Be careful with your abbreviations

This tweet caught my eye:

LawTimes

Commentary: Prorogation an issue of law, not just a technicality, writes Queen's ass. law dean Mark Walters. http://bit.ly/8GyUXf

I would rather see assoc. as a Twitter abbreviation for "associate". Mr. Walters probably would also.

Bad use of Twitter. Good article.

What do those library people do all day?

A conversation sample:

Person at party, "What do you do for a living?"
Me, "I work in a law library."
Person at party, "Oh."

Sometimes the response will be "Interesting", and occasionally I get a "That sounds cool". Once in a while the response is "What do you do all day?"

Jane Symons, most excellent and wonderful Edmonton office Library Assistant is doing this today:
Processing the 39" of mail that came in.

Processing mail - is that more than opening it? Yes! It involves tracking items received in our database, making sure that we have a record if the item comes with an invoice and entering the invoice data so that I can track our budget properly and send them for payment, filtering the new items that people want forwarded to them as part of their current awareness services, and much more.

And Jane is smiling...go figure. We library types think that most of our work is interesting and even fun.

For those readers interested in learning more about what Library Technicians do, visit the Alberta Association of Library Technicians website and watch video clips of job profiles from different library types.

Do YOU use a checklist?

There is a very thought provoking article on the Value of Checklists by Mary Abraham at Above and Beyond KM. Mary's blog is excellent and I would highly recommend it for your RSS feeds. This post talks about surgeons using checklists for both routine and complex tasks.

We had a new associate start today, and of course we have pulled the "new lateral hire" checklist out of our Library Procedures Manual to make sure we share all of the relevant need to know info as well as do all the preparatory steps to welcome a new person (personalize the sign out rotunda, get a Westlaw Canada password, etc.)

What about legal research checklists? I admit, I fail miserably at using a checklist except for the brain stumper questions, even though there are good checklists available. We put checklists for research sources and noting up processes in the student's Head Start packages. Is a checklist instructional material or is it something we SHOULD use as a practice tool?

I look forward to reading the comments here or where this is cross posted at the ELLA blog.

P.S. Welcome to Field Michelle!

CLawBies

Happy New Year! I hope that 2010 will be a rewarding, fulfilling and productive year for all of us.

I am thrilled to share that this blog has been honoured with a CLawBie in the Law Librarian Blog Award category. I am also thrilled that Slaw.ca was recognized as Best Canadian Law Blog.

Congratulations to all those recognized and nominated. The Canadian legal blogging scene is a deep well of rich content. Thanks to Steve Matthews and the Stem team for continuing the tradition of these awards.