Survey for CCCT Legal Information Clearinghouse

The Canadian Centre for Court Technologies (CCCT) has put together a team with the assigned mandate to develop "an on-line Clearinghouse for information on technology and the courts". Members of this team include: Louise Hamel, David Whelan, Diana J. Lowe, Brad Albrecht, Gordon R. Kelly, Dominic Jaar, and Olivier Jaar.

One of the initial steps in their planning efforts is a quick 5-minute survey for members of the Canadian legal community. Please consider taking part prior to their deadline of December 3rd.

Once again, it's nice to see law librarians embedded within the CCCT's online agenda. Dominic Jaar does a great job of keeping each stakeholder group involved, including the regular participation of librarians. And while I'll disclose that I've helped (mildly) in an advisory capacity in the past, I would feel this way in any event -- the level of respect that the CCCT shows our profession should be commended.

Now go take their survey. :)

Busy Stem Friday

We've had two exciting announcements today over at Stem. First, late this morning, we launched a new website design for McClanahan Myers Espey LLP; and now just a few minutes ago, we formally welcomed Kelowna law firm Pushor Mitchell LLP into the Stem fold.

The MME redesign was a great project for us. Laurel Fulford and I worked closely with Partner Mike Myers trying to maintain the firm's minimalist vision for the site, while trying to raise the visibility of the published content. The five-section snapshots on the homepage grabs small messages about the firm, and breaks out those elements in a concise way. See:



And what can I say about working with one of BC's most respected law firms? Kelowna Corporate Citizen of the Year, 2009 CBA-BC Work-Life Balance Award... We are very excited about working with a firm like Pushor Mitchell!

New OS Cloud Tool for Digital Collections

Interesting new OS cloud service Omeka.net is based on Wordpress, but offers a scalable solution for web collections. Annual pricing plans range from $25/yr to $1000/yr.

Quoted in this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education:

"Museum archives and scholarly collections have a new home online with yesterday’s release of Omeka.net Beta, a cloud-based Web-publishing platform from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

The program—commonly called “WordPress for museums” by its users—is a Web edition of the popular Omeka open-source content-management software that lets users create their own digital archives without having to download and code the software themselves. Though modeled on WordPress, the Omeka beta program is designed to store and display archival material—videos, documents, and images—rather than just blog entries. Whereas WordPress “is really good for doing journalism,” said Tom Scheinfeldt, the center’s managing director, “Omeka is very good at managing collections data.”

Seems like a reasonable cost for a hosted solution, and a good alternative for those not interested in downloading & configuring the free version.

What Is Omeka from Omeka on Vimeo.