When I ask fellow SLA members if they are going to the conference, there is one response that has never resonated with me: “No, I can’t go because my employer won’t pay for it.” Now, I do understand that some people truly have financial restrictions that simply will not allow for the expense of paying …
Continue reading ‘Professional Development That’s Up To You, Not Your Employer’ »
Caleb Keeter’s change of heart about gun rights after the Las Vegas mass shooting has gotten a lot of press in recent days. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pro gun machine is turning on him with push-back that he was never a “real” supporter of the Second Amendment anyway. I’ve only seen one such article so far, …
Continue reading ‘A Little Research Keeps You From Being Played Like a Fiddle’ »
I participated in a panel at the SLA 2017 Annual Conference entitled Beyond the Day Job: Developing Leadership Skills Through Voluntary Service. My recap (below) was originally posted on the SLA LMD blog: It was my honor and pleasure to join four of my colleagues as one of the presenters on this panel. The session …
Continue reading ‘Volunteering – Getting as Good as You Give’ »
WIPO’s PATENTSCOPE search system has recently added Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval (CLIR) in beta mode for public testing within its PCT and National Patent Data Collections search system. This interface allows you to search the PCT database of International Applications, as well as the patent collections of ARIPO, Cuba, Israel, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa and …
Continue reading ‘PATENTSCOPE Search Service Adds New Multilingual Search Functionality’ »
Every other month, my firm library puts out a newsletter highlighting interesting developments and articles in the legal and intellectual property fields. Sometimes the articles I write showcase new search engines and other tools. I figure I have enough librarian-type friends who might also be interested in these tools that I can re-purpose some of my articles …
Continue reading ‘Free Alert Tool for the U.S. Courts of Appeals’ »
The following is lightly adapted from a listserv post from earlier today. Over the past couple of days, I have started to see more discussions focusing on the “why this name” issue I have so wanted to get to. I greatly appreciate the people who are starting to engage in a detailed discussion of the research. …
Continue reading ‘SLA Name Debate: Focusing on What It Means to “Test Best”’ »
Since writing a long post a week and a half ago detailing my concerns with the proposed SLA name change, I have been struck by three things and thought a follow-up post was in order. First, a few of the messages sent to listservs by association leaders have emphasized that the research results were posted …
My professional organization, the Special Libraries Association, is currently considering a name change. Members will vote in November on whether or not to change to the proposed name: Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals (ASKP). I have been participating in the Twitter debate about this change for several days, but feel it is time for a …
Continue reading ‘My Lengthy Thoughts on the SLA Proposed Name Change’ »
Although the Public Policy Update was on the schedule well in advance, the addition of a representative from Google to speak about Google Book Search and the related settlement was a last minute development. Dan Clancy, Engineering Director for Google Book Search, began with a brief presentation on the Google Book Search project and quickly …
Here’s my basic re-cap of the Opening Session Keynote Address by Colin Powell. Powell started by saying the librarians at the national Defense University warned him that librarians were angry about something he’d said early on as Secretary of State. I thought maybe he was going to address the OTHER thing we were upset about …
Continue reading ‘And now put your hands together for. . .’ »