Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Balancing Our Brains: Apps For Avoiding Bandwidth Overload, Geraldine R. Kalim, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Amidst the rush and worry many librarians around the world felt as we scrambled earlier this year to set up physical spaces to work from home, at the University of Georgia Law Library we were fortunate to have several task boards, project management spaces, and apps for communication already in motion. Individuals and small teams had been using various platforms for years to collaborate more effectively and track progress on longterm objectives, all while maintaining business as usual. In this article we put our recent and personal experiences to use, giving context for why and how four tools can be …

Back To The Future With Higher Ed: A Sample Of Drupal Sites At Uga, Rachel S. Evans, Deborah Stanley, Delmaries I. Gray, Lauren Blais

Presentations

Consisting of a show and tell of a selection of large and small site installations from various departments, schools and colleges at the University of Georgia, panelists including back end and front end developers, public relations experts, librarians, and web coordinators will share their ship's timeline with Drupal versions and examples from the past, present and future. A moderator will then ask questions of panelists including: the biggest challenges they have faced with migrations and upgrades, the issues or blessings of more cohesive branding initiatives over the last few years, and their visions, concerns, and hopes for the future. In …

No Jd? No Problem: Aall Annual Conference Review, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

This installment of ALL-SIS Newsletter’s short reviews of AALL2020 conference programs is by Rachel Evans, Metadata Services and Special Collections Librarian at the University of Georgia School of Law’s Alexander Campbell King Law Library. It was originally published to the ALL-SIS blog. The session recording is available to conference registrants, and will be available to all members in 2021. The full review will appeared in the fall issue of the Newsletter.

Big Data: Managing Large Scale Metadata Projects In A Teleworked Environment, Rachel S. Evans, Mary Miller, Kathleen Carter, Kelley Ansley

Presentations

Beginning in March of 2020, Mary Miller and Kathleen Carter coordinated the work of over 100 University of Georgia Libraries students, faculty, and staff on remote metadata projects for the Brown Media Archives. The great majority of these UGA employees were not catalogers, were not familiar with metadata concepts, and had never visited the Brown Media Archives. Yet, in a four-month period, they successfully completed a quantity of work that would have taken Brown Media two and a half years to accomplish at regular staffing levels. Miller and Carter will share what they got right, what they got wrong and …

Review Of Becoming A Library Leader: Seven Stages Of Leadership Development For Academic Librarians, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Review of Freedman, James M. and Freedman, Shin (Ed.) (2020). Becoming a Library Leader: Seven Stages of Leadership Development for Academic Librarians. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries.

Law Library Reopening Video, Fall 2020, Rachel S. Evans, Geraldine R. Kalim

COVID-19 Pandemic Archive

In this five minute video UGA Law Library shared information about reopening for Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters, including changes to policies, virtual services, and access to the facility and other resources. This video was used as a part of communications with School of Law faculty, staff and students and embedded on the library's webpage for continuing services throughout the 2020-21 academic year.

Law Library Virtual Tour Orientation Video, Fall 2020, Rachel S. Evans, Geraldine R. Kalim

COVID-19 Pandemic Archive

In this updated virtual tour for Fall 2020's incoming students at UGA School of Law the library took students on a tour of the building, shared resource and service information, and provided some details about navigating the spaces and accessing the collection during the pandemic. This video was included in the School of Law incoming student virtual orientation experience as part of their eLC course, managed by the school's Office of Student Affairs.

How Intelligent Ci Instruction Gives Law Students A Competitive Edge, Heather Simmons, Beau Steenken, Liz Whittington, Joshua Pluta

Presentations

"Competitive intelligence" (CI) is a term that gets bandied about across many sectors, but how exactly do law firms use it to further their business? Academics are aware of CI as a concept, but teaching students how to conduct competitive intelligence requires a more nuanced understanding of how it is actually used. In a discussion moderated by a newer academic librarian who will be teaching competitive intelligence for the first time, a firm librarian will share insights into how competitive intelligence can and should be used, and an academic librarian who regularly teaches competitive intelligence will offer tips on how …

Data, Stats, Go: Navigating The Intersections Of Cataloging, E-Resource, And Web Analytics Reporting, Rachel S. Evans, Wendy Moore, Jessica Pasquale, Andre Davison

Presentations

Do you trudge through gathering statistics at fiscal or calendar year-end? Do you wonder why you track certain things, thinking many seem outdated or irrelevant? Many places seem to keep counting certain statistics because "that's what they've always done." For e-resources, how do you integrate those with physical counts and reconcile the variations (updated e-resources versus re-cataloged physical items)? What about repository downloads and other web traffic? The quantity of stats that libraries track is staggering and keeps growing. This program will encourage attendees to stop and evaluate what and why they're gathering data and help identify possible alternatives to …

Customizing The Connexion Client To Work For You, Rachel S. Evans, Emily Williams, Kelley Ansley

Presentations

OCLC’s Connexion Client has a number of built-in tools to help catalogers save time and energy through customizations that provide controlled automation and ensure consistency. We’ll review a few of these tools, specifically Text Strings, Key Maps, and Macros, along with some resources that provide additional shortcuts.

