Dumpling in a Hanky

The current Big Idea in the legal / library blog world is the Free Legal Web (FLW). Originally mooted by Nick Holmes, the idea is to pull all of the content currently floating about the ether (legal professionals blog posts, Government information etc) into one portal. That in itself is a big enough task, but what doesn't seem to be clear yet is...who is this Free Legal Web for? The people involved so far seem to be legal professionals and IT specialists. The legal professionals will be working out some way of getting the useful materials together, and persuading other legal professionals that giving up their valuable time and work (such as blog postings) for this enterprise will be a worthwhile investment, and will reap them rewards in the end. The IT professionals job will be to write the scripts and programmes that will get everything together in the one place, and working well with all the other bits and pieces. That's all lovely (although it's hard to tell what's...

Yay! As emailed out over lis-law last week, the Copyright Licensing Agency have developed a CLA licence just for law firms . Body of the press release below: New licence for law firms 15th October 2008 CLA have announced the launch of a new licence designed specifically for UK law firms. From 1 November 2008, the new Law Licence will offer law firms additional benefits to the existing photocopying rights. The Law Licence now enables articles and clippings from law reports, journals and press cuttings (magazines, journals, legal and other periodicals, but not newspapers) to be scanned, stored electronically and distributed externally to clients. The new licence has been developed in consultation with The Law Society of England and Wales and the City of London Law Society so that it meets the needs of law firms that wish to copy from law reports and journals, business titles and other published media. Chris Holland, Librarian & Head of Information Services at the Law So...

A legal librarian friend forwarded me this event notification today from SIN, the Scottish Information Network . Unfortunately, I didn't get the notification myself (nor did at least one other member that I know of), despite having joined SIN back in April. I think they may need to look at their email /contact list management! Scottish Information Networking event - First steps in blogging Dear colleague Do you blog or are you thinking about blogging? The Scottish Information Network is running an evening event entitled “First steps in blogging” on Tuesday November 4th. Come along and hear advice from some real bloggers or perhaps even plug your own blog! The event will also be an opportunity to meet with other members of the network and find out more about what’s happening in the information world. See below for more details and let me know ASAP if you would like to attend John Coll Business Information Services Manager Scottish Business Information Service National Library of Sco...

Starting on Saturday 8th November, the Edinburgh Festival of Libraries will be running a week long programme of talks, walks, tours, presentations roadshows and behind-the-scenes peeks into some of the many different types of library services working in Edinburgh. Lots of interesting things going on, but I'm kinda ruled out of any of the daytime events by working (I've maxed out my holiday allowance for the year, boo, hiss), which is a shame, because there's plenty I'd have loved to be able to go to! So, to make sure I still get to do *something*, I've emailed to book a place for the finale event on Friday 14th November: Finale event - Future of the Book Panel discussion "The Future of the Book" Print books or e-books? Uplift or download? Writers and readers or interactive interchange? We are pleased to present a panel of informed people who will present and discuss a range of views on this topic. The discussion will be chaired by Stuart Kelly, Literary...

You turn your back for 5 minutes... Last week, the Law Society of Scotland launched a redesigned website for the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland, with minimal (if any) fanfare. Well, there may well have been a fanfare, but as I'm not a solicitor and so therefore not on their emailing list, I only found out when I went to check up on their news area last week. It doesn't even list it as something of note in their own News area...no press releases to The Firm Magazine , nor Scottish Legal News ...is this some sort of terrible secret, not to be publicised to the world at large? This is how it used to look (Feb 2008 image from Internet Archive): This is how it looks now: It is, however, a bit of a good news / bad news situation. So we'll start cheerfully with The Good News : It's pretty, it's shiny, and looks much more sleek and modern. The JLSS now has blogs, yay! There are links from the homepage to both the Editor's blog, and the Law Society's blog too...

So, last week I did a firewalk for charity, at Edinburgh Zoo. Due to the 'delightful' roadworks going on in Edinburgh for, ohhh, eternity, I arrived at the event at 7pm just as the briefing started, instead of the planned 6.30pm for registration. Apparently, in the few minutes before the briefing officially started, it was announced that a daily news show crew were there to film us, and if anyone objected to being filmed, could they make themselves known. It seems like nobody did, because we were all filmed by the crew at various points, usually in the background to the presenter. I have absolutely no desire to be on TV, particularly during a stressful event, so I was not best chuffed to find out by questioning other firewalkers that what I thought was perhaps going to be a promotional clip for the company organising the firewalk, or for the Zoo itself was actually going to end up on national telly. Added to this was the fact that I had not been asked about my agreement to the...

Lo-fi librarian tagged me as part of Information Overlord s meme, and has therefore forced me to reveal my terrible taste in music. I admit it, I'm a pop princess, and have a disturbing love of 1990s pop at that. Fiendish lo-fi, fiendish! If I'm ostracised from society for this list, I shall blame you!! So, the challenge was to name my top 5 favourite bands beginning with the letter 'S', so here goes... Salt N Pepa - Lets Talk About Sex This one is because my Mum used to delight in singing along to this any time she had me and any of my friends trapped anywhere, like in the car. I could claim that she was trying to encourage healthy discussions in that area, but realistically, she just enjoyed embarrassing lots of pre-teen girls. Semisonic - Closing Time I worked for a summer in America in a theme park, first as a landscape gardener, then as a ride operator when the bulk of the staff went back to school after the summer break. This song was the last one played every ni...