kirschsubjudice

Aaron Kirschenfeld

Short thoughts on topics that interest me combined with selected link-sharing. And because having one blog really isn't enough.

My boring newsletter

Civil,
Police killing unarmed black teens isn't right.
Government shouldn't restrict speech it disagrees with.
Muslims aren't terrorists.
Social,
Teach boys and men not to rape and don't blame victims of sexual assault.
GTFO about bathrooms, ok?
Same with voter fraud -- we all know what that's about.
As long as it's consensual, do whatever you want sexually with whoever you want to do it with.
Economic,
Silicon Valley ain't normal.
Details about big banks and trade deals matter.
Inequality is out of control.
Energetic,
It is time to stop paying attention to Trump, Huckabee, etc.; they are dangerous demagogues and will get people hurt.

I legitimately consider the above statements to be non-controversial politically.
They are what I consider the starting points for contemporary political discourse.

Aaron Kirschenfeld Posted on November 25th, 2015

The (Continued) Zeal of a Podcast Convert

For the original in this series, see The Zeal of a Podcast Convert.

In July, I started listened to podcasts, apparently swept up in an ascendent trend of spoken-word audio. We are, it seems, in a golden age of podcasting. Many things have happened in the podcast medium and to my listening habits since then (including my spending a total of 6 days and 8 hours of time listening, according to my pod catcher of choice, PocketCasts), so I figured it was time for part two of this series, such as it is.

First, and most significantly, we lost Grantland:


Here, Bill Barnwell of the Grantland NFL Podcast, during what was suspected to be a walkout of sorts at the sports / pop culture site. In fewer than two weeks’ time, Grantland would be gone.

My first lineup of podcast listening included three from the Grantland network — now, sadly, it includes none.

Next, I got some new tools, namely a new car with bluetooth audio. Here’s what I’m working with:
Here were my available tools:
- 2015 Toyota Corolla
- Entirely too many pairs of headphones purchased over the years on the advice of The Wirecutter
- A daily (on weekdays) 25-minute commute in either direction.

Oh, and we dropped cable TV service at our house last week.

So, what am I listening to? Up from an original lineup of 12, I now keep 21 podcasts in rotation. First, some originals remain. They are nearly perfect expressions of the form:


Somewhere in the late summer or early fall, these now-regulars entered, all of which are much more hit than miss:

I have begun listening to some of last year’s blockbusters, too:

The newest of the bunch are:

And sadly, let us pour one out for the dearly departed:

Finally, I’ve been keeping up with Nick Quah’s hot pod newsletter, which has been a source of inspiration for new things to listen to while I drive, do the dishes, and shred documents in my office on Sunday afternoons. Some things that I’ve heard have been truly life-changing, and almost everything has been excellent entertainment.

Any comments? Leave ‘em below!

Aaron Kirschenfeld Posted on November 22nd, 2015

The Zeal of a Podcast Convert

(Updated: 2015-07-25)

A few weeks ago, I wondered aloud on Twitter:


I had listened to some podcasts long ago, but found I never really had the time or attention span to listen to them. This was at least three or four years ago — I was transitioning from full-time work to graduate school— but now, having graduated, I was noticing that we’d entered a phase in which podcasts seemed to be gaining a good deal of popularity. Frustrated with local sports radio and momentarily bored with my beloved jazz station (sorry, WNCU… I will still be a donor / member!), I wanted to see if I could find time for podcasts in my life.

Many folks on Twitter offered helpful advice and listening suggestions. From that base of knowledge, I began constructing a set-up and programming menu that worked best for me.

Here were my available tools:
- Old iPod Classic, circa 2008 maybe?
- 2001 Toyota Corolla with AM/FM & Tape Deck Stereo lacking AV input
- Entirely too many pairs of headphones purchased over the years on the advice of The Wirecutter
- Tape adapter of unknown origin, eventually found in wife’s car
- FM iPod tuner
- A daily (on weekdays) 25-minute commute in either direction.

Now, I have other toys. Most important among them are a MacBook Pro and an iPad Air 2. So far, I haven’t done a ton of listening on either, but I will explain. First, I wanted to go for simplicity, so my main podcast player is my Android phone. The best cross-platform podcast software I could find is PocketCasts, made by Shift Jelly. And boy, have I been impressed. They have a web player, too, which is available for a small subscription fee, and it is totally worth it. Everything syncs seamlessly, podcast discovery is easy, played podcast episodes can be set to auto-delete, etc., etc. I recommend it highly. Seriously, it’s a fantastic app / service.

The tape adapter works well in the car. I had problems with it in the past, but this was likely because my tape deck had tried (and failed) to play Side 2, creating a loud, grinding sound. Checking periodically to make sure Side 1 was “playing" almost totally eliminated the sound. The headphones are all great, too, and now I listen on my morning walks and while I’m doing dishes. If I have a “driveway moment" but need to leave the car, I will finish up the podcast on the web player.

So, what am I listening to? It’s been a process of trial and error, but so far I’ve landed on 12 podcasts I really like (and, more important, that I can keep up with). Here they are, listed in loose thematic form:

- What’s The Point (Unsubscribed 2015-07-25)
- Welcome to Night Vale (Subscribed 2015-07-25)

So far, I really like them all. Obviously, I’m interested in the internet and technology, sports, and storytelling, but I’ll tell you what really makes each of these great — the regular, cerebral deep-dives into minutiae which stimulate my curiosity and make me want to listen more. That said, each one manages to stay light and funny, and is a good overall listening experience.

I’m having fun with this!

Any comments? Leave ‘em below!


For the original in this series, see The Zeal of a Podcast Convert.