Born-Digital Preservation: The Art Of Archiving Photos With Script And Batch Processing, Rachel S. Evans, Leslie Grove, Sharon Bradley

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

With our IT department preparing to upgrade the University of Georgia’s Alexander Campbell King Law Library (UGA Law Library) website from Drupal 7 to 8 this fall, a web developer, an archivist, and a librarian teamed up a year ago to make plans for preserving thousands of born-digital images. We wanted to harvest photographs housed only in web-based photo galleries on the law school website and import them into our repository’s collection. The problem? There were five types of online photo galleries, and our current repository did not include appropriate categories for all of the photographs. The solution? Expand our …

“Tech Is Easy, People Are Hard”: Philosophical Takeaways From Cat Moon’S Calicon Keynote, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

In this blog post for AALL's CS-SIS Evans shares her favorite bits of advice from the recent Computer Assisted Legal Instruction Conference keynote delivered by Caitlin "Cat" Moon, including design philosophies for making resources, services and workflows more user-centered and specific book recommendations.

Productivity Column: It Took Me Four Pomodoros To Write This, Geraldine R. Kalim

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Kalim shares specific productivity techniques in this blog post for PEGA-SIS. She talks about the upsides and downsides of teleworking, gives a brief history of the pomodoro technique of working full-focus for 25 minute increments, gives options for the classic and modern timers, and even notes the similar and highly compatible idea of the "power hour" to work against a clock to see how much you can accomplish during a set amount of time.

Best International Poster Presentations: Connectedness @ The Alex, Anne Burnett, Rachel S. Evans

Presentations

The mission was to determine effective combination of apps to support both the workflows and the social connectedness of a collegial staff forced to pivot to working from home with one week’s notice.

The University of Georgia’s Alexander Campbell King Law Library has a staff of around 25 with a strong culture of face-to-face communication, collegiality and socialization. Our work is often team-driven, and small groups walk to nearby coffee shops nearly daily for informal meetings and camaraderie. When we transitioned rapidly to a work-from-home environment in mid-March, the library’s leadership was concerned not only that every staff member would …

Reprogramming To Unplug During Covid-19: My Never Ending Story, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

In this short candid article member Rachel Evans provides effective strategies for unwinding during COVID-19 including practicing more mindfulness and other activities to find balance while teleworking.

AALL's New Voices is for members to share insights on any aspect of law librarianship. Pieces in this series also appear on the Members Open Forum in addition to being published as part of the AALL monthly eNewsletter. Topics in the series include: starting a new role, insights on professional development, recommending a favorite resource, providing an overview of an AALL webinar, or your take on an article from AALL Spectrum, …

Top 5 Ts-Centric Webinar & Virtual Conference Highlights, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

The increase of wonderful, FREE programming being delivered virtually right now and available to audiences around the world is truly amazing. It can be overwhelming to sift through the options (especially if your inbox has exponentially exploded as mine has over the past 3 months). Take a trip back in time with me as I share below my favorite sessions that I feel offered the most valuable content to those of us in technical services positions.

TechScans is a blog to share the latest trends and technology tools for technical services law librarians. The official blog of the TS-SIS and …

Virtual Poster Exhibit: Connectedness @ The Alex, Anne Burnett, Rachel S. Evans

Presentations

The mission was to determine effective combination of apps to support both the workflows and the social connectedness of a collegial staff forced to pivot to working from home with one week’s notice

The University of Georgia’s Alexander Campbell King Law Library has a staff of around 25 with a strong culture of face-to-face communication, collegiality and socialization. Our work is often team-driven, and small groups walk to nearby coffee shops nearly daily for informal meetings and camaraderie. When we transitioned rapidly to a work-from-home environment in mid-March, the library’s leadership was concerned not only that every staff member would …

Surving Covid With The Breakfast Club: Tools For Telework Task Management And Communication In A Multi-Generational Workplace, Carol A. Watson, Geraldine R. Kalim, Wendy Moore, Rachel S. Evans

Presentations

As librarians around the world scrambled earlier this year to set up physical spaces to work from home, at UGA Law Library we were fortunate to have a few apps already in place. In this session we put our recent and personal experiences to use, as well as adding a newer tool into the mix, and successfully pivoted employees, teams, departments and services all online within a week. Individuals and small teams had been using various platforms for years to collaborate more effectively and track progress on long-term objectives, all while maintaining business as usual. Our library is also made …

Conference Roundup: Smart Cataloging - Beginning The Move From Batch Processing To Automated Classification, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

This article reviewed the Amigos Online Conference titled “Work Smarter, Not Harder: Innovating Technical Services Workflows” keynote session delivered by Dr. Terry Reese on February 13, 2020. Excerpt:

"As the developer of MarcEdit, a popular metadata suite used widely across the library community, Reese’s current work is focused on the ways in which libraries might leverage semantic web techniques in order to transform legacy library metadata into something new. So many sessions related to using new technologies in libraries or academia, although exciting, are not practical enough to put into everyday use by most librarians. Reese’s keynote, titled Smart Cataloging: …

Cultivating A Culture Of Mindfulness In The Law Library And Beyond, Heather Simmons

Presentations

In this presentation Heather J.E. Simmons, Associate Director for Instruction and Access Services, University of Georgia School of Law, Alexander Campbell King Law Library shared her experiences in creating a more mindful environment for students, including methods and resources she has used in her current and past positions.

