Adventures of a Midwestern Girl (and Her Hillbilly Hermit Tennessean) in Sunny, Sunny California

Hmmmm. This is the given description of this program:

“As organizations expand globally, the challenge for researchers is to ensure the information they are gathering is internationally based and current. This session will provide an overview of best practices for developing a strategy for globalization and an effective program of research to help organizations ensure they are making strategic, fact-based decisions when expanding operations to new countries.”

I interpreted this to mean that I was going to hear about ways to access global information, so that my American-centric research skills could find information from the EU and Asia. Instead, the program was more about how you can position your organization to be a player in global information, creating interconnectivity from your organization to the rest of the world.

I think either interpretation of the description is valid, so it isn’t like the description was misleading. I just chose the wrong interpretation and didn’t get quite what I wanted from the session. On the bright side, there was a woman from the European Union office in New York in the audience who offered her assistance to people if they ever have a question about obtaining EU information. The line to get her card after the session was quite long and I'm pretty sure she ran out, but I got one.

My notes follow.

Globalization = interconnectivity

Dissemination of information around the world relies on: Space, regularity, speed, and depth; it can’t be a casual thing and still be globalization

World is not flat when it comes to information, the world is spiky – these were some neat graphs, showing spikes related to emitted light, broadband access, education levels, etc. North America, Europe, and Asia are like excessively-gelled Mohawks rising to the sky. The rest of the world, not so much.

Countervailing forces: integration and universalism versus particularism and fragmentation

There isn’t systematic collection of information globally – there are commissions and suggestions, but not global laws or rules on info collection, so there are different levels of access everywhere. I recently had to try and find information about some Chinese companies. What a project!

Even with idea of globalization and living online and using social networking, people still cluster geographically (MySpace is US-centric, Bebo is Australia-centric)

People do want a unique identity, not to be a truly global citizen, they like their language, culture, and food, and they make decisions in ways informed by those things

There are profound differences in how people deal with the same problem and view the same information – you must understand the culture someone comes from if you want to understand how they will interpret information

The more integrated we become, the easier it is to forget how different people are when they solve problems

Transparency – we do not live in a transparent world – this is often the greatest barrier to finding international information; even in a transparent society, there can be elements that are cloudy (a new culture was created surrounding subprime mortgage world – even though still in the U.S. it was a culture that only the investment bankers and real estate firms were a part of)

Foundations of Global Markets
General
• Drivers
• Technologies
• Global Culture
• Global norms
• Stability
Specific
• Markets
• Infrastructure
• Competencies
• Norms

Obstacles
General
• Cultural Particularism
• Social Expectations
Specific
• Data Standards
• Data reliability

Models of Corporate Alignment
• Centralized – domestic home office
• Duplicated – copies of system used
• Decentralized – everyone does what they do in their office
• Networked – multiple offices working together

How do we start to understand how people solve problems when we are building resources – like client info systems and intranets

This is where they started really veering off into how we need to create our information to speak to a global audience. Important, I’m sure, but not much note taking was done by me.

sla2008

Posted by Anne at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday morning, I roused myself out of bed to get to the early Emerging Technologies Breakfast.

This was a bit of an odd program. First of all, I understood that the presenter who had a death in the family and couldn’t make it would show a pre-recorded web cast for his portion of the program. But I was confused as to why one of the presenters who was there would choose to do so. I mean, I know what he was trying to do. He was trying to demonstrate what a web cast was at the same time he was explaining why to use them. He was multi-tasking in a way, and I get that. But it was strange nonetheless and I would have preferred him speaking in person – he could have shown a short web cast if he really needed to.

Which brings me to my second point. Web casting? At an emerging technologies breakfast? I suppose it is a newish technology, maybe not the standard fare everywhere. But is it really emerging? I watch 3-4 webcasts a month for work. Twitter is emerging. Hyper-local search is emerging. But web casts? Web casts are just. . . here. It’s technology that is already reaching the tipping point of wide-spread adoption. Am I really that early of an adopter, or does this seem odd to you, too?

