Quiet in the Library: June 2016

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Shelving Identifiers

I’m still working on projects like the SEO project for our firm website, and working on a team to figure out our intranet. But now I have a new (self-assigned) project as well: shelf assignments. I’m serious, none of the shelves are identified so sometimes when we get supplements for books I have to hunt on three separate floors before finding it.

Because the physical organization of books here is by attorney and not how you would expect to find them organized in an academic law library, and we have multiple offices, I have to come up with a unique shelving system. My thoughts on this so far are:

(City initial)(Floor number)(Bookshelf)(Shelf)

For example, for the top shelf of the bookshelf closest to me would be identified as B2H1. When an attorney searches for the book in the database, they will see that the shelving location and know that it is located in the city “B” office on the second floor. Even if they don’t know which shelf is which (yet), they can look for the H on the top of the bookshelf unit, and the number of the shelf.

I have a color-coded map at my desk that I'm working at to label the shelves preemptively to make sure this works before I give it a go.

I kind of love that my first law librarian position is at this firm – which has never had a law librarian before – because there is so much room for potential growth and I can really work from the ground up to see what works best for the firm.

Someday I will have to take the time to write about my battle with print v. electronic resources. I just ordered my first electronic book today for the firm (yay)!

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Search Engine Optimization: Marketing or Tech?

I’m no marketing guru. In fact, I have barely mastered speaking to strangers without stuttering (baby steps, guys). As mentioned in the past, though, I am moderately comfortable with HTML and CSS. And thus, a new duo was formed: the firm’s marketing guru, and little ol’ me.

So what is this week’s project, you might ask? SEO! Or, acronym aside, Search Engine Optimization, as well as the meta descriptions. As far as tasks go, this one is kind of interesting because I am trying to put myself in someone else’s shoes. Librarians in general…well, we use different search terms out of practice and habit I think. I’m trying to figure out how I, as a layperson, would search online for the different pages on the firm’s website.

The descriptions are easy enough since it’s simple enough code:

<head>

</head>

I’m okay with summarizing.

But coming up with the proper order of words and the key words that will be used by the average Joe Schmoe, that’s what I find challenging. Luckily said marketing guru will be looking over my work before we start adding it into the head section of our sources. I took a look at our sources, too, and I’m a little jealous because someone out there has a spectacular grasp of internal CSS and Javascript. I had a hard time getting a hang of Javascript. Ah, well. I guess we can’t all be good at everything.

So anyway, if anyone wants to find me I will be glued to my computer screen mapping out the website so I don’t miss any itty-bitty hidden links.

Toodles!

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Information Literacy and Attorneys

It’s so rainy and cloudy outside, but I’m absolutely stoked because the clouds coming in are rolling over in front of the mountains. For a southern gal like me, this is nothing short of supernatural – just more in the sense of being super amazing and natural as opposed to being, you know…supernatural.

On that note, rainy days just make you think of books, don’t they? I always want to curl up by the window and read. And since I’m a graduate (how weird is that?), I don’t even have to feel guilty for reading for fun instead of for study! Despite that, I’ve been looking into books I can read to further my knowledge of law libraries. Instead, I managed to lead myself astray and I am now looking at a book called “Lawtalk” which is kind of hilarious as it discusses the legal jargon that gets tossed around in every day conversation, and how it started. Very amusing.

I guess I’ll just continue to use AALL as my source for learning more about being a law librarian for now. There are great people who are willing to answer all sorts of questions, and the discussions are very informative. Recently we were talking about information literacy and how to entice attorneys to participate in training. Some of the ideas were silly and fun, and others were more complicated but would be very beneficial. Here’s what we came up:

Set out coffee and donuts. It’s an attorney trap. Each time they come up to get a donut, you start an information literacy conversation with them and show them a few tricks if you have time. By the time they’re done eating their donuts, you’ve had their attention for 5 to 10 minutes, so you’re sort of “sneaking” the training in.
Have a lunch-and-learn session once every few months. The private firm or library can provide a catered lunch (sandwiches, salads, pizza, whatever’s edible…). The attorneys eat their lunch in the conference room while you force feed them a presentation of different searching techniques and services the library can provide.
This one needs a bit more research, but I think it would be very effective: Get your training course certified so the attorneys receive CLE credits for taking it. Then, especially near the end of the year when they’re scrambling for their last few credits, make sure you broadcast in the area that you are offering a legal information literacy course worth CLE credits!

All of these options have their pros and cons, but I think that using all three of them in a combination would really promote information literacy among attorneys. Now I just have to figure out how to implement them all on my library staff of one.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Building (Intranet) Bridges

Lately I have been thinking about creating an intranet site at work. It would be a good way to firmly establish the link between the library, the staff, the attorneys…you know, building bridges and whatnot. Luckily the IT gal here at the office is spectacular. We’re putting together a list of different platforms we can use, the strengths and weaknesses of these platforms, and the cost. Another bit of luck is that she’s very comfortable with programming and I’m moderately comfortable with HTML and CSS. So, together we make a pretty good team.

Of course, my emphasis is on the library but the intranet site would technically be for the firm at large. I suspect that other law libraries within private firms have similar sites. The “wish list” we have come up with so far includes various pages and sections:

Library (obviously)
Search capabilities
Database access
List of external sites
Events and notices
Announcements
Internal contact information
Calendar and scheduling access
“Share space” for employee interest
Etc.

It’s quite an undertaking, but I’m very excited to be preparing the proposal for the firm. I think this is one of those wonderful times that my library degree blends perfectly with the needs/wants of the firm.

On that note, I'm off to go refresh my knowledge of website design...