Author archives

Bye Google: 7 privacy-first search engines everyone should try

Fast Company: “Even if you have nothing to hide, searching the web with Google can sometimes feel unnerving. Maybe you’ve got a medical question or financial concern that you’d rather keep to yourself, or you want to research a product that won’t later become fodder for targeted ads. In all those cases, it’s nice to …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy, Social Media

GPO and Law Library of Congress Make Volumes of Nation’s Most Treasured Publications Digitally Available

“The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO), in collaboration with the Law Library of Congress, has digitized and made available volumes of the United States Congressional Serial Set on GPO’s govinfo, the one-stop shop to information published by the Federal Government. The release comes as part of a large decade-long partnership to digitize more than 15,000 …

Subjects: Congress, Education, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation, Libraries

Study: Climate change is disproportionately affecting children

PhysOrg: “International research led by Prof. Wim Thiery of the VUB research group BCLIMATE shows that children are to face disproportional increases in lifetime extreme event exposure—especially in low-income countries. Under current climate policy, newborns across the globe will on average face seven times more scorching heatwaves during their lives than their grandparents. In addition, …

Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law

How Can We Help To Free Legal Research From Algorithmic Bias?

RIPS Law Librarian, Stephanie Farne: “…While the bias in an AI powered search in any context is deeply troubling, looking at algorithmic bias in the context of legal research is even more disturbing. In ALR class, students work with hypothetical research problems. I paused to think – What about potential AI bias in real world legal …

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines

Can You Delete Yourself From the Internet? Yes – Here’s How

Make Use Of: “One of the major tradeoffs for access to the digital world is privacy. Unfortunately, you can never completely delete yourself from the internet, simply because you’d have to find every photo, video, tweet, mention, comment, shopping order, to name a few, and delete them. However, there are ways to minimize your online …

Subjects: E-Commerce, Financial System, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy, Social Media

OMG! My Boss Just Friended Me: How Evaluations of Colleagues’ Disclosure, Gender, and Rank Shape Personal/Professional Boundary Blurring Online

Rothbard, Nancy, Lakshmi Ramarajan, Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, and Serenity Lee. “OMG! My Boss Just Friended Me: How Evaluations of Colleagues’ Disclosure, Gender, and Rank Shape Personal/Professional Boundary Blurring Online.” Academy of Management Journal (forthcoming). (Pre-published online, December 30, 2020.) “We propose and test a relational boundary blurring framework, examining how employees’ evaluations of colleagues’ characteristics drive …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries, Privacy, Social Media

The boss may be watching long after the pandemic ends

Keystroke tracking, screenshots, and facial recognition: “What workers should know about corporate surveillance software as companies consider permanent remote work policies…Workers have little power to control how and when they’re being monitored, especially if they are using work-issued devices. Experts advise workers to assume they are being monitored if they’re in the office or using …

Subjects: Economy, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy

The Zeroth Law of Library Science

John Hubbard: “One’s core beliefs are never quite the same as other people’s. At the very least, your “pursuit of happiness” may involve far different activities than mine. Even identical twins raised together have varying tastes, after all. So it’s little wonder, for instance, that not every “single man in possession of a good fortune …

Subjects: Knowledge Management, Libraries

How to make your laptop last longer so you don’t have to buy a new one now

CNET – “Whether you need to delay a new laptop purchase because of uncertain finances (to put it mildly), want to reduce your contribution to the e-waste problem or simply have more important things to think about, there’s a lot you can do to stretch the lifespan of your existing system. The longevity horizon of …

Subjects: Climate Change, Economy, Environmental Law, Internet, Knowledge Management