The other topic of the presentation was wikis. Although most people probably know what Wikipedia is, I suppose you could argue that wikis in the work place are still an emerging technology. If we ever have time to get around to writing out best research practices in our library, I will push to use a wiki, but we don’t have one yet. Collaborative document management systems are pretty mainstream, but collaborative wiki documents maybe aren’t so. But, again, this seemed like kind of a stretch for an emerging technologies presentation.

Finally, there were sections on online social networking and the legal commons (like public.resource.org). I guess these are emerging, but there didn’t seem to be all that much content in this portion of the session. My enhanced notes from the session are below.

Mary Talley & Ellen Callinan, Axelroth & Associates
Wikis
• Intuitive
• Simple Hosting Options
• Content Management System
• Online Discussion
• Knowledge Base

Librarians can create guidelines and the folksonomy for a wiki rather than relying on web developers for access decisions – This is a pretty good point. In the past, librarians often had to rely on web designers to create our web pages and include the hyperlinks that create access to the content we want to share. With wikis, there is much more freedom for the content creator to make access points on the fly for the created documents.

Attorneys can post research strategies for new/other associates to view – This is an interesting idea. I wonder if we could get buy-in from our attorneys for them to create a document describing their strategies. Although for some of the senior attorneys, that research strategy is “contact the library” or “have a junior associate do it”. I have had some senior attorneys tell me that they haven’t used XX research tool in years because they assign the task to other people. At least the library is in there as one of the sources to do their work. . .

Creating buy-in
• Must solve a recognized problem/need – if people don’t know that there is a need for it, they will not make the effort required to adopt the new tool
• Easy – it must be easy. If there is too much training needed to get started, people won’t make the effort
• Fun – you should make the project fun. How to do this? I love this idea: Have the staff create their own wikis for whatever they want to do. Give them “wiki hours” to work on their wiki during the work day (1 hour/week). Later do a show and tell for them to demo their wiki to the rest of the company. What a great idea to get people interested. Don’t make them start with a wiki of corporate procedures (yawn) – let them use a couple of work hours to create a wiki of their favorite restaurants or sports team or video games.
• There must be a leader to take charge. You can’t just introduce a wiki and hope other people will start using it. A leader has to use it, too, and has to encourage others to use it. In our case, a partner would likely need to be the champion of the project.

WikiMatrix – website to help you decide which wiki product works best for you

John J. DiGilio, Reed Smith
Just in Time learning

Voice thread – podcast with voice comments from viewers

Podcasting, vidcasting, etc.

What is Just in Time learning?
Training and instruction designed to get to end-users when and where they need it most; what they need to know when and where they need to know it.

Uses familiar technology: web, audio, video, presentation software

Goal and task driven, and portable

Pros
• Learn on user’s terms
• Cheaper than travel for the teacher
• Less out of office time for learners, too
• Optimal for mobile and distance learning

Cons
• Learning at its “minimum” – giving just what they need in the moment
• Can’t account for different levels among learners
• No teacher-student exchange
• Technological limitations

Assess training needs of institution – are needs suitable for 10-15 minute presentation or is something more needed

Investigate the available tools

Human capital – do you have people to help make, maintain, and update the lessons

Formats/Tools
Software: Camtasia and Profcast – Mac-based
Web-based: VoiceThread.com

This is something Steve and I have talked about doing for WildCare – creating short videos on how to complete tasks at WildCare. Like the proper way to clean a duckling brooder or to clean a raccoon run or to set up a cage for a water bird. But we need to get buy-in from someone in the organization to get volunteers to watch them so it is worth our while. Otherwise, it’s just pissing in the wind.

