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April 30, 2008
English Medieval Legal Documents Wiki from USC
Senior Law Librarian, Hazel Lord at University of Southern California has created an amazing research tool, using a wiki, English Medieval Legal Documents A.D. 600 - A.D. 1535: A Compilation of Published Sources.
According to Lord the classic bibliographies of law during these time periods are at least fifty years old and since that time many important archives have been digitized and are now available online, either free or from subscription databases. Using a wiki makes this a fluid, organic document which can grow along with the knowledge in this field since it can be instantly updated. First made available in February of this year, this wiki has had 72,000 hits in its first two months. Lord envisioned a project of about 200 records but the database as grown to nearly 1,000 records.
The wiki is well designed, starting with broad categories such as case law, statutory law and administrative law but also includes sections on early legal treatises, research guides and bibliographies. Navigating around the wiki is simple with main subject category links available from every page. There is a search function which is also available from every page and which ranks search results by relevance. Where possible, OCLC record numbers are linked to items so users can easily locate materials in WorldCat. LibX makes this feature that much easier when using FireFox, since you get the MGetIt icon and link back to Mirlyn or online databases.
Posted by swortman at 04:54 PM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2008
The Future is Now
While attending an interesting Victorian Studies conference honoring Eliza M. Moser Distinguished University Professor Martha Vicinus last weekend I ran into an interesting example of how scholarly research is changing and how the young may end up overtaking the old, although they usually do anyway don't they?
One of the conference presenters, Melanie Hawthorne of Texas A & M talked about Natalie Clifford Barney, a most interesting woman, know as the amazon who strove to be Oscar Wilde's successor. According to Professor Hawthorne she was married twice but the second time was illegal in a number of ways, 1.) she wrote and signed the marriage contract when she was already married and 2.) the marriage contract she signed was with her female lover Elisabeth de Gramont, Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre. Since same-sex marriages were not legally recognized in France in 1918 this marriage was doubly illegal.
Well, back to library research. One of the Victorian Studies scholars attending the conference mentioned he had never heard of the marriage contract between Barney and the Duchess before to which the presenter answered this was a relatively new discovery.
The next day on a whim I decided to perform a Google search on Natalie Clifford Barney and the word “contract” to try and get a sense of if and how well this bit of information has migrated into general knowledge. The first link on the list of results was for a Wikipedia article on Barney which mentioned this same contract and gave a correct citation to a 2005 article in South Central Review by Francesco Rapazzini. I am not necessarily condoning students use Wikipedia for their research but I couldn’t help but consider that a possible expert in the field of Victorian Studies didn’t have this information while, likely an undergraduate English student might easily trip on it, using a resource many scholars and librarians consider inappropriate.
Having LibX installed in FireFox I was able to link directly to the full text of the article cited in Wikipedia and confirm the finding of the marriage contract between these two remarkable women.
Research has come a long way, baby!
Posted by swortman at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2008
Virtual Library Tours
Those of us who work in Hatcher Graduate Library know how difficult it can be to find your way around this/these buildings. Hatcher is actually three buildings pulled together over the years with parts of the original library dating back to the 1880s. [Interesting that as I try to go back to verify the dates of the library there is no mention of Hatcher North being actually parts of two separate buildings. We even have an online display of the history of Hatcher Library but the text in the display makes it sound like Hatcher North was built in 1920. That's a whole other story...]
Staff at the Information Center desk get a few phone calls every term from students on cell phones trying to find their way out of the stacks. The YouTube video "Harlan Hatcher Graduate Labyrinth", a tongue-in-cheek tour of the library made the rounds last year. I think its time for the library to come up with our own tour to help students and faculty find their way around this lovable, old relic.
Here are some links to what other libraries are doing to help people find their way around the library. There are audio tours, tours set up in Flickr and other ideas.
Posted by swortman at 04:19 PM | Comments (0)
Knowledge Management by Ray Sims
This is what I meant to say about knowledge management and web 2.0 at the ML2SG brownbag only this presentation by Ray Sims is much more thorough and interesting.
Posted by swortman at 08:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2008
Video Uploads Now Available on Flickr
According to the Flickr blog you are now able to upload a 90 second video and post it to your Flickr account. You must have a pro membership in order to do this but membership is relatively cheap. Check out some of the videos already posted.
Evidently some Flickrites are less than thrilled about this. One of the most popular tags in Flickr last week was "novideosonflickr"
Posted by swortman at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2008
POPLINE and the Politics of Reproductive Health Research
USAID, sponsor of POPLINE, "the world's largest database on reproductive health" has riled the library world this week. It appears that a savvy librarian discovered the database was recently changed so that searches on the term "abortion" were not recognized and brought back zero hits. Dr. Michael J. Klag, Dean of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which administers POPLINE stated:[USAID] found two items in the database related to abortion that did not fit POPLINE criteria. The agency then made an inquiry to POPLINE administrators. Following this inquiry, the POPLINE administrators at the Center for Communication Programs made the decision to restrict abortion as a search term.There is no explanation of the criteria for items to be included in POPLINE. We can only guess, since USAID says on their web site they are an "independent federal government agency that receives guidance from the Secretary of State." It's sad but true that librarians and researchers have to be the watchdogs of information. This is an excellent example for student researchers on the hazards of information products, what is and, more importantly what is not included. To his credit, Dean Klag announced on Friday the controversial word has been reinstated in the database but significant damage has been done to the credibility of the Bloomberg School of Public Health because of this incident
Posted by swortman at 08:56 PM | Comments (0)