Year archives: 2017

200 universities just launched 560 free online courses. Here’s the full list.

Dhawal Shah, Founder of the online course search engine – https://www.class-central.com/ – identifies free online courses in a dozen disciplines: Computer Science, Mathematics, Programming, Data Science, Humanities, Social Sciences, Education & Teaching, Health & Medicine, Business, Personal Development, Engineering, Art & Design, and Science. You are certain to find a few if not many self-paced courses to leverage for continuing education, professional development, as well as just for the fun of learning and applying new subject matter expertise.

Subjects: Big Data, Continuing Legal Education, Distance Learning, Education

Open Educational Resources (OER) Sources 2018

Costs continue to rise for students who are pursing college and post graduate degree programs. By leveraging best practice sites, services and non-traditional options to expand knowledge, skills and abilities in many disciplines, students can choose from a wide range of options to complete their respective goals. This guide by Marcus Zillman is a comprehensive listing of useful open source educational resources, sites, e-books and courses on the Internet that can assist you in optimizing your learning opportunities.

Subjects: E-Books, Education, Internet Resources - Web Links, Open Source

The State of Law Library eBooks 2017-18 Part One: The Landscape

Ellyssa Kroski is the Director of Information Technology at the New York Law Institute and an award-winning editor and author of 36 books. In Part One of a three part series for LLRX, she describes the current landscape of eBooks relevant to the law library field, the benefits and challenges of offering eBooks in law libraries, the different ways to purchase law-related eBooks, and how to get started choosing a solution.

Subjects: E-Books, Law Librarians, Legal Research, Library Marketing, Library Software & Technology

Picturing the Law

While Lyonette Louis-Jacques was conducting research on the subject of illustrated law books, she identified the extensive work of her colleague, Michael Widener – Yale Lillian Goldman Law Library. Mike has shared his research in a number of presentations and lectures that Lyo identifies for us, in addition to sharing her considerable insights and own work on this subject. The confluence of their respective work provides us with a “sense of wonder and play, things that can be in short supply in today’s world.”

Subjects: Comparative/Foreign Law, Legal Research

25 for 25: A Librarian’s Free Law Awakening

For law librarians, the past 25 years have engaged us in a journey from fee based access to the law via books, followed by dedicated terminals and CDs, to online portal services, to the current state of far more open, accessible and free access to the law. Sarah Glassmeyer’s perspective on this journey helps us focus on information access as a key facet of justice, highlighting the critical foundation that Cornell’s Legal Information Institute established for our communities of best practice to follow as we continue to pursue complete and free access to all facets of legal information on the Internet.

Subjects: Legal Education, Legal Research, Technology Trends

AI And The Rule Of Law

Our exposure to and reliance upon an increasingly ubiquitous range of technology is intertwined with issues related to intellectual property law. With smartphone cameras used to capture and share what their respective creators otherwise claim as intellectual property, to the devices, services and applications that comprise the Internet of Things (IoT), Ken Grady raises significant and as yet unresolved concerns about how the rule of law will be applied in response to the use, and misuse, of AI and digital personal assistants.

Subjects: AI, Intellectual Property, Leadership, Legal Research

The Fight to Bring Legal Research to the Front

Law librarian and professor Brandon Adler identifies core issues to support educating third year law students in a wide range of reliable free and low cost legal resources. Many law librarians acknowledge that there is a lack of awareness and use of alternative legal resources, with the law student community as well across a large swath of attorneys in firms both large and small.

Subjects: Law Librarians, Legal Education, Legal Research Training

The Road To Intelligent Legal Software

Legal AI pioneer Itai Gurari’s article is a commentary and a lessons learned that is critical to our communities of best practice as we seek to effectively assess both the promise and significant drawbacks of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the context of the legal sector. As Gurari clearly articulates, building reliably intelligent legal software requires more than just the application of the latest trendy tools. It requires building systems that are robust and that respect the use cases for which they are designed.

Subjects: AI, Legal Technology, Technology Trends