Nathan Rosen

Speech to text programs still need a lot of work

Online social networking – LegalOnRamp.com and LawLink – just for lawyers

Law Libraries and Librarians have own network, too

Thomas B. Fleming, Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro
Effect of Free Information on Professionals and the Public: Case Research and Web 3.0

The Legal Commons

Scanning error rate on Malamud’s site is 2% = 40 errors/page

Other sites: casemaker.us, chesslaw.com, precydent.com, Silicon Flatiron

Legal Commons – Future

Massive amounts of data available – people can build their own databases

Citations move to URL rather than traditional citations

Will force government to make more information freely available because of larger user base – I hope so. This goes back to the Sunshine Week program I organized with speakers Carl Malamud, Brewster Kahle, and Marcia Hofmann. (You can read a write-up of the program here on page 6 - caution - this is a big PDF file). Their big point was that the data should be freely available so that people can create new databases and that is where market competition comes from. Instead the current procedure is for the government to contract with an established database provider to give them the data so they can create the database. I’m not sure when the tipping point will come that the government understands that giving the data to everyone equally (bug guys and little guys) is what will create competition, but I do hope it happens sooner rather than later.

sla2008

Posted by Anne at 08:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I was walking across the street from one of our office buildings to the other today, I saw a kid, probably around 12, crossing the street. He was in shorts and a t-shirt and was barefoot. He was coming from the 7-11 on the corner and was carrying a big Slushie, a bag of Cheetos, and a candy bar. Oh, the joys of summer vacation!

Posted by Anne at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I posted about the Monday night parties before posting about another session I attended on Monday. Whoops! I can't imagine why my mind strayed like that. . .

Anyway, Monday afternoon I went to a session called Information Professional: The New Private Investigator. This session focused on public records information and was presented by Howard E. Trivers, Sr. Ref Librarian at Baker Daniels. He pointed out that all of the online tools are pretty much only good for information from the mid-1990s on. Fortunately while I often need to find old prior art references, I am not called upon to find old public records. Typically, I just need to find a person’s most current contact information so we can serve them or contact them to be a witness. For this, these tools work just fine. My enhanced notes from the session follow:

How do commercial databases work – buy credit header and combine with public records and compile into one report based on common address and info. People let credit card companies know when they move. This is good to know. I don’t think I’d ever really thought about this. If people suddenly stopped applying for credit in this country, this information would quickly dry up.

Problems with databases – run a credit report on yourself to find common mistakes

Have realistic expectations – cannot find everyone, cell phone only and unlisted households are difficult

Today’s companies: Accurint, ChoicePoint, LexisNexis, Westlaw, Loislaw, Intelius, Merlin, Locateplus, etc.

People Finder Databases

Free people finder databases: Infospace (links to foreign phone books), Switchboard, ReferenceUSA, Argali, Google, Superpages

Finding people before the Web: Polk’s City Directory, phone books, directory assistance, call contacts

Accurint: Owned by Lexis, very current, more accurate than competition, higher cost since bought by Lexis, has People at Work (from credit applications – I always wondered how they got the employer information especially because it is not often current. People tell credit card companies when they move so they can keep getting their bills, but they only tell them who their employer is when they fill out the application. I’ve found People at Work is still a great tool, though, because it at least helps you determine if the person you are looking at is in the right general industry.), has some cell phones gotten from insurance applications, etc.

Other Lexis Products: SmartLinx (too expensive – although I will say I used it once to great effect. In my case, I was trying to find a guy who had moved to the US from the UK in 2005. I couldn’t find his address anywhere else, or any public record of his existence really since all of these databases only include US information. But SmartLinx picked up his address in the U.S. It is not the first place to go, but if you are striking out other places, it may be worth a try.), ALLFIND, P-Trak (okay, but competition is fine)

ChoicePoint Products: Lexis is purchasing, AutoTrakXP, KnowX (can use credit card) - Accurate and current, batch file – can upload excel file full of names to see if they are in there and alive or dead (Accurint has batch upload as well)

LoisLaw Public Records: New product for B&D, flat fee, saves money, not purchased by Lexis (yet), has People Finder database, has rating for probability of paying bills (only place to get this info, but it is only okay –rating based partially on how long at address, not only on past history)

Westlaw: Cumbersome and confusing, improved but still weak people finder products, getting info from ReferenceUSA

LocatePlus: find SSN, some cell phone info

Merlin

Intelius

Public Records

Depends on state or jurisdiction, use free sources for locals, spend money for jurisdictions outside your state

Begin research with Accurint or ChoicePoint, use public records to verify current address (i.e. own property)

