Today was another early start. At 7 am, I walked into the Legal Division's Emerging Technologies Breakfast. While we finished up our breakfast, we had three speakers discuss new technologies or issues. The first Speaker was Nina Platt, who discussed Enterprise 2.0, which seems to be mainly the combination and practical useage of the new technologies brought forth by Web 2.0 (OK, so she went fast enough, my definition may be way off). I have to say, though, that althoguh I found her topic interesting, I kept getting distracted by her constant comments about how this applied to law firms, but complete and utter failure to even attempt to relate it to academic libraries. This was the first time I had run into this extreme firm orientation in any of the sessions. I believe Ms. Platt needs to re-evaluate her audience, especially since I can vouch for at least 5 academic law librarians at my breakfast table alone...
The next speaker was Tom Flemming. When Tom first began speaking, I didn't think I was going to like his topic because he started off with how different the Boomers were from Gen X and Gen Y (aka Millenials). I have heard that speech about 8 times now, and have not agreed with the overly broad generalizations yet. Thankfully, Tom quickly branched out into some og the new technologies being utilized by the newer generations, such as Linkedin.com, which Tom described as a new-style of rolodex.
The final speaker and host of the breakfast was Nathan Rosen, who spoke about Wikis. Nathan was by far my favorite of the speakers because I learned a lot about how wikis are being utilized in the legal field.
My next session was the Global Legal Information & You session, which was presented by two Law Library of Congress librarians. They both knew their stuff and went through a lot of resources. I had heard of the great majority of them, but was greatly interested by some of their suggestions for the initial structure of a reference interview when asked about foreign, comparative or international law. I definitely have lots of notes to transcribe from this session.
The next session held a bit of a surprise for me. I was attracted by the title, 20+ Tips for Searching the NEW Web. What I didn't realize was that the session was being presented by Super Searcher Mary Ellen Bates. This was the first time I have ever heard her speak, and I was quite impressed. A great many of the websites that she recommended were new to me, and I will definitely be sharing the sites with my co-workers as there are sites for everyone, even the techies who are notoriously hard to impress with new websites (usually the sites are already 6 months old to them). The session was very well done and had an truly amazing attendance.
I next went to the networking lunch that was being offered to all full-conference attendees. I met some nice corporate librarians who worked for Intel and Visa International. While we did not share many of the same resources, it seems that vendor relations are the same, no matter which industry you work in!
My last session of the day was another surprise. It was titled: Web Tools for Legal Researchers, which turned out to be a bit of a misnomer. The true surprise, however, was that it was presented by Gary Price of ask.com, ResourceShelf, and DocuTicker fame. Gary's presentation really did not focus on legal research websites at all. He did however, tell us about a lot of new resources which could be helpful to those in the legal industry, as well as other industries. For instance, he spoke about Zoho, which has released a lot of free or really cheap office utilities, and about Metavid, which provides searchable congressional video materials. The nice thing about this presentation was that Gary did not mind answering questions after the session had ended. I was able to ask him about some suggestions for my toolbar project and he was so interested in it that he asked me to email him, which I will do once I get home. This session, too, resulted in lots of URLS and info to share with the entire library.
I also attended the drawing for the two $1000 awards, but, alas, I didn't win. Oh well, maybe next time (I am still hopeful about some of the iPods and the GPS systems that some of the vendors are giving away).
I decided to grab some dinner and take it back to my hotel to eat while typing up these latest installments before heading out to the open houses tonight. I had a nice sub from Jimmy John's, which I had never heard of, but appears to be a chain (I am trying to be frugal, too). However, it is now almost 9 pm, and I am ready to drop. I think I will skip the open houses tonight since they are just starting. Tomorrow's legal division openhouse starts at 7 or 7:30, so I will defintiely be able to attend that one before heading off to bed.
Have a great night to all!
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