Westlaw trumps law books in US prisons

If you’re an American prisoner unhappy with your sentence, you might want to start brushing up on your IT skills. This story of an inmate who objected that giving limited Westlaw access wasn’t the same as providing a legal library turned up in my RSS feeds via Library Stuff.

I can understand his problems with Westlaw, although it’s actually one of the less painful legal databases to use (Lexis – why? WHY?!?!). As the story says though, he’s not likely to win his case, so the books will be going, and occasional Westlaw access will be staying. Which ain’t fun if you’re not confident on a computer, and have restricted access.

Do we have a similar sort of requirement for prisoners to have access to law libraries and legal materials? Do UK prisoners have any sort of ability to do legal research on their own behalf?

I am a mirror, so I’d watch where you’re pointing that laser gun, kiddo

Ok, I’m caught up (ish)! I shall hold back on the firing of glitter guns, and the triumphal music, while I sit quietly, and Think About What I’ve Done for Thing 19. This is the type of Thinking About What I’ve Done that’s good, unlike when as a child I would be sent up to my room, to Think About What I’ve Done. That was bad. And usually involved climbing a wall/tree/building I wasn’t supposed to.

Anyway, what have I done with the Things I’ve looked at? And what have I used that’s new? Well, to be totally honest…I’ve done everything, and use nothing new, mainly becuase I’m either already using the tools anyway, or they’re not relevant to my current role.
I blog, and have done for years; I subscribe to the RSS feeds of blog that interest me; I manage my online presence reasonably actively; I use RSS for current awareness daily;  I’m active in my professional groups; I organise myself the way that works best for me; I’m qualified, Chartered, and preparing for Revalidation; I’m informally mentoring and soon to be trained to formally mentor others, I use social media daily; I use the filesharing and collaboration tools that are appropriate for the situation I want to use them for; I don’t need a citation organiser tool; I attend, present at (if forced!) and organise professional events; my advocacy is focussed on my own service; I don’t need to use presentation software, and the screencast software I’d like to use isn’t accessible in work.

So, what’s happened so far is that I’ve confirmed that I’m happy with the tools I’m using, and that they fit the jobs I need them to do best. I’ve had a look at other tools as we went along, but decided that they are either answering a need I don’t have, or that they are unavailable in my workplace, and so not currently useful to me.

Thing 18 – Jings, crivvens, and help ma boab!

I wonder if the makers of Jing are secretly Scottish…or perhaps Oor Wullie fans? Because Jing’s name is awwfy like wan o’ Wullie’s favourite wurds…

Anyhoo – Thing 18, one which looks at a tool for recording your actions on your computer, in order to let others see exactly what you’re doing on your computer, rather than have to explain things in a convoluted way. A screencast! Lovely! This is actually something my boss and I have been discussing on and off for a while – the ability to have a recorded version of how to find/use the things that new staff are most going to want to use on their computers, that we have responsibility for. To have that sort of information available to them at any point (after they’ve recovered from the induction process information bombardment from every department) would be quite handy. The sound recording aspect would be redundant, as we have open plan offices, and sound disabled on the computers, so an ability to tag things with a text box would be best. It looks like Jing would do this nicely.

Unfortunately, as the blog post predicted, I didn’t have the necessary administration privileges to enable me to install it on my work pc, so that’s kicked that one into the long grass.But, the other option, Screencast-O-Matic doesn’t need any install, and works from the browser, so bypasses those problems.

Well, it would, if it didn’t actually need Java installed. Which I don’t have the necessary Administrator privileges to do. Hmmm.

So, for the moment, there’s not really much I can do with these two tools in work, and I don’t have the time just now to faff about with Camtasia or Lightshot, so this plan is going to have to be relegated to the “Something to look at at home, when I have time” category.

Prezi and Slideshare – the presentation sorta Things

So, I’m so late that I can incorporate the delayed Thing 17 on Prezi and Slideshare into the correct numerical order of Things. Which makes me happy, in a perhaps-abnormal way. I knew there was another reason I hadn’t blogged CPD23 topics for a while…honest.

Unfortunately, this is going to be another Thing that I’m going to skip merrily over (although not without thoguht, or explaining why). These tools are aimed at those giving presentations or teaching substantial groups, which is not something we really do. We don’t have to give presentations using Powerpoint or similar to senior internal management, and our inductions for new library users are either in small groups (new trainee intakes) or one-on-one sessions (new employees at any other time). The training we give each group or person is hands-on, and tailored to their experience level, and specialist interest area – there is no “standard” training given, and the resources we refer to for each person and specialism are different.
We also provide trouble-shooting, informal one-on-one hands-on training sessions on any resources when requested by users, so the content of these sessions couldn’t be standardised either.

So, for now, I’m not going to go poking about in Prezi or Slideshare, although if we do find a need for these tools, I’ll be back 🙂