Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Newly Minted Author

Are you really a writer if you haven't written a book? That, of course, was my little internal self-doubt question I would hit myself with late at night. Even after years of writing articles, papers and blog posts, you'd think I'd have that part of my self-identity nailed down. 

It's not a justifiable self-critique, of course. At least not in the daylight. But perhaps ticking that check-box off my life list will let me sleep a little easier now. It's a milestone, and one I am very proud of.

Oh yes, my reason for rambling... Last night I posted our Stem news item announcing the forthcoming book Jordan Furlong and I have been working on for the past year. As you can see from reading Jordan's post from earlier today, he's equally as thrilled as I am.

For the particulars, please check out the Ark Group's bookshop summary, the executive summary & TOC, or the sample chapter that are now available.

Writing with a co-author wasn't as bad an experience as one might expect. It helps when your co-author is Jordan Furlong; but it also helps when you have a personal history of critiquing each other's work. Jordan knew my Columbo routine of 'just one more idea' going in. (Even when it meant yet another twist to our narrative.) To say I'm appreciative would be an understatement.

I would also like to add a note of thanks to my colleague Emma Durand-Wood, who is a big part of the idea generation process at Stem. Her ability to flesh out the intended message, or identify an inconsistency that Jordan or I wouldn't see, was invaluable to the writing process. We mentioned Emma by name in the acknowledgements for good reason.

And finally, I'd like to thank Terry Edwards and Matthew Kraemer from Pushor Mitchell for stepping up to be one of our book's case studies. We're proud to be working with such a great firm.

Book cover:



Monday, June 24, 2013

Quickscribe Manual Updates for June 2013

This month three Quickscribe Manuals were updated:

Keep in mind that www.bclegislation.ca, operated by Quickscribe, features free, daily updates of BC legislation!

Thursday, June 06, 2013

Some of Our "Best" Work

As readers of this blog, you likely know that Stem's roots go back to legal librarianship. It's been a while since Emma or I have worked in that capacity, but we've never forgotten the resources that were essential to our former work. For us, one of those go-to resources was BC lawyer Catherine Best's indispensable website, legalresearch.org.

If you're not familiar with it, the "Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research" is an info-packed website beloved by Canadian law students, legal researchers, and law librarians alike. Folks from outside Canada also cite is as a valuable resource for researching our laws. Simply put, this is one of those "gems" that you find yourself going back to time and time again.

So, you can imagine how thrilled we were when Catherine asked us to help her update the site's look and organization. She'd done an impressive job at hand-coding the site's HTML with painstaking care and precision since its inception in 1998, but the time had come to migrate the site into a content management system that would be more stable and user-friendly.

We worked with Catherine for several months on this project, and are pretty happy with the finished product: a refreshed organization and great-looking WordPress-based website where Catherine can continue to share her expertise and wisdom on this essential topic. It's also now easier to view across different devices, and has social media sharing capabilities, making it generally more accessible.

Here's a screen capture of the new homepage:


Best Legal Researhc

Did I mention Catherine is blogging now too? As VLLB readers, legal research is likely part of your job. So be sure to subscribe to her new Canadian Legal Research Blog.

Congratulations, Catherine, on this exciting milestone for legalresearch.org -- an important contribution to Canadian legal research and a boon to law students, librarians, and legal researchers everywhere!

Monday, June 03, 2013

Quickscribe Manual Updates for May 2013.

Six Quickscribe Manuals were updated in May.   The following manuals were updated:
Keep in mind that free, daily updates to B.C. statutes and regulations are available at www.bclegislation.ca.