Podcast

I discovered a number of useful podcasts this week which are related to developments in various areas of law, law libraries, or legal research. I used several different search engines and different search terms to find the podcasts, and this helped me locate those which were most relevant to my blog's topic of law librarianship. I looked on YouTube and a few podcast search engines such as Podscope and Podcast Alley. I found several podcasts on YouTube and one that was quite good at iTunes. Podcast Alley was my favorite podcast search engine, returning a great number of results using such search terms as "law library," "law librarians," and "legal research." The URL for Podcast Alley is: www.podcastalley.com. I also used Google and discovered many of the same podcasts I had found using Podcast Alley, in addition to a few new ones. West, the company which provides publications, products, and services to those in the legal profession, has a wonderful podcast called Westcast. It was very relevant to my blog and is a legal podcast that would be very useful to any law librarian. The podcast episodes cover a wide range of legal topics and I particularly enjoyed listening to one about legal research in our "google generation." An archive of podcasts from the Westcast podcast can be viewed at: http://west.thomson.com/about/podcasts/. A number of the podcasts I found were from law libraries at law schools around the country. Some of the topics for these were very localized, but others would be of general interest to law librarians. Also, The Law Librarian, with Richard Leiter, is a podcast which discusses "all issues of concern to law libraries, law librarians, legal bibliography and the profession." (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thelawlibrarian)

Using the search term "law librarian podcast" on Google led me to a wonderful article by Diane Murley titled, “Technology for Everyone... Podcasts and Podcasting for Law Librarians." (The link is: http://www.aallnet.org/products/pub_llj_v99n03/2007-40.pdf ) A number of specific podcasts were mentioned in the article and the author discussed the ways these podcasts are being used in the profession. However, the article also gave me the idea of using "aall podcast" as a search query in Google. This helped me find a link to a podcast from Government Info Pro: LexisNexis. I conducted a search with this search term, adding "podcast" and then was able to link directly to the site. The URL is: http://www.governmentinfopro.com/federal_info_pro/lexisnexis-federal-info-p.html. After looking through the site, I found a number of good podcast episodes. LexisNexis, like West, provides a great number of legal products and services to those working in the legal world. The company is now providing podcasts on topics of interest to law librarians and other legal professionals. Government Info Pro is one of them and is hosted by Marie Kaddell. There were many very useful episodes from this podcast and I plan on returning to the site to listen to many of them. The episode I chose to include in my blog, was a podcast of a talk given at an American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) convention by Donna Scheeder, Director, Law Library Services, at the Law Library of the Library of Congress entitled: "Leadership Through Influence: The Path for 21st Century Government Librarians." It was definitely one of my favorites which I listened to in its entirety and is found at:

LexisNexis® Federal Info Pro Podcast: Special Episode 1. http://www.governmentinfopro.com/federal_info_pro/2007/07/lexisnexis-fe-1.html

The podcast was very relevant to the topic of my blog. The various challenges faced by law and government librarians today were discussed, such as: how to accomplish the electronic preservation of born digital documents; open access to court records versus the privacy issues this raises; globalization trends and the need for librarians to be able to provide access to international sources of legal information, etc. The speaker in the podcast explained that law librarians will need to exercise leadership to meet these challenges. They must find ways to add value to their services and go far beyond the traditional role of a reference librarian or bibliographer. She talked about the use of a law library's website, blogs, and web crawlers which would get scholarly blogs onto the library's own webpage. It was very interesting and I believe the other episodes from this podcast will be as well.

In conclusion, I did learn that varying one's search terms really does help lead to additional sources. For example, using "legal research" at Google led me to Berring’s Legal Research podcast. There were very useful episodes such as, “Legal Periodicals and How to Find Them.” (This episode discusses how to use indexes and Boolean search techniques in full text databases. The link is: http://www.berringlegalresearch.com/podcast.asp) There is much useful information to be found, but it may take a little extra effort in terms of trying different search engines, search terms, and scrolling through a podcast's archives.