LLRX's Redesign Looks Great!

Tim Stanley & Co have rolled out a new design for LLRX, and personally I think it looks great! And a big 'well done' to Sabrina Pacifici for upgrading what was already a world class resource. Website launches and redesigns don't get much press these days. There's always a million issues to deal with, a ton of work involved, and not much thank-you. Well Sabrina - thank-you. :-)

LLRX has been my 'old reliable' for many years now. Whether it's KM, intranets, legal research, marketing or technology topics, I count on LLRX to deliver the legal industry's take on things. As we all should remind ourselves now and then: before blogs, there was LLRX.

Congrats to everyone involved.

Blawg Review "Northern Edition"

Do drop by and check out Canadian law blogger Connie Crosby, who is hosting this week's Blawg Review (#105). Plus, brave soul she is, Connie's testing her cataloguing skills by indexing the entire edition in LOC Class K!

How cool is that?

Could Excited Utterances Blog A Little?

Like Jack, I often wish Excited Utterances wasn't locked down behind a subscription service. Frankly, I miss Joy London's personal take on KM events and technology.

The paid subscription offering is still excellent and I highly recommend it. But for me, the EU experience was also about Joy's blogging voice. Like many other top bloggers, if you trust that person, their candid commentary can help put issues into perspective.

So, I am left wondering -- maybe Joy could blog a little? do an abbreviated companion blog? perhaps a supplement to the paid offering? I'd be willing to bet the number of paid subscribers increases.

Rob Golbeck Wins 2007 BCLA President's Award

Congratulations to my work colleague Rob Golbeck on being awarded the 2007 BCLA President's Award. Rob works very hard as the committee chair for BCLA's LTAIG group, and is also a prominent member of the VALL community.

Anyone know if this is the first time a library technician has won the award? If so, could you comment on or trackback this post?

And for the locals ... if you're attending the BCLA conference tomorrow, catch up with Rob at The Social Libraries session at 2:00. He's on the panel!

InfoWorld Editor Stuck in 2005

Welcome to 2007 InfoWorld Editor David Margulius! Via Scott Vine, it seems that David has just discovered the 'tagging-vs-ontology' debate. I voiced some opinions on folksonomies a while back, and will echo Scott's critique - these two forms of classification are NOT mutually exclusive. Both controlled vocabularies and tagging should be considered when trying to improve information access within the enterprise.

So before we run off and recommend that companies ditch their classification efforts, and Librarians, let's recap why tagging has 'issues' in the corporate setting:

• Adoption Rates & Buy-in - When users are given the opportunity to self-classify documents or enter 'nothing', guess which way many will turn? Unfortunately, enterprise wide buy-in isn't as easy as conceptualizing within a magazine column.
• Tagging has huge potential for abuse & spamming - even behind the firewall, users will put self interest first, and aren't always concerned if their co-workers can find their document later.
• A complete lack of synonym and homonym control- On the web with millions of users, this may be good enough. But when an enterprise requires access to its information to operate, missing stuff here and there just isn't acceptable.
• Tagging requires critical mass to work - The smaller the organization, the more users won't find what they are looking for. The result is that users will be forced to browse their co-worker's tags, rather than search on an enterprise wide basis.
• Tagging often ignores the Long Tail - In the professional service industry, our selling proposition is our expertise. Niche bits of information are important. Ignoring the small stuff leads to knowledge gaps, and forces professionals to re-invent the wheel. Clients don't want to pay for that.

So here's the deal... Tagging is a great technology. Every corporate librarian out there will tell you that. And it works even better when teamed with a controlled vocabulary. But for Mr. Margulius to equate Librarians with one classification style over the other, and claim that we are a waste of money, is simply insulting. Librarians were examining the merits of folksonomies 2 years ago, and he's just getting into the game now?

Perhaps this is InfoWorld's new online strategy? If you were looking to linkbait a bunch of Librarian bloggers, well I guess you got me ... um ... no. I just put 'nofollow' on your link. No google juice for you Infoworld! Have a nice day.

Conrad Black Trial: Law Blog Coverage

I noticed the other day that MacLeans, Toronto Life, and Canadian Business Online all have blogs dedicated to the Conrad Black trial. I also noticed a dearth of posts from lawyer blogs. Business magazine and newspaper coverage? yes. But no legal experts.

Does anyone else see the lack of legal blog commentary as a missed opportunity? With high profile cases like this, or the Pickton trial, shouldn't there be a few journalists out there looking for third party commentary?

Canadian criminal law blogs should have been all over this.

Well done Neil & Larry!

More solid evidence on the power of law firm blogging. Via this news item over at my law firm, Neil Melliship and Larry Munn of the Canadian Trademark Blog would seem to be raking in the media contacts these days - 2 radio interviews in one day!

So much fun, they had to split the good fortunes: Neil was interviewed by Gord McDonald on CKNW, and Larry was interviewed by Mark Forsythe on CBC Radio. Both sessions aired on the noon news hour of the respective stations.

So congrats guys! and Karen too! I'm so glad to see your dedication and commitment to providing quality content is being rewarded. Recognition well deserved.