of Legal Research Symposium. I was unable to live blog the afternoon sessions, so I'll share a few thoughts now.

Right after lunch, I participated on a panel with Professors Doug Berman of the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University (Sentencing Law and Policy Blog & Law School Innovation) and Richard Friedman of University of Michigan Law School (The Confrontation Blog). The session, which was moderated by Debbie Ginsberg, was on Web 2.0: New Tools for Doing and Teaching Legal Research. The panel began with each of us discussing how we got into blogging and the place of blogs in legal scholarship. I then explored a number of Web 2.0 technologies and discussed their role in legal research. They included:

• blogs
  
• podcasts
  
• wikis
  
• scholarship repositories
  
• other content sharing tools
  
• RSS
  
• instant messaging
  
• live chat
  
• micro-blogs
  
• social networking sites
  
• virtual worlds

I created a handout which defines each of the above with links to examples. There is also a wiki for the panel to which you are invited to contribute

Later that afternoon I attended two more sessions. Alison Julien & Kira Zaporski from Marquette University Law School, Rosalie Sanderson of New York Law School and Sarah Valentine of CUNY Law School gave an interesting presentation on Being Research-Selective for Efficiency and Economy. They shared the strategies that they use for teaching law students cost-effective legal research strategies. I was particularly impressed with the time sheet exercise used at Marquette.

The last session I attended was on Evaluating Subscription Databases. Julie Jones from Cornell Law School began with an explanation of how the eye tracks a web site. Then she offered suggestions on how Westlaw and Lexis might improve their search interfaces so that law students could learn to use them more efficiently and cost effectively. I was glad to see that there were representatives from each vendor in attendance because she had some great suggestions.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently been notified that my article on the State of the Law Library Blogosphere was chosen as the winner of the ALL-SIS Outstanding Article Award. I'm very honored to receive the award.

Here's the abstract:

Although the legal and library literature is filled with information about the theoretical pros and cons of blog publishing, little has been written about actual blogging experiences. Who is blogging? What are they blogging about? Who reads blogs? What technologies are being used? Have blogs been successful? What lessons can be shared? These are the questions explored in this article. Through this study, potential bloggers will better evaluate whether this technology is right for them and veterans will gain insight into their own blogging experience in comparison to their peers.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From Library Boy:

LEGISinfo, the Library of Parliament's legislative research website, has started offering RSS feeds since the beginning of this parliamentary session to help people track bills before the House of Commons and the Senate.

In the lefthand column on the LEGISinfo home page, simply click on any of the links to Senate or House of Commons bills from the 39th Parliament.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Meg Kribble, a new law librarian at Nova Southeastern University Law Library in south Florida, has recently started blogging at All-Purpose BiblioBlawg.

In addition to law, librarianship, and legal research, Meg also blogs about such things as Second Life, Macs, cool YouTube content, and sci fi TV shows. Yay - someone else to talk Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica with. What is it with law librarians and sci fi?

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Justia just keeps getting better and better. The latest addition, Regulation Tracker allows you to search, browse, and track Federal Register documents.

Not only is there a RSS feed for every agency, but you can customize them by type of document or keyword. I just had someone ask me whether a product like this existed - and at the time it didn't. Very cool.

Source: Law Dawg Blawg

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Beginning with Weekly List 1 for 2007, the Library of Congress Subject Headings Weekly Lists and Library of Congress Classification Weekly Lists are now available as free RSS feeds.

Thanks to my colleague, Cindy May for the tip.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anne Reed, trial lawyer and jury consultant in the Milwaukee office of Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren, SC, has started a very well done blog entitled, Deliberations. The focus of the blog is juries, jury trials and jury selection.

Not only is the blog well written, Anne does a great job of using images to attract attention. The photo of the child watching the Teletubbies caught my eye. And I was rewarded by reading the interesting accompanying post comparing jurors to adults who can't understand what little kids say --because they lack the context to do so. Unless you've seen the Teletubbies, you won't understand when a toddler describes what Tinky Winky did today. Now just try to explain Boobah.

Thanks to Judge Richard Sankovitz for the tip.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to Blawg for the link to the Practical RSS video clip, An Introduction To RSS... In just seven minutes, the video does an excellent job of explaining what RSS is and how to use it. Well worth a few minutes of your time if you've been wanting to learn more about RSS.

And after you've learned about RSS, head over to Vancouver Law Librarian Blog for a debunking of the Biggest Hurdles for Law Firm RSS Adoption.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The ABA Web Store is now offering a RSS feed with information about new books available from the ABA. News Feed will include new titles and other Web Store information.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Second Line Blog is the official blog for the American Association of Law Libraries' (AALL) 2007 Annual Meeting in New Orleans. It features current announcements, news, photos, informal reports from conference goers, and all sorts of important items of interest. Both a RSS feed and email subscription are available.

