Thing 2: reading and thinking

The concept of Library 2.0 is going to mean different things to different libraries. I work in a public law library, which has important differences from the public library that most of the articles are written for and about. For example, John Blyberg raises the issue of how to make available non-authoritative data generated by our patrons. The concept of authority in legal research is more complicated than in other areas. There is the authority that a court must listen to when deciding a case (mandatory, primary authority) and there is scholarly writing (secondary authority.) The latter is the type that Blyberg is talking about. Authority is important in legal research because of the potential real-world consequences of acting on the results of your research. (I imagine medical libraries think the same way.) A child citing a hacked article from Wikipedia in a school report might be embarrassed, faulty legal information can cost you money. Wex, Cornell’s law wiki, doesn’t “radically trust” just anyone to participate. Another related concern for law libraries is the line between legal information and legal advice. Our determination to avoid the latter makes us cautious in all we do.

This doesn’t mean that law libraries are tied to the “come to us” model of service. Our library is endeavoring to make more resources available on the Web. One of the things I hope to get out of this course is some ways to make the starting points of legal research more accessible to members of the public. Comprehensive legal research (finding that primary, mandatory authority) is going to remain an arcane exercise, however.

The people making the most use of social software seem to be the Millennials, those born after 1980. In our library, these are the judges’ and justices’ law clerks. We have not been pushed to the cutting edge like public and university libraries have, but we can’t ignore demographics. I would love to put a Meebo Me box on the court’s intranet page and see how many of our clerks use it.

The vast amount of information available on the Internet is a huge time sink. I didn’t find any dog stories on the Hennepin County Library’s Marley and Me discussion site, just a lot of “I laughed, I cried” reviews. Jumping over to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I found a comment that listed all the characters who die in the book. I’ll stick to the reviews in Library Journal, thanks.

Thing 1 Challenge

Looked through all the things that can be added to the blog and added one: a link to my only published fiction on the Web. If I were going to keep up this blog beyond the 23 Things, I might add more. Still might if I have time to just play around. Or maybe when this is all finished I'll write Conan 2.0.

Today we step out into the world of Web 2.0 with the first of 23 crazy things on a stick.
Don't know how much I'll like blogging--I tend to rewrite everything I do-- but we will give it a shot.
The time-consuming part of setting up the blog was thinking up names and passwords, but otherwise it was easier than expected. Creating the avatar had to be the most fun.
I have been hesitant to try these types of things before. I like to keep a low profile on the Web, primarily to travel under the radar of advertisers. As a writer, I like having my stuff read, but as a person I'm kinda shy. This 23 Things on a Stick program is great, though, because reading about something is no substitute for trying it. And I'll try anything once.