Working in a law firm there will come a time when you are asked to do research that goes against your personal morals. Law firms have the potential to deal with controversial issues, that you may personally find uncomfortable.  These could be religious, environmental, personal/human rights issues or even just situations or topics that you don’t necessarily disagree with but find uncomfortable anyway.

Hopefully, this is something that you’ll only experience very rarely.  But how to deal with it when it does happen?

I’ve been pretty lucky in my career that I’ve been able to mostly avoid this happening. But ever since the first time it did, I’ve been aware that it might happen to me again. The first time I was able to avoid asking too many questions about why a particular piece of research was needed, and only had to do a very superficial job.  Next time, I might not be so lucky so I thought I’d brainstorm a few ways of dealing with it.

1.  Pass it on to a colleague. This is not so useful if you are in a one person library, or the sole researcher. But there is the possibility that one of your coworkers may not feel as strongly about an issue as you do.
2. Stand up and say something to the person who requested it. This probably isn’t a very good option, but you could at least make your feelings known. If you’re lucky, the requester might be someone who’s willing to pass the research onto a trainee, or even do it themselves. This does have the potential of backfiring unfortunately but could gain you respect as someone who stands up for what they believe in even if in the end you end up doing the research anyway.
3. Say nothing and do the research. This rankles with me, but if option one fails, this is the option I think I’d be most likely to go with unfortunately.  I don’t personally think I have the confidence yet to stand up to someone and say that no I’m not doing that piece of research.

And then I come to a screeching halt. So, is this something that any of you have had to deal with? And if so, what was your strategy?

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I’m always interested when new search engines are released. Not because I use them (it’s the boring choice, I know, but Google really does tend to meet my search needs better than the alternatives), but it is nice to see the ways people are trying to manipulate the area. There are some really interesting and inventive search engines being produced now - the focus seems to be more on highlighting the difference and niche aspects of different search engines, rather than trying to produce a GoogleClone.

Chipwrapper is a Google custom search engine encompassing the major UK broadsheets. It isn’t new I understand, but as I hadn’t seen it before, I thought I’d pass it on anyway. It searches across The Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sun, The Telegraph and The Times, and is actually pretty successful at finding articles that the newspapers own search engines fail at turning up. I’ve not spent a lot of time investigating custom search engines, but this is a pretty cool use for them, and I’ve found that I’ve used it a fair bit since I found it.

FuzzFind is a combined search engine that searches across Google, Yahoo, MSN Live and del.icio.us. You can then choose the weighting you want to give a particular search engine, which is actually pretty neat. By heavily weighting del.icio.us in particular, you get access to links that otherwise probably wouldn’t have come up. It shows you what ranking a particular response has in each search engine, as well as how many times the url has been bookmarked on del.icio.us, which could be quite useful.

Wikia is the search engine brainchild of Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales. It is self-statedly imperfect at the moment - results appear erratic and almost unsorted. The idea behind it being that user-moderated results will ultimately be more useful than those generated purely by algorithm. It isn’t brilliant yet though. The first hit when you search for ‘apple’ is the QuickTime download page, which, whilst close, isn’t quite right. More uncommon queries don’t get you anywhere just yet - the first hit for ‘European Court of Justice’ is to an article about the Protection of Fundamental Rights in the European Community, which is probably not what you’re actually after. It’s an ambitious concept though, and I’m curious to see how it turns out. I expect, given the collaborative nature of it, that commonly searched for terms will probably end up being fine, but that more complicated searches will never really work on it. It reminds me quite a bit of Maholo, which never particularly interested me either, but Wikia functions more as a wiki than a portal.

I’m curious to know if anyone else really uses other search engines on a day to day basis. Tools like this are great, and it’s really handy to know that they’re there, but I tend not to use anything other than Google. Does anyone have any suggestions for search engines that they absolutely couldn’t do without?

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We here at Enquiring Minds Want to Know would like to wish everyone reading this a happy and wonderful and positive and fulfilling and engaging and terrific new year and year to come.

May it be everything you want it to be, and everything you don’t know you wanted yet :)

London Eye - New Year 2006Originally uploaded by diamond geezer

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I’ve been filled with a terrible ennui for the last few weeks, not just for blogging, but for pretty much everything work related. It’s been really frustrating me - I don’t like to be apathetic and grumpy about work all the time - and I couldn’t work out what was up. And then I thought about it a bit more, and realised that not only is it the end of the year, but I’ve also been at MPOW for a year now. It’s not the biggest milestone ever, but it’s enough that it’s been causing me to look back on the year and dwell on all the things I hadn’t achieved. Which is completely the wrong way to go about it.

So, in an attempt to spruce up my spirts, and try and get some perspective on the past year, I’ve been thinking about about what I’ve achieved this year, and what I’m thankful for (too late for Thanksgiving, I know, but as I don’t celebrate it anyway, I figure that any time is a good time to remember to be thankful).

