I got back over a week ago, but I immediately had I plunge myself into preparing for my presentations at the Minnesota Innovative Users Group Fall Conference. ...
This was something that I'd known about since June, which of course I'd put off until a few days before. This time I discovered that sometimes procrastination has its virtues - because if I'd prepared for this only a few weeks earlier, I wouldn't have been able to mention any of the new features which were incorporated with the latest upgrade, Release 2002 phase 3. So it all worked out very well in the end - but not before some late nights and last-minute stressing out. Eventually I'd like to add a few screenshots to that outline, but there's no rush there.
I'm not someone who does lectures/presentations/classes every day - and I've got another one tomorrow. Introducing our first year law students to online legal research. It would have been better to give this one at the beginning of the term, rather than now. I might post up a version of that when I'm done. This class has to purposes from my points of view - firstly to orient them to powerful search tools they'll soon be learning with Westlaw and Lexis, so they could make the most of fielded searching and proximity operators and all the bells & whistles that you can't do in Google. Secondly, to remind them when they start using Westlaw and Lexis, not to forget every other way of legal research! Of course this means not forgetting how librarians can help. Our library has BNA, CCH and RIA databases which don't have any equivalents in Wexis. Some of the government and academic sites on the free web are very good, depending on what you're trying to do. Even Google has its limited place in the legal research universe.
In the meantime, I've been amused to see that my blog's readership didn't fizzle out while I was away - thanks to Google search results about Bill O'Reilly and Fresh Air. Now I'm looking forward to doing some blogging again.