If you wish to contribute to the blog, contact the editor for an invitation.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm please to report that my article, Too Much Information: Filtering RSS Feeds, appears in the Winter 2006 issue of Connecting..., the newsletter of the AALL Computing Services Special Interest Section.

In the article, I offer instructions for:

• Filtering blog content using Google Blog Search and Feedster
  
• Filtering other RSS feeds with Feed Rinse
  
• Combining feeds with Feed Jumbler
  
• Receiving filtered RSS feeds via email, cell phone or IM using ZapTXT

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Tis the time of year for blog awards. Here are two which honor legal blogs:

• Dennis Kennedy's 2006 Blawggies
• Blawg Review's Awards 2006

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm very honored to learn that WisBlawg has recently been named as a Top 100 Education Blog by the OEDb: Online Education Database. Not bad considering there are over 30,000 education blogs. The list is not ranked but rather is ordered alphabetically within each topic. WisBlawg is one of four specialty blogs.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Looks like the Library of Congress is offering a handful of RSS feeds. There are general feeds about library news and events, as well as feeds from the U.S. Copyright Office. The latter features feeds for current legislation, federal register notices and more.

Source: Library Stuff

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you've visited Blawg lately, you've probably noticed a few changes. The directory of legal blogs has updated it's look and added some useful upgrades.

• The first change is the url - the central domain is moving from .org to .com. Blawg.com has long redirected to Blawg.org, and now the relationship will simply be reversed.
• Blawg's Blog is also moving to a new platform and address. You will find the new Blawg's Blog at http://blog.blawg.com.
• The new Blawg directory automatically sorts each category (or subcategory), top to bottom, by a blawg's popularity.

Also interesting - Blawg developer, Bill Gratsch, shared with me that the category Law Libraries & Research is one of the largest, most active categories in the directory. "Law libraries are clearly one of the dominant forces out there with regard to law blogs."

He goes on to say in a recent blog post:

[I]t is readily apparent that they are offering a valuable service to the legal community at large. . . For example, attorneys could clearly benefit from subscribing to the content from their local law school's or bar association's library blawg. These research professionals are often well-versed in recent legal developments in the state or city where the library is located. Just tapping into these daily updates for information of import to the local Bar could be a valuable time saver.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Justia.com has recently launched a legal-blog--only search engine. Blawg Search offers both a search engine for blawg posts, as well as a directory of legal blogs. Very nice.

Source: Robert Ambrogi's Law Sites

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm a big RSS fan. It's a wonderful technology for current awareness, networking, benchmarking, and image monitoring. But, unfortunately, not every Web page that I want to monitor offer a RSS feed.

That's where "html scraping" services like FeedYes & Ponyfish come in. They allow you to create your own RSS feeds from almost any regularly updated web page.

"Html scraping" services "scrape" the links and text off a Web site and save the links and text into an XML document. See Wikipedia if you want to learn more.

Of the two, I prefer Ponyfish because it's a bit more user friendly. Here's how it works:

1. Enter the URL of the page you want to create a feed for. I chose the Wisconsin Joint Committee on Finance web site. There may be some new papers or minutes that I want to know about.

2. In the window containing the web page, click on the links that you want to include in the feed (you have to choose at least two). For the Joint Comm. on Finance, I chose Minutes and Papers.

3. Continue to generate the XML document. (You can skip Ponyfish's step three)

4. Add the feed to your Feed reader. Now anytime the committee posts new minutes or papers, I'll be notified.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Earlier this week, Minnesota Public Radio featured a segment on the extent to which legal blogs are making their way into judicial opinions.

Source: Real Lawyers Have Blogs

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is an interesting article in the October issue of the Duke Law & Technology Review entitled, When is Employee Blogging Protected by Section 7 of the NLRA? (2006 DUKELTR 17)

From the article:

Blogs present courts with a new context in which to strike the balance between employee and employer rights. This iBrief focuses on employee blogging during personal time without the aid of an employer's property. The iBrief recommends that courts recognize employees' criticisms of their employer on blogs as protected concerted activity, and argues that existing case law examining unfair labor practices readily applies to the blogging context.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some data from the latest State of the Blogosphere, October, 2006 from Technorati.

• Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
• The blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
• About 100,000 new weblogs are created each day
• About 55% of all blogs are active, which means that they have been updated at least once in the last 3 months
• Total posting volume of the blogosphere has leveled off somewhat, showing about 1.3 million postings per day

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy have compiled a good list of RSS Resources You Can Use: Automated Web Surfing for Lawyers in November issue of Law Practice Today.

The article begins with an introduction to RSS and how to monitor information via RSS feeds using a newsreader (a.k.a. feed reader or aggregator).

For the more advanced RSS user, I thought that the section on Generating Your Own RSS Feeds and Other Advanced RSS Tools was particularly useful. They described tools for customizing, filtering and creating your own feeds.

