Friday, May 26, 2006

VALL Executive Changes

VALL members received an email today describing changes to the Executive structure for 2006-2007.

The biggest change is that there will now be a core executive, made up of a Past President, President, Vice President, Membership, and Treasurer. This group will liaise with, but not meet with, two supporting committees - Communications and Programme, each with 4 members.

Perhaps it's because I'm only a year removed from the VALL executive, but these changes seem very reasonable. At over 100 members, it was time to add more support to the two core operational functions - lunches and publishing. These functions, while very important to VALL, can at times overwhelm the Executive's larger role. By focusing the 'team', and increasing the number of helping hands from 10 to 13, other good things can now happen.

Also, by separating out the executive group, there's now a chance to address the bigger issues like: skills training, succession planning, electronic communications, awards & recognition, or at the very least, brainstorm & talk about new ideas and directions.

If you haven't looked at the strategic directions document, it's well done and worth a look. Short, simple and to the point.

My year in the VALL executive was one of the most rewarding I've had, so I've gladly signed up for another run. Wanna come? you have until May 30th to contact Susan Crysler. There's only a couple of spots left! :-)

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Proud Pop Again!!!


My wife Leah and I are proud to announce another addition to our family, our new daughter Bethany Julia Matthews. She was born yesterday at noon exactly, weighing in at a whopping 7lbs 7 oz. (whopping by our standards anyway, since neither her older brother or sister were over 6 lbs.)

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

LexisNexis Canada Goes for RSS!

Looks like Library Boy has broken the LexisNexis Canada RSS Feeds story. I'm told that there were rumblings about this at the CALL conference, but this is the first I've seen of it.

From the Lexis website:

From new case law, to new print titles, to new Quicklaw™ sources, to Canadian legal news, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) technology gathers all updates in one place and makes it easier for you to stay informed.

I believe some of these feeds were available previously (What's New, News Releases, & The Lawyers Weekly) , but some look to be new, and this 'one-stop-shop' approach is definitely new!!!

Congrats to Lexis! You've made a number of techie Law Librarians very happy, and the Crosby dream of putting all new publisher materials on a single website may yet happen.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Off to Edmonton

I'm on a 1:00 flight tomorrow heading to my first CALL Conference, and just a reminder that the best place to check out us Canadian law librarian bloggers is on the CALL Blog!

Finally! I'm now going to get to put some faces to the names. Believe it or not, I've never met face-to-face with Connie, Jim, Michel-Adrien, Michael, Mark, Heather, and whoever that mystery blogger is!?!

For the period of the conference, I'll be posting mostly on the CALL Blog. That said, if I want to offer more personal commentary, it will likely end up back here.

See you in Edmonton! (where hockey fever is still alive!)

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Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Research in a Digital World -or- Personal Knowledge Management for Legal Researchers

Rich McCue, System Administrator for the UVic Law Library and UVic Faculty of Law, and a fellow Slaw-er, has just published a new paper titled: Research in a Digital World -or- Personal Knowledge Management for Legal Researchers.

I haven't read it yet, but with illustrations like this, how can I resist? :-)