Author archives

Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge

OCLC Research: “The vision statement of the Wikimedia Foundation states, “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.” Libraries need not see Wikipedia as competition; rather, failing to leverage its omnipresence in the online world constitutes a missed opportunity. As a senior program officer at …

Subjects: Education, Knowledge Management, Libraries, Wiki

AALL 2021 Annual Meeting Program Recap – Brief Analyzers: The Next Level of Bots Doing Legal Research

FCILSIS Blog – By Jennifer Allison – Description of the program, provided by the presenters: Legal research vendors have taken new steps to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning in their products. The latest development is brief analysis tools that read a document and formulate searches with little to no additional human input. This session …

Subjects: AI, E-Records, Legal Research

2021 National Book Festival

Library of Congress: “Create your National Book Festival experience with the Library of Congress in 2021 by engaging in author conversations online, watching the broadcast special on PBS, listening to NPR podcasts, tuning in to Washington Post Live author interviews and attending a ticketed event at the Library. Join us for an expanded Festival, Sept. …

Subjects: Libraries

GPO Makes Available Statute Compilations in USLM XML Format

“The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) and its legislative data partners in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have made Statute Compilations available in USLM XML format. This new format makes documents easier to use, read, and download. The public can access the compilations on GPO’s trusted digital repository govinfo, the one-stop …

Subjects: Congress, Government Documents, Legal Research, Libraries

FBI sends its first-ever alert about a ‘ransomware affiliate’

The Record: “The US Federal Bureau of Investigations has published today its first-ever public advisory detailing the modus operandi of a “ransomware affiliate.” A relatively new term, a ransomware affiliate refers to a person or group who rents access to Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) platforms, orchestrates intrusions into corporate networks, encrypt files with the “rented ransomware,” and …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Government Documents, Internet

The farmers market is moving online

The Verge: “The pandemic brought rampant growth for local food distribution platforms…the pandemic came, and it hit farms hard. Supply chains, customer bases, and in some cases labor were upended. Small and medium-sized independent farms that relied on restaurant wholesale lost huge percentages of their business overnight. Some local CSAs folded. Some farming operations went …

Subjects: E-Commerce, Economy, Food and Nutrition

States Least Prepared for Hospital Capacity

QuoteWizard: “The emergence of the delta variant of COVID-19 is once again putting a major strain on health care systems nationwide. One of the primary concerns during the pandemic is the ability of each state’s hospitals to handle a growing number of cases. If there are too many cases in a short period of time, …

Subjects: Health Care

How Americans feel about ‘cancel culture’ and offensive speech in 6 charts

Pew: “Americans have long debated the boundaries of free speech, from what is and isn’t protected by the First Amendment to discussions about “political correctness” and, more recently, “cancel culture.” The internet has amplified these debates and fostered new questions about tone and tenor in recent years. Here’s a look at how adults in the …

Subjects: Censorship, Internet, Social Media

Black Craftspeople Digital Archive

“Discovering • Interpreting • Digitizing From 1619 to beyond, Black craftspeople, both free and enslaved, worked to produce the valued architecture, handcrafts, and decorative arts of the American South. The Black Craftspeople Digital Archive seeks to enhance what we know about Black craftspeople by telling both a spatial story and a historically informed story that …

Subjects: Education, Knowledge Management

Hospitals and Insurers Didn’t Want You to See These Prices. Here’s Why.

New York Times – “This year, the federal government ordered hospitals to begin publishing a prized secret: a complete list of the prices they negotiate with private insurers. The insurers’ trade association had called the rule unconstitutional and said it would “undermine competitive negotiations.” Four hospital associations jointly sued the government to block it, and …

Subjects: Economy, Financial System, Health Care, Legal Research

Robots are coming for the lawyers – which may be bad for tomorrow’s attorneys but great for anyone in need of cheap legal assistance

Via LLRX – Robots are coming for the lawyers – which may be bad for tomorrow’s attorneys but great for anyone in need of cheap legal assistance – Imagine what a lawyer does on a given day: researching cases, drafting briefs, advising clients. While technology has been nibbling around the edges of the legal profession …

Subjects: AI, Economy, Knowledge Management, Legal Research