Searchsytems.net Public Records Directory – portal to public records sites by state

BRB Publication Company – portal links not as extensive as Searchsytems.net, but lists people who will retrieve local docs for you

PublicRecords.com

Craig Ball (www.craigball.com/hotlinks)

Check state tax assessor info for property value info

Some states keep access to records on state web sites and don’t sell access to commercial companies – won’t be in commercial databases, so you have to look on these state web sites

Can sometimes search DMV registration records using SSN for a fee to get address

Current employment info – bankruptcy records - Accurint (sometimes), LinkedIn – I use this all the time - or tail him/her to see where they go

Asset searches – cars and homes is what you can find, not bank or investment accounts

Criminal Records

Individual state web sites – try free sites before spending money
For example, Indiana Department of Correction
Federal Bureau of Prison, state prison department, local county dockets, local city records
Federal Inmate Locator, state offender sites

Westlaw and Lexis Criminal Dockets – catches plea bargains, non-convictions that won’t be on prison sites. Both have state and local criminal dockets, but go local for free sources first

DMV driving records

Other tools and methods

News outlets – go local, search local papers

Google Maps – look at what type of building the address is – house, apartment, suburb, etc. – I’ve done this before. You can use either Google maps of Live maps. The whole photos of your house deal may be a little creepy, but it works great to see if you are finding a residential or commercial location. Trivers suggested using this to see if the house was nice and in a good neighborhood or if it was a dump.

Search engines – notice the plural

Alltheweb - picks up foreign sites – not sure about this comment, don’t they all?

Genealogy – locate relatives of people who have died

Do not pay for commercial databases for death records – http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com – go first, but only has listing of people who have received Social Security benefits

Phone

Get out of the office – if it’s a local address, drive over there yourself and see what you can see

LinkedIn, MySpace, FaceBook

5 Points to Remember
• Use alternative sources
• Check database coverage
• Create value added research
• Control passwords – don’t hand out passwords to public records databases to everyone. They are powerful tools and can be bad in the wrong hands. Plus, job security.
• Go local – look for local/state databases and resources before paying the big bucks

sla2008

Posted by Anne at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday night was Party Night. There were more parties than I could go to or was invited to, but my dance card was full. I started out at the Thomson Reuters party that was held at the Pacific Science Center. Great food, got to chat with lots of people, and I went through the butterfly exhibit. BUT, in the past, the Thomson party was THE dance party. My first time attending in 2002, they had Paul Revere and the Raiders playing. The last 2 times it was a great DJ. This year, they had a steel drum band playing, and they were good, but it was not a dance party. I do need to remember the Pacific Science Center, though. I think Steve and I went here with A and V on one visit, but we only went into a small portion of it, not the whole thing. It seems very hands on and we should go back and pay the fee to get in.

After the Thomson party, I headed over to the Lexis Dessert Reception back at the Experience Music Project, where karaoke was the night before. Most of the desserts were only so-so, but I have 2 words for you: chocolate fountain. Oh, how I love me the chocolate fountain. I dipped mainly marshmallows and pieces of pineapple. I started to get full and didn’t want the vehicle anymore - I was trying to figure out a good way to just get the chocolate, but sticking my head under the fountain didn’t seem like the right choice given the state of my reputation from the night prior. I thought about sticking a coffee cup under, but was afraid one side of cup would be a huge mess and it would get everywhere. I’m not sure I forgive myself for passing up the chance. . .

I also met a very cool librarian from the California Academy of Science in San Francisco at this party. She is pretty new to the local SLA chapter so I hadn’t met her before, but I do hope we can keep in touch.