This has been a good year for me – I have a lot to be proud of. I’ve achieved things that I didn’t think I would have, I started writing this blog, I’ve done awesome things at my work and for my career that I’m really happy about, I’ve learned things and changed things and been happy, and all in all I don’t really have very much to complain about.

Despite this, it’s really hard for me not to hit that wall at the end of the year though. It’s just in my nature. And it seems to be the time where everyone becomes frustrated and disgruntled, looking for changes that just haven’t happened. I’m trying to keep the good things in front of me, but it’s very hard not to focus on all of the things that I haven’t achieved, that haven’t been done yet, and that don’t look set to change anytime soon.

So how to keep my head above the water? Well, I’ve been reading lots of great and inspirational blogs – not library blogs, but career oriented blogs, mostly aimed at millennials/gen-y workers and the angst associated with it (a bit self-indulgent, I know, but educational and motivating at the same time). I’d recommend Modite, Employee Evolution, and Brazen Careerist (even when I want to yell at her for being difficult) as gen-y aimed blogs that help keep me focused on my goals, whilst also helping me be oriented as a young but (relatively) ambitious worker in an industry that it’s (relatively) difficult to be ambitious in. And blogs like Web Worker Daily, and ProBlogger Daily help my motivation to blog and be proactive – I don’t really want to blog as a career, but they make it sound so appealing! Surrounding myself with these positive examples really does help, even though it doesn’t seem like it some days.

How about you all? This time of year get you down? Any tips to share on beating that mid-winter, year-end ennui?

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I’ve never owned a laptop, I’ve just never been able to justify the money, when I have a perfectly good PC that I love to pieces.  And I’ve never felt the need to be able to take my computer with me anywhere.  I never wanted a laptop at uni, mostly because I used to get really annoyed at those that did take them and then sat on MSN for the entire lecture, serenading the people around them with their tap-tap-tappity.  And most of my classes were small or in workshop environments that just don’t allow for laptop use.

When I went to Sydney in September, I borrowed a laptop from work, so that I would have access to the web, and be able to use it at the conference.  I had plans of liveblogging the conference, and typing up my notes at night.  It turned out though that there was no wi-fi at the venue, nor would there be accessible power points.  And seriously, what is the point of a laptop battery that only lasts 2 hours maximum?!

Sydney was my first experience with a laptop. And I was not so impressed.  First, the abovementioned batterylife. If I’m travelling, I’m not going to be near a powerpoint all the time. Second, the weight!  I had a fairly big laptop - I think it was a 17 inch screen.  And it was heavy.  I felt like I was lugging around a bag of bricks.  This could be because I’m just not used to carrying one, but it seemed like an awful lot of unnecessary weight.  It all served to remind me of why I’d never gotten one in the first place. I know that they’re not all behemoths (Vaio’s case in point) but it does make me wonder why they make such massive machines.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend introduced me to a new laptop, and I must admit I fell in love straight away, and if it wasn’t such a bad time of year, I probably would have at least made an attempt to buy one by now.

The laptop is called the Eee PC, and it’s an ultra portable baby laptop that weighs less than a kilo.  It’s small - I could probably fit in in my handbag, it comes preinstalled with a Linux operating system and open source software like Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice. And because it’s in part aimed at kids, it has preinstalled games - typing games and maths games etc plus a few other educational programs. It’s also got a built in webcam and Skype installed. And, most important of all, they come in multiple colours!

On the downside, it only has 4Gb of space, however it’s got an SD card slot, so that’s expandable. Basically, it’s the perfect machine for taking with you when all you’re really needing is somewhere to type, check your email etc.  It would be perfect for travelling, so that you can download your photos off your camera and upload to flickr, and type a journal entry or two. Or perfect for conferences and classes - it’s small, light and unobtrusive.

Have I mentioned I want one?

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Back in October, I wrote about the closing keynote at the Web Directions South conference given by Mark Pesce.

I’ve just found out that the videos, mp3 and transcript are now available from the conference site. I’ve not yet gone and had a listen myself, but if you’re in any way interested in technology and where it’s taking us you should go read it.

Also, Will Richardson of Weblogg-ed posted a couple of days ago about it and has some interesting points also. He writes from an educator’s perspective, but what he says can be transferred into the generic library arena.

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In the New Jersey Express Times yesterday, there was a truly depressing story of a public librarian putting up signs on the computers in the library in which she works urging people to ‘Just Say No to Wikipedia’

Isn’t it time we moved on from this attitude? Now I know that Wikipedia can be inaccurate, and it certainly isn’t the beginning and end of online research, but it does provide a valuable service. Though I do think it’s important to warn students of the potential problems of using Wikipedia as a key research tool, and encourage them to look farther afield, surely education about how to use Wikipedia properly is more important than scaring people away from it?