Source: VLLB Linkblog

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning, Westclip picked up on Federal Lawyer article on The State of the Legal Blawgosphere. (Westlaw: 53-OCT FEDRLAW 14)

According to estimates from Bob Ambrogi and Tom Mighell, there are at least 1000, but probably closer to 2000 legal blogs in existence. Also mentioned was the list of 100+ law library blogs which I maintain.

From the article:

Should We Care?
Now, as if making the argument over sheer numbers somewhat irrelevant, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a published order denying a motion for en banc reconsideration. A fairly substantial portion of the dissent (written by Judge O'Scannlain, with Circuit Judges Kleinfeld, Tallman, Bybee, and Bea concurring) consists of a block quote from a blawg. (See Harper v. Poway Unified School District, 455 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. July 31, 2006.) Can an avalanche of blawgs be far behind?

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Legal blogging expert, Kevin O'Keefe had this to say about the recent Blogger outages:

I'd hate to be the law firm marketing professional telling the managing partner in a 500 lawyer firm with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues that 'our 5 blog sites have been down for the day - but we got them for free.' Looks great to clients paying the firm $350 to $500 an hour.

Kevin certainly does tell it like it is - and quite often he's right. If you are running a professional blog, there are better hosting options than Blogger, even your organization isn't bringing in hundreds of millions in revenues.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"Join Denise Howell and the TWiL panel, including Cathy Kirkman, Ernie Svenson, and John Palfrey as they discuss breaking issues in technology law including patents, copyrights, and more." What's TWiL? This Week in Law, a new legal issues podcast.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two new blogs:

LexLibris, University of Minnesota Law Library Blawg

Law School Innovation, A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Real Lawyers Have Blogs:

Jason Eiseman, Computer Automation Librarian at Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt, has produced an excellent 3 part screencast tutorial on RSS:

1. Introduction of RSS discusses importance of RSS and looks at an RSS feed.
2. How to set up an RSS aggregator and subscribe to RSS feeds.
3. Specific tools law librarians may use to set up RSS feeds.

Jason says it's for law librarians, but anyone learning RSS would benefit from his instruction.

I agree and highly recommend this tutorial to any legal professional interested in learning more about RSS. It's one thing to read about a technology like RSS, but following along as someone walks you through the tools is even better. You can see just where to click and why. I thought that screencast #3 was particularly useful - I even learned a thing or two myself.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From BoleyBlogs:

The Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) provides a unique list of lawsuits against bloggers. The list comes complete with annotations, links to decisions, case documents, related web sites and news stories. The range of cases is impressive, from Apple suing over trade secrets, to actresses protecting their reputations, to judges taking on local critics, and to principals suing over false MySpace pages.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Steve Matthews of Vancouver Law Librarian Blog has an excellent list of the Top 10 Uses for RSS in Law Firms. There are some wonderful ideas here on how to leverage this technology for current awareness, marketing, image monitoring, communication and more.

If you are new to RSS, see my article in the August Wisconsin Lawyer entitled, RSS: Making the Internet Subscribeable.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few weeks ago I was invited to participate in a survey on the diversity of niche bloggers. The results of the survey appear at Mapping the Diversity of the Blogosphere: A Bloggasm Case Study. Interesting stuff.

Here's a sampling of the results:

The Blogosphere as a whole: (These are the results if you add all the niches together)

Male: 74%
Female: 26%
***
White/Caucasian/European: 73%
Black/African: 9%
Asian: 10%
Middle Eastern/Arab: 1%
Latino/Hispanic: 6%
Native American: 1%

Law/Legal Blogs:

Male: 74%
Female: 26%
***
White/Caucasian/European: 94%
Latino/Hispanic: 6%

Interesting that both categories show an identical ratio of male to female - 3 to 1. I wonder how many other law library bloggers were surveyed. Given that librarianship is a female dominated profession, I suspect that many - at least half? - of law library bloggers are women.

The author finds that the only niches where females outnumbered males were Sex Blogs, Gossip/Fashion Blogs, Feminist Blogs, and Food Blogs. The first category comes as a surprise to me.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

EContent has an interesting article on the legality of harvesting content from RSS feeds for publication on your own site. The author explores both sides of the debate about whether it's legal/ethical for "non-content creators reap some of the value of others' content-creation labor."

Source: Real Lawyers Have Blogs

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I received a postcard in the mail today for a free Webinar from Newsgator entitled, "RSS: The Future of Legal Information Delivery" It is scheduled for September 26th at 2:30 pm and September 27th at 12:30 pm.

Topics:
- Learn more about RSS
- Discover how leading law firms and legal departments are using it to improve information delivery and collaboration
- See a demonstration from both the library and the attorney's perspective

To register, contact clairf@newsgator.com. (The URL listed on the postcard to register by Web was wrong and I couldn't find it on their web site. Not so good.)

Not sure what RSS is? See my article in the Wisconsin Lawyer this month, RSS: Making the Internet Subscribeable.