Due a multitude of competing interests that keep us from posting here on a more regular basis, Josh and I have decided to end the run of Library Laws and instead concentrate our efforts on our own respective blogs. Thank you for reading, and we hope you'll join us at our individual homes:

Joshua Brauer - Adding Understanding

Tom Boone - tom boone dot com

This morning Google Reader quietly added a new feature: search. Given that Google is best known as a search engine, this kind of functionality may be long overdue, but its utility makes it a welcome addition.

The search box, which appears at the top of any page within Reader, allows users to search for items within their subscriptions. A search can be performed on all items or just across individual tags or subscriptions. Search functionality is, however, limited to a user's own subscriptions (including any shared content to which you subscribe). To search all blog content, users will still need to use Google's separate Blog Search tool.

From a usability standpoint, search results are a breeze. Note the green border that appears around the results, making it instantly clear to users that they are viewing search results, not regular subscription content.

Google also made another welcome change to Reader today. Unread counts now go to 1000, so no more folders and subscriptions displaying a less than helpful count of "100+."

The Online Education Database (OEDb) published its ranking of the top 25 librarian bloggers yesterday, based on 4 criteria: Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Technorati authority, and number of Bloglines subscribers. The top librarian blog according to OEDb? Jessamyn West's librarian.net.

The surprising news for the law library world, however, is the fact that 5 blogs featuring law librarians made the list. Joe Hodnicki, Ron Jones and the rest of the gang at Law Librarian Blog were 5th; Steve Matthews' Vancouver Law Librarian Blog was 17th; Connie Crosby's eponymous blog was 20th; The Handheld Librarian, featuring Grace Lee and Barbara Fullerton, was 21st; and Jason Eiseman's Jason the Content Librarian was 24th.

Way to go, everybody!

David Tosh and Ben Werdmuller, the developers behind the educational social networking tool Elgg, will soon begin providing coverage of other educational technology products on their new blog, edufilter. From the blog's "About" page:

Edufilter has been set up as a resource for those wanting to find out more about the various educational projects going on around the world. As well as reviewing the projects we will be reviewing educational software.

(Read/Write Web has an excellent overview of Elgg and an interview with Tosh and Werdmuller here.)

Over at Library Stuff, Steven Cohen ponders the possibility of using patrons as bloggers/marketers for the library. If, as David Rothman suggests, "librarian blogs preach mostly to the choir," perhaps a user-centered blog would be a better tool for marketing a library's facilities and services.

What does that mean for law school libraries? Perhaps law faculty and student "evangelists" should be drafted to write about the library. After all, their experiences certainly reflect more accurately the needs of other patrons than do a librarian's. And they may even raise concerns in their postings that never occurred to librarians. Assuming the librarians listened to these concerns, faculty/student blogs could lead to an improvement in library services.

Now, I'm not totally sold on this concept, mind you. For one, most faculty probably consider themselves far too busy to spend time writing for a library blog. (Perhaps they should have their research assistants blog for them.) As for students, they're certainly more familiar with the concept of blogs, but in most cases they're simply unaware of the many services available to them in the library (which is, of course, our failure as librarians to effectively market what we already have).

Nonetheless, it's something to ponder. I think there might be a good, workable idea buried in there somewhere.

The law librarian bloggers gathered on Monday evening for drinks and conversation at Kitchen K...

 
 
Connie Crosby talks with a fellow attendee...

 
 
Jim Milles shows Connie Crosby his portable podcasting equipment...

'Piping Hot Content' from Your Library via CALI ClassCaster IntraBlogs
Michael Samson, Wayne State University Law School

With the help of CALI Classcaster, Wayne State now has IntraBlogs for faculty, government documents, information technology, computer labs (for student news), and library staff (reference).