I’m sure that students (especially high school aged ones) probably overuse it, and don’t know how to use it properly (I’m sure there a great many non-students who do too). But surely it’s our job as librarians to help broaden our users scope, rather than closing it off? Put up signs pointing them to other online resources that they might want to view, or to the reference desk, or to the hard copy encyclopaedias even, rather than just telling them to not use the site. Encourage further avenues of research, point out places they can go. If you’re in a position to be educating students, get them to critique Wikipedia articles, to discover for themselves where the inconsistencies are, and learn some critical resource evaluation skills in the process.

One of the best uses of Wikipedia is as a pointer to further information. I use it frequently, usually to get an overview of topics that I know very little about. I’ll usually read the first paragraph or so, and then go straight to the links section at the bottom the page, which always seems to turn up sites that I probably wouldn’t have found on my own. And yes, I do take any of the content that I read there with a grain of salt, but honestly? I’ve found it to be right far more than wrong.  Admittedly, the type of articles that I tend to view on Wikipedia (predominantly tech, legal and economic articles, when I come across an area I’m unfamiliar with) are the better written - these don’t really get as much malicious tinkering, or polarised opinion as some of the more contentious articles - but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t valuable information in an article on the American Civil War, or the crisis in Darfur, for example. I use it not just for personal research, but also in my work (though never as a primary resource - there are some professional standards to maintain!), and I’m happy to do so.

The trick, I feel, isn’t in not using Wikipedia, it’s in learning how to use it critically and carefully.

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I’ve finally gotten hold of a copy of Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger courtesy of MPOW. I’ve just sat down to read it, and I can tell this is going to be a book where I’m constantly getting up to note down an interesting quote. I can also tell that it’s going to be hard to put down - I may have to put the novel I’m currently reading aside until it’s done!

My favourite so far? The solution to the overabundance of information is more information (p13). How very true!

However, I’ve also got a small nitpick. There’s been a couple of cultural references so far that I’ve not gotten (The Odd Couple/Oscar Madison), though I’m not sure if that’s down to my age, or an American focus. Still, not too much of a nitpick, and things like that I can easily google.

And even though I’ve only just started this book, I’m already on the lookout for others to get for MPOW. I’ve been coveting a number of books myself (These two specifically come to mind immediately) but working as I do in the legal sector, I worry that they wouldn’t have much applicability to our environment, and I don’t want to spend our book budget on irrelevant books. So, does anyone have any recommendations for web 2.0/library 2.0 books that would have some relevance to the legal library?

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Today I managed to successfully update this blog to wordpress 2.3.1 without anything breaking or going horribly wrong.  We now have the tags working properly and each post now has a list of related posts at the end.

Also, we have added a widget to the sidebar from Cliq, a service that encourages community by letting blogs on the same topic  link to one another.  We are a member of a Cliq of UK Law librarians, so if you haven’t had an invite yet, and would like one, let us know!

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I was having a think about del.icio.us last night, mostly because my bookmarks are in such bad shape, and sorely need maintaining. I was thinking about the different ways that people use it, and how it isn’t really actually working for me at the moment, and what I can do to change that.

My account is a terrible shambles. I’ve had it since Dec 2005, and I’ve now got something in excess of 600 items bookmarked, but I’m just not happy with the way I’m using it. I use it more as a surrogate for a traditional browser based bookmarking system (which it is obviously very useful for) and less for keeping track of articles and posts that I’d like to remember or read later (which I’d like to use it for). I’m finding it very hard to change my usage of it, mostly because my tagging is so awful. I have far too many tags, and in the system as it stands, it’s more or less impossible to edit them effectively.

I keep meaning open another account to keep track of all my bookmarks for work, but I keep hesitating, mostly because I know how easy it is to let it all spiral out of control. Do any of you use it for work/professional bookmarking? If so, do you have a better way of keeping it neat and tidy, or have you found that it tends to get messy fast?

I’m anxiously waiting for the beta to become public (there’s a preview of it on Techcrunch). Del.icio.us is such a good service, and very web 2.0 at heart, but it’s no way near as user friendly as it should be, which is a shame.

Only vaguely relatedly, but all the Facebooking law librarians out there should be part of Lo-Fi’s new group ‘UK Law Librarians for Publisher’s RSS Feeds’. We’re going to take on the man and hopefully try and convince the UK legal publishers that it’s in their and our best interests to start publishing this material as RSS. So much easier, so much more current and timely, and so much paper saved from the wastebasket. It’s win-win people. (Also, in the interim, do check out Nick Holmes homebrewed version. He’s a star for putting this together)

While I’m griping about web 2.0 products that are less than spectacular in some areas - why is the groups function in Facebook so poor? I tend to forget that groups exist because there isn’t (unless I’m not looking hard enough) a way of being notified when there are changes to a group. Which is a shame, because obviously social interaction is at the heart of Facebook, and not being able to interact effectively with the groups that you’re involved in is just disappointing.

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