Linked Data For The Real World: Leveraging Metadata For Cataloging, Rachel S. Evans, Robin Fay, Linh Uong

Presentations

Will the promise of linked data actually save us time? How will catalogers and machines work together to streamline recording of data and authority maintenance work, allowing catalogers and metadata practitioners to focus more on data stewardship and less on being data scribes? Will Real World Objects (RWOs) and linked data help bridge the gap between traditional cataloging and the larger semantic web communities of practice, ensuring that library metadata supports our users’ search behaviors, those FRBR User Tasks? Or will it just provide more maintenance work down the road? This session will explore the potential of linked data and …

Resources For Work & Play: Gems From The Internet Archive, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Who doesn’t love the Internet Archive? As one of the longest running vehicles for capturing content generated online, it also serves as one of the primary databases for Public Domain and Creative Commons licensed media. Founded in 1996, the vast archive includes more than 430 billion web pages, but the fun doesn’t stop with the web. As a non-profit library, it also presents a broad spectrum of collections, from live audio to feature films, ebooks to software, and even patents and other government documents. In this post I wanted to share some favorites from the archive I’ve enjoyed recently, …

Review Of The 360 Librarian: Integrating Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, And Critical Reflection In The Workplace, Geraldine R. Kalim

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Review of Owens, T.M. and Daul-Elhindi, C.A. (2020).The 360 librarian: A framework for integrating mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and critical reflection in the workplace. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries. 164pp.

Power Projects For Quarantined Librarians, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Some of us are approaching the two month mark of our library's closure to the public. Though it has definitely had ups and downs, I have found it has helped me better carve out time for professional development activities, dedicate more of my day to clean-up projects I have just not had time to follow through on, and even start new projects with the help of colleagues who found themselves needing a little more to do from home. I hope this post will elaborate on that topic to give specific project examples for those working in collection services, technical services, …

How To Hack Outreach: An A–Z Guide Of Ideas, Tips, And Tools, Rachel S. Evans, Marie Mize, David Rutland, Szilvia Somodi, Sharon Bradley

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

In this article librarians and staff collaborate to deliver an alphabetical list of tips, tools, tricks and other resources for how they effectively work inter-departmentally to promote their library and institutional resources, services and information. The piece includes specific examples featuring several ideas from past library events, exhibits and displays, and other efforts with nods to several other colleagues from UGA Law Library. This article served as written documentation of this group's fall 2019 panel presentation at the Georgia Libraries Conference.

Taking The Office Home: Telework With Trello & Slack, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Amidst the anxiety, fear and overwhelm we are all feeling, many of us across the country have been scrambling to figure out teleworking for our libraries while setting up physical spaces at home. Evans outlines the solutions UGA Law Library deployed as they transitioned during a time of rapid change.

Avoiding Bandwidth Overload: Apps To Maxamize Time And Accomplish More, Geraldine R. Kalim, Rachel S. Evans

Presentations

Accomplishing goals and keeping to deadlines on both big and small projects can be challenging to balance with our recurring tasks. Making effective use of a few on-point tools can be the key to avoiding burnout and making sure your personal bandwidth doesn’t throttle. This session will use the two presenter’s preferred platforms to show specific examples of how to manage workflows using a selection of apps to tackle business as usual, short and long term work, and major special projects. You will learn which tool is best for generating documentation, collaborating with multiple individuals, syncing with other apps, and …

A Baker's Dozen Of Tips For Better Web Searches, Anne Burnett

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Anne E. Burnett also served as Program Chair. Burnett is the Foreign and International Law Librarian for the Alexander Campbell King Law Library at the University of Georgia School of Law.

An Attorney's Guide To Business And Investigative Research, Carol A. Watson

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Carol A. Watson is the Director of Alexander Campbell King Law Library at the University of Georgia School of Law.

On Being A New Voice, A New Everything, Geraldine R. Kalim

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

In this thoughtful post, member Geraldine Kalim reflects on being a new librarian, a new University of Georgia employee, a new/returning resident of the state of Georgia, and a new mother.

AALL's New Voices is for members to share insights on any aspect of law librarianship. Pieces in this series also appear on the Members Open Forum in addition to being published as part of the AALL monthly eNewsletter. Topics in the series include: starting a new role, insights on professional development, recommending a favorite resource, providing an overview of an AALL webinar, or your take on an article …