The tools used over the life of the project include Bloglines, Blogger, and CALI Classcaster. Initially, the IntraBlogs were created with Blogger. The pros of using blogger include the ability to integrate e-mail, support for adding team members to a multi-user blog, the availability of add-ons for such things as VoIP, statistics, pictures, spam-blocking, and mobile devices. With Blogger, remote access to the IntraBlogs was achieved through either Remote Desktop connections or a virtual private network.

There were, however, several cons associated with the use of Blogger. For one, separate blogs had to be created for each and every blog, meaning there was no ability to administer them all together. There was no file server for hosting files directly with Blogger. There was also no calendar support. Finally, Blogger offered no ability to password-protect blogs to hide them from general consumption.

Why did WSU switch to Classcaster? It offered a wide range of tools, including blogs, podcasting, VoIP, and video. Users could assign categories to their posts which could be integrated with RSS feeds. Classcaster also offered the file server and calendar WSU desired. Notably, CALI offers 24/7 support for its Classcaster blogs.

There are several reasons for faculty at all law schools to use Classcaster. First the technical support mentioned above can help non-techie professors tremendously. The tools can maintain use statistics that can show faculty how widely a blog is being used. Unlike some tools, Classcaster offers the ability to suppress comments to protect against unwanted comments or spam. There is also a plugin center to administer the various add-ins that are available.

So far, three of the IntraBlogs at WSU are using Classcaster: the library, Professor Peter Henning's Professional Responsibility podcast, and the Michigan Association of Law Libraries. Professor Henning's podcast was a part of CALI's Legal Education Podcasting Project which took place during the Winter 2006 semester and involved over 50 law faculty across the country. The professors were asked to record and post recordings of class lectures or summaries. All were provided with recording hardware and web support via instructions, digital tools, and screencasts.

Prof. Henning says podcasting is very easy to do but requires discipline. In his class it was definitely an attention getter for the students. The recordings provided depth and clarified class issues. They also provided flexibility and enhanced students' comfort level with the material.

Students indicated that they liked the idea of class podcasting. They said it improved comprehensive and retention and allowed them to learn a new technology in the process. The time commitment was minimal, requiring only an additional 20-30 minutes per week.

What's the future of podcasting at WSU? Prof. Henning says he'll be doing it again, and the Dean plans to begin podcasting shortly.

Samson finished by providing a demonstration of a Classcaster blog, including the live creation of a blog post on his library's system. He also showed off the ability to add video files to the posts from tools like Jumpcut, Stickam, and YouTube. Members of the audience asked several questions during the demo, one of which even caused Samson to discover a feature of Classcaster of which he had been previously unaware.

Ian Best at 3L Epiphany has posted a collection of links to blog posts discussing Friday's "Bloggership" conference at Harvard. The symposium was a watershed event for legal scholarship, and it's only fitting that the best commentary about the day be found in the blogosphere.

Don't forget to check out all of the conference papers over at SSRN.

[3L Epiphany] Blogging the Harvard Bloggership Conference (via Law Librarian Blog)

Tomorrow (Friday) morning, The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School will host a symposium titled "Bloggership: How Blogs Are Transforming Legal Scholarship." The all day event will feature presentations from some of the biggest names in the legal blogosphere, including Eugene Volokh and Glenn Reynolds.

For those of you who, like me, won't be in Cambridge tomorrow, the Berkman Center is offering a live streaming audiocast of the event. In addition, the symposium papers are all available from SSRN on its special conference page.

For complete information, visit the Berkman Center's Bloggership Symposium webpage.

Amanda Etches-Johnson has kept an exhaustive list of library blogs for quite some time on her site, blogwithoutalibrary.net. As the number of library blogs has grown, that list has become increasingly difficult to maintain. In an effort to make the list more self-sustaining (and less time consuming), Amanda has transferred all the information into the new Blogging Libraries Wiki. By converting the list into wiki format, librarians can now add their own blogs to the list themselves.

In the Academic Libraries section, I count about 9 law school libraries on the list, some with multiple blogs. There appear to be another 3 or so listed in the Special Libraries section. If your law library blog isn't included, please add it to the wiki.