Ballad in Plain E

A while ago, I got tagged by Rob Golbeck to do the “5 things” “meme”. So here’re five things you probably didn’t know about me.

1. I could watch TLC Daytime (A Wedding Story, Makeover Story, What Not To Wear, etc.) all day, every day. Seriously. But only the shows about people, not the ones about home renovations.

2. I got dean’s vacation two times before I got my act together, school-wise. The first time was from U of L and the second was at LCC (affectionately remembered as the U of Hell and Last Chance College). Fortunately it wasn’t my last chance; I went to SAIT and maintainted a 4.0 GPA during all four semesters of my LIT program.

3. I had a pixie haircut for about 3 years. Yep. Shorter than Twiggy’s! I had it for three years because growing it out was such a pain. Fortunately there is no digital photo evidence.

4. I am learning to play the mandolin! My late father was a somewhat accomplished bluegrass musician (by accomplished I mean, “his band was popular on the folk fest circuits”), and I realised a couple of months ago that my life just wasn’t complete without some fine mandolin pickin’. Mind you, I can only play about five chords, but it’s all about the effort, right?

5. I think creamed corn is the fruit vegetable of the devil.

I’m supposed to tag five people to do this, but most of my blogger friends have been tagged and completed it already (waa waa). So… how’s about Laurel and Gels over at 12 Hours of Power and Kels at a Life & Times of a Lipstick Librarian?

Today I had the opportunity to be a tester for a new database that the BC Courthouse Library will be unrolling in the (hopefully near) future. The A-Z Knowledgebase will contain “handy references and hard to find answers” for legal researchers in BC.

I am ridiculously excited about this new offering from the Courthouse Library: they already provide so many great services (eg., Unreported Decisions Index, BC Legal Literature Index, etc.), and this one will be no exception.

According to Mandy Ostick of BCCLS, the A-Z was “originally a private resource to help our staff answer our users’ questions”, but luckily, they’ve decided to make it available to the public on their website. The database has an interface similar to the aforementioned indexes and includes both search and browse capabilities.

Even in the small selection of records made available for the test phase, there was a lot of good stuff. One particularly nice feature is that the records often list contact organizations/agencies and have references to where the answer/information was found (eg., list of corresponding/related regulations, agency websites, library resources on that topic, etc.).

No word on a launch date, but I presume there will be adequate (and well-deserved) fanfare when the time comes. This database is sure to become another essential website for law libraries (actually, all libraries!) in BC.
Way to go, BCCLS!

P.S. What - did you think I didn’t notice? The A-Z Knowledgebase will also have an RSS feed for new items…jackpot!

OK, this is shameless self-promotion, but I think it’s kind of cool. Our firm is running a campaign called “Fresh Thinking” and recently, our department was featured in an ad. It appeared a couple weeks ago in the Vancouver Sun, so we are minor celebrities! At least in our mothers’ eyes ;)

At first I was a little reluctant to be photographed for and named in an ad that would be published in a major paper, but now I think it’s alright — how often do you see a little old library tech in something like that? Behold the mighty and modest Research & Reference team!

I just had an excellent WebEx session and conversation with Kathy Bryce at Andornot Information Management Solutions. Andornot is offering free 30 minute consultations for clients until January 31, 2007 and I wanted to take advantage of it to learn a little about how to set up subject browsing for a new project I’m working on.

It never ceases to amaze me how much cool stuff you can do with Inmagic’s WebpublisherPRO, and Andornot is always finding innovative ways to make the software even better than it already is.

Kathy showed me two really nifty things:

1) Index pop-ups with dynamic query modification (find matches as you type) — check out Imagine Canada’s opac and click on the A-Z buttons for Author and Subjects — so slick!

2) Andornot Search Cannery (canned search generator) — this is going to save me hours of headache and confusion! Using this tool, it’s a lot easier to see how a canned query is assembled.

Kathy tells me we can tentatively look forward to a February Inmagic Users meeting, where they hope to demonstrate some new ways of generating and incorporating RSS into your catalogues/webpages. Can’t wait!

I moved this past weekend and won’t have my computer up and running with the internets until this weekend…so no real posts from me for a while still.

But can I just say, I love WestlaweCarswell? I really am trying to give New Quicklaw a chance, but WLeC is just so good. Is it wrong to love a commercial database so much? All the problems with New QL make me love WLeC that much more.

This morning I discovered they’ve added a download icon so that you don’t have to go other>download. It’s little tweaks like that that make it such a good service. I’m working on a top ten wishlist for New Quicklaw, which I’ll post here…oh, sometime.

EDIT: I just came across this video at LibraryStuff…if it is a real Westlaw ad, wow. Awesome! I love the blowtorch part.

Wildly overdue but here at last: the latest issue of LTAIG News is now available. The issue is our first in PDF with colour and proper formatting, and features news, blog suggestions, and a lengthy article by LTAIG committee member John Alexander on his recent trip to Italy. Can you say “jealous”?? Enjoy!