Finally, I headed to the Elsevier reception. I only stayed there for 45 minutes or so – it was getting to be close to midnight and they were only serving beer and wine. Actually, other than the wonderful open bar at the Wiley party, none of the parties were able to provide my rum intake. I had a vodka drink at the Lexis party, but the rest of the parties were dry for me. I guess I need to develop a taste for beer or wine. I didn’t stay too long, but I met a nice gentleman who works at the USPTO, and given that I work at an IP firm, that is a good contact to have.

sla2008

Posted by Anne at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Monday morning was spent in the two-part session: 60 Gadgets in 60 Minutes and Web Tools for Legal Researchers. I know the 60 Gadgets session is a popular one, but it was my first time at this session and I have to say I don’t think I’ll go again. There was nothing really wrong with it, but it was not useful to me. I expected it to be 60 gadgets that would actually be useful in a library/information setting. Lord knows those types of gadgets are plentiful these days and it’s hard to keep up. I thought this session would help me do that.

Instead, it was a session devoted to (mostly) useless crap. I do not need a catapult watch, complete with BB ammunition. The flip-flops with the built in flask could come in handy now and again, but it is certainly not why my employer paid for me to come to this conference.

This is the type of session that makes sense on Wednesday afternoon, when your brain is squishy from a long week and you need something a little more light-hearted. But Monday morning? It’s just not my bag, baby, and in the future, I’ll pass.

Here are the things from this session that I thought were interesting, and a least mildly useful:
• APC USB Battery Pack - $55
• Turbocell Charger - <$20, runs on 1 AA battery
• Solio Universal Charger – solar charging - $200
• Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card – detects Wi-Fi spots and wirelessly transmits pics to home PC - $80 - $130
• Radioshift - $32 – Tivo for radio. Mac OS only – record from database of 50,000 stations

UPDATE: The slides from the 60 Gadgets presentation are online at LLRX, just in case you want to see what you missed.

Next came the ever-popular Gary Price with Web Tools for Legal Researchers. This was a bit of a misnomer as he did not focus on legal tools one bit. And he was called on it by someone in the audience who was wondering where the legal tools were. Gary replied that these were tools everyone should know about and he would not be showing legal information per se. Whether or not these are tools everyone needs is debatable, and I think the real meat of his presentation was too far in to his ubiquitous list of URLs. Fortunately, his entire list is available at http://digbig.com/4xbhr.

Here are the tools he got to before the end of his session. Actually I had to leave about 10 minutes before he finished because of an unfortunate time overlap, but at the rate he was going he probably only got to 2-3 more tools before time was called.

• Hakia.com – Israeli-based semantic web search engine
• Powerset.com – searches Wikipedia entries
• Jux2.com – compare results to Google, Yahoo!, and MSN – This one is cool. It has a tab showing the search results you would get on each of these search engines as well as a listing of the results that were unique to each engine and the results you would miss if you only searched one engine and not the others.
• 1800flights.com – flight status online and on phone
• Summize.com – search Twitter postings based on topic – This was kind of neat in its use to monitor daily trends and hot topics. Of course your trendspotting is limited to Twitter users, but that group is growing daily.
• i-Metro – public transit directions worldwide
• Hopstop – US transit directions
• Earthcomber.com – local stores, restaurants, etc for major cities
• Whatsonwhen.com – database of world events
• Wheretraveler.com
• Science Info: Scirus, WorldWideScience, Science.gov, CiteseerX Alpha, BotSeer
• feedM8.com – transcoding – shows you how a web site will look on a mobile device
• Archives: Archive-It, CyberCemetary

It was too bad that this session (Price’s only session) was in direct conflict with Mary Ellen Bates’ only non-CE session. It was a tough choice and, given the 60 Gadgets program, I’m not sure I chose the right one. Oh well, ever onward.

sla2008

Posted by Anne at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I would certainly never say that the parties are the best part of going to an SLA conference (after all, I want to keep being allowed to go by my employer), but they are a good time.

I started out the party part of the conference with the Wiley karaoke party on Sunday night at the Experience Music Project. What fun! I sang 2 songs: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and Heard it Through the Grapevine. There were some good singers, some entertaining ones, and some REALLY bad karaoke, but the crowd was always friendly and it was so cool how many people got up on stage. The party ended before everyone who put their name in to sing got called. If you think you want to sing a song, but don’t want to go first, just wait until the first set of name slips are given to the DJ and then turn yours in. They go in order and if you wait too long, by the time you see what fun it is/drink enough courage, you’ll be shut out.

