Back to Karate

Started back to Karate today after a 3 month hiatus. It is good to be back. I enjoy karate because it is a very personal sport. The training is intense and the only you compete against is yourself. Shihan was very happy to see me back and made it clear that he wanted me to come regularly again. I intend to.

Cats and Dogs Living Together (make that Librarians and IT)

This session was a group presentation by individuals from 3 different law schools about the evolving role of IT in the law school. Historically IT was ‘housed’ in the library because the library was the biggest user of technology in the law school. That has not been true for several years now. Other departments within any school or college have significant IT needs.

At Duke the IT department was split off from the law library 12 years ago and established as a separate department. Four years ago Duke established an educational technologies department deparate from the law library and the IT department. Duke has found this configuration works well for them but cautions other schools to find a configuration that fits their culture.

Pepperdine is in the process of separating the IT department from the law library. One of the Associate Librarians is the Director of IT but they have separated the IT budget out from the law library.

Rutgers IT department is separate from the law library. They collaborate quite a bit on what they call high profile projects.

Apache mod_rewrite – Not Just for Rockers

Thomas Bruce
Director, Legal Information Institute
Cornell Law School

A rules based method for rewriting URLs. This module is included in the standard distrubution of Apache.

Flash and XML: SU’s Seating Chart Application

Michael Caldwell
Print and Web Media Manager
Seattle University School of Law

Chris Wilen
Director of Instructional Design
Seattle University School of Law

Seattle University created a seating chard application using Macromedia Flash, MS Access, and XML. Student, class, and faculty data are imported into MS Access and then exported to an XML file. A Flash application was developed that reads the XML file and allows the instructor (or user) to easily create a seating chart for their class. The application allows the modification of student data such as title and name spelling. Using drag and drop a seating charty is created using a variety of classroom templates. The number of seats per row in a classrom is user configurable.

Using Current Broadband Technology for Multi Media Communication

Mostly a commercial for Digital One. Talked about broadband use as another way to communicate with customers. WIFI access will be coming on-line in major cities throughout the USA so broad band access will become ubiquitous. The speaker discounted Real and Quicktime as players in the marked. Seems Microsoft is dominant here too.

Comments added to sidebar

Thanks to Rori for helping me again. Comments have been added to the sidebar. I don’t know why I added them because few people read my blog anyway. But nevertheless, this is really starting to look like a blog.

Law School Case Management Software: The Law Library Experience with Amicus Attorney

Lisa Smith-Butler
Director, LLTC abd Assistant Professor
Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center

Roy Balleste
Associate Law Library Director
Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center

Amicus Attormey provides filing, billing, library, calendaring, document assembly, and communications. They implementes this software because the Dean of the Law School wanted their students to have an experience that mirrors a law firm. These kinds of software reduces tremendously the amount of paper generated in managing cases. Functions are automated based on data defined parameters. For example, if a court date is known Amicus will automatically calculate dates for filing the documents appropriate to the case.

DSpace:Why you should care

Carol A. Parker
Law Library Director and Assistant Professor of Law
University of New Mexico School of Law

DSpace is an open source repository that is data agnostic. It will accept any format of data weather it is web, video, word processing format, PDF, or other such file. DSPace servers are indexed by Google. This technology allows the school to provide a central repository for data. Faculty can ‘publish’ all of their research to the extent they want to. The advantage it gives is the ability to publish writings that may not typically be accessable to others. Since Google will index DSpace servers any writings or documents in a DSpace repository will be searchable on the web.

Onfolio: Researcher’s ‘Swiss Army Knife’

Michael Samson
Law Librarian
Wayne State University Law School

Onfolio is a program that integrates into browsers and into Microsoft Windows applications. Michael is a good presenter and is very much interested in how to retrieve and deliver information electronically. His presentation title was most appropriate. Onfolio manages RSS feeds, and helps you collect and organize on-line content. Onfolio provides is able to manage and provides easy access to blogs, web sites, files stored on a server, and is able to publish to all of these types of content including web sites. Onfolio integrates seamlessly into MS Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, amd EndNotes.

Flying

I love flying. It is magical being several thousand feet up in the air. Flying through the clouds brings me a sense of amazement that is hard to describe. I get a similar feeling when sailing on a large lake or being on the ocean.

There was a young girl who was in a wheel chair on the flight. She was with an adult woman who seemed to be her mother. The interesting thing is that she had trained companion dog with her. It was a beautiful black lab. This dog was amazing to me. It was so calm throughout the entire flight. It was obviously devoted to the young girl and she was devoted to her dog. This dog acted better on this flight than some children I’ve seen on flights. Better yet, he/she acted better than some adults I’ve seen on flights.