Reading Time: 6 minutes
Librarians are knowledge workers. We work on things that require attention to detail and investigation, whether we’re cataloging books or answering obscure reference questions. I am always interested in new research on interruptions and thinking around how to improve the work environment so that librarians can be as effective as possible.
Law Library
A Hole in the Bucket
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 5 minutes
A colleague was in town and attending ABA Techshow so I swung by McCormick Place to see them. It’s been awhile and the Expo pass is free (something I will keep in mind next year). I walked over to the Metra and hopped on the train to the conference site. As…
How to Prepare a Book
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 6 minutes
I’ve signed a contract to write a book. I’m excited but also a bit daunted. It will be my third book and it is one I have wanted to write for most of my career. As I wrote recently, I started working in law firms when I was 15 and was…
The Plague of Document Formats
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 4 minutes
I was downloading a government form the other day and it told me that I would need the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Umm, I don’t think so. Adobe is a corporation whose tools I avoid like the plague. Also, a PDF should not need a proprietary reader in order to be accessed.…
Decision Dilemmas
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 13 minutes
I cancelled Bloomberg Law. It was an agonizing decision-making process. The decision itself was not hard. If anything, it was obvious and overdue. That tension, of having an obvious decision that still needs to be teased out to its full extent, was a professional challenge. It has been a long time…
Slow News Days
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 5 minutes
I am leaning increasingly on a philosophy of slow news. It’s a pretty big change for me, because I used to enjoy getting information from multiple media, especially the radio. NPR and PRI podcasts used to be a staple. But over time, I have found audio and video takes a…
Measure What Matters
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 10 minutes
I have been unhappily surprised by the apparent lack of usage data available to academic law libraries. After talking to some folks at the MAALL annual meeting, my own experience seems to be a common one. While our colleagues in other law library contexts may have rich usage data, legal…
Dream Work
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 4 minutes
I was still traveling so I missed the AALL announcement about this artificial intelligence (AI) keyword glossary (members only). It was a project I had worked on, so of course, I was glad to see it get shared publicly. But it had also been a great collaboration, which is not something…
The Distraction of Magical Thinking
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 7 minutes
I am sure I am not alone in my experience with magical thinking in law libraries. I’m sure it’s not unique to law libraries either. We operate in an environment where the people who oversee our libraries often know how to use legal information, perform legal research. There is a danger…
Embrace Our Robot Underlings
By David Whelan
Reading Time: 9 minutes
I was able to participate recently in a professional event involving lots of smart librarians discussing AI and law libraries. At the end, one outcome I committed to was to list what my law library was doing and how AI might impact those tasks. Here’s how that progressed.
Sometimes saying something…