I didn’t think there were all that many people at the party – it seemed like just a couple hundred people at a conference that registered over 5,000 – but for the rest of the conference 2-3 strangers a day made a “nice singing” type of comment. Oh, how fragile reputations are. But then, some of these folks aren’t strangers anymore, so connections were made, and I like being known as someone who knows how to have a good time and who will take a risk.

sla2008

Posted by Anne at 08:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Earlier this week I was at the SLA conference in Seattle. I took lots of notes, but didn't have a lot of time to make them into semi-coherent blog posts, what with all the evening activities (see next post). So, these entires are being posted a smidge after the fact, but will hopefully still be interesting and useful. In the past, I've written narratives of the sessions I've attended. In the interest of time, I am mainly going to be posting my notes from the different sessions, but I have cleaned them up and added my own observations to the key points, and I have written a few summary introductory paragraphs for each. I hope these post still have some flow because I personally don't like reading other people's posts that are just a serious of bullet-points with no context. If you are interested in this kind of thing, let me know if this format works so I know if I can use it in the future.

Okay, enough with all of that. After a wonderful weekend visiting our friends in the area (more about that once I have time to upload a few pictures), I arrived at the Seattle Convention Center Sunday afternoon just in time for a reception in the exhibit hall. That was followed by our Opening Keynote Speaker, Vint Cerf, considered one the fathers of the Internet, being interviewed by Charlie Rose. Cerf is currently working at Google as "Chief Internet Evangelist". Not sure I like the made up title, but whatever. The opening business meeting seemed to take up a lot of time and only left about 45 minutes for the Vint Cerf interview, but it was still an interesting session.

Cerf stated (not too revolutionarily) that the power of the Internet is in its openness and accessibility, that it gives ordinary people the freedom to invent new content. The Internet grants access to everyone's knowledge as long as they are willing to share it.

He said that he is concerned that we are so reliant on software to interpret digital documents - what if the software it no longer supported and we can no longer interpret the bits of data. Yadda yadda yadda, this is not a new concern. Personally, in addition to being reliant on software that may become obsolete, I'm really concerned about all of the Internet companies that are being bought up by one or two big players (I'm looking at you Google - you qualify as a reason for concern now, too).

What happens if one of these tools doesn't make the kind of money that the buying company hopes it will? Will they stop developing it and let it fade away? What if a buying company eventually goes under? What happens to all of those little companies it bought up along the way? Yahoo! owns del.icio.us now. What if their ongoing corporate battle, or the growing dominance of Google, results in a long slow death (or even a quick one) of Yahoo!?

Sure, in theory someone else could create a similar tool, but what if there are patents involved? Would the big company sue a little guy for a product they aren't developing anymore? Of course they would! It happens all the time, and especially now when the economy is struggling and more companies are trying to monetize their intellectual property more and more to make up the gap.

Regarding access to the Internet in foreign countries, Cert believes that oppressive governments will ultimately have to accept open access to the Internet whether they like it or not - they won't be able to escape the positive influence the Internet will have on their economies and things will have to open up for this economic growth to continue.

With relation to artificial intelligence, Cerf believes that a defining characteristic of human intelligence if personal experience. Until computers can have an experience (like seeing the sky or feeling the wind or whatever), they will not be able to achieve human intelligence. His example was that of Helen Keller feeling the sign language symbol for water on her hand and then feeling the water itself. The experience of the water is what created her knowledge.

Of course, this could just mean that our robotic overlords have their own experiences unrelated to ours and we remain unable to connect on a fundamental level thus encouraging them to see us as little more than the animals we are. (Can you tell we watched Terminator 3 with our friends Saturday night?)

Cerf has an optimistic view of the future of the Internet as long as it stays open. It is a place that has no boundaries. As long as you can program the software, it can do anything. It is endless. He just worries about the future if attempts to restrict access are successful.

That was about it for this presentation. No real a-ha! moments for me like I would have in the Closing Keynote (I see you shiver with anticipation). But it was interesting nonetheless. Now, off to the parties!

sla2008

Posted by Anne at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)