In July, I started listened to podcasts, apparently swept up in an ascendent trend of spoken-word audio. We are, it seems, in a golden age of podcasting. Many things have happened in the podcast medium and to my listening habits since then (including my spending a total of 6 days and 8 hours of time listening, according to my pod catcher of choice, PocketCasts), so I figured it was time for part two of this series, such as it is.

First, and most significantly, we lost Grantland:


Here, Bill Barnwell of the Grantland NFL Podcast, during what was suspected to be a walkout of sorts at the sports / pop culture site. In fewer than two weeks’ time, Grantland would be gone.

My first lineup of podcast listening included three from the Grantland network — now, sadly, it includes none.

Next, I got some new tools, namely a new car with bluetooth audio. Here’s what I’m working with:
Here were my available tools:
- 2015 Toyota Corolla
- Entirely too many pairs of headphones purchased over the years on the advice of The Wirecutter
- A daily (on weekdays) 25-minute commute in either direction.

Oh, and we dropped cable TV service at our house last week.

So, what am I listening to? Up from an original lineup of 12, I now keep 21 podcasts in rotation. First, some originals remain. They are nearly perfect expressions of the form:


Somewhere in the late summer or early fall, these now-regulars entered, all of which are much more hit than miss:

I have begun listening to some of last year’s blockbusters, too:

The newest of the bunch are:

And sadly, let us pour one out for the dearly departed:

Finally, I’ve been keeping up with Nick Quah’s hot pod newsletter, which has been a source of inspiration for new things to listen to while I drive, do the dishes, and shred documents in my office on Sunday afternoons. Some things that I’ve heard have been truly life-changing, and almost everything has been excellent entertainment.

Any comments? Leave ‘em below!

Aaron Kirschenfeld Posted on July 25th, 2015

More Information: I've Landed @UNCLawLibrary

On June 1, I will be starting work at the Katherine R. Everett Law Library at the University of North Carolina. I am taking the position of Reference & Digital Initiatives Librarian, which will be a hybrid job responsible for providing traditional reference services and contributing to work on the access to, collection, and description of new and existing digital resources.

I am truly excited to join an excellent team at Carolina Law. I have gotten to know many of the folks there during my years as a dual J.D./M.S.I.S., but now I am particularly looking forward to working with them as a professional colleague. I also want to say thanks to all of the great mentors I've had outside of Carolina Law, including Ed Walters and his great crew at Fastcase, Sara Sampson, and the staff at the J. Michael Goodson Law Library, where I have worked as an intern for this past year.

I can't wait to get to work!

Aaron Kirschenfeld Posted on May 1st, 2015

#LawRepositories - OER & Perma.cc - Glassmeyer & Ziegler


Sarah (@sglassmeyer) & Adam (@abziegler)

Sarah:
Assume the following are true:
P1: Access to information is access to justice.
P2: Access to justice is the responsibility of the legal profession.
∴ Legal professionals make access to justice happen by providing access to information.

3 Ideas:
  • Data (the “raw" law)
  • Information
  • Knowledge

A lot of knowledge goes into our repositories, but not a ton of information or data.

3 Aspects:
  • Content
  • Container
  • Conveyance
    • Free repositories have been the subject of the talk

Information is Locked Away:
  • Publishers are treating digital materials different from print materials.
  • Copyright extension (in term and scope).
    • Orphan work problem: 25% - 50%
  • Format changes.

What does it mean to “pay" for content?
  • Taxpayers pay for courts, professors, licenses.

Technology is available!
  • Publish and distribute from the desktop.

Definition of Open Source vs. Open Access
  • OS refers to the software
  • OA refers to the content

What Open is NOT:
  • Garbage
  • “Given away"
  • Forbidding
    • Sometimes things under CC license don’t look “open"

Much of what is going on in law repositories is “Fauxopen Access"

OER / Casebooks:
  • Removes barriers to education ($$)
  • No more reinventing the wheel all the time
    • Why do we struggle to teach “What Are Primary Legal Materials?" over and over?
  • Public domain legal materials for:
    • Law schools
    • CLEs
    • Paralegal training programs

Finding “Stuff" in Virtual Boxes of Crap:
  • SSRN
  • TWEN & Blackboard (or other LMS, I suppose)
  • Published court opinions

It’s ok to start small! So...
  • Don’t hide the license
  • Make the document “re-mixable"
  • Make lots of copies so people don’t have to hunt for it!

Adam:
Repos / Platforms / Networks

Harvard Library Innovation Lab: http://librarylab.law.harvard.edu/about.html

Law-Specific Projects:

Will discuss Perma.cc in depth today:

Link Rot (Perma.cc)
  • https://perma.cc/about
  • Links. Will. Break.
    • (There was a great conference on this topic in October at Georgetown Law)
  • Perma.cc is a simple web app. Resolves links to the very page the author intended to reference.
  • But it’s also a code repository!
    • Available on GitHub
  • 85 law libraries acting as Perma.cc registrars.
  • Perma is also a platform; recently released an API.
    • Recently have built a small Word plugin, being tested now.
  • Finally, Perma is a network.
    • Institutional combination.
    • Library mirroring.

Q&A Notes:

Law schools have chosen a commercial repository vendor. Is this a problem?
  • Sarah says yes. Question is where the content is hosted?
    • Cost a concern. Stability, too.
  • Quarterly archive feature of bepress.
Progress on Perma box:
  • Prototype has been created.
  • Still being tested.

Perma workflow problems for law journals:
  • There is no manual, but some folks have developed resources.
    • Libguide at Boston College on it (link to be circulated)
  • Audience noting resistance from journals
  • Courts have different sensitivities.
    • Links being created might be used to forecast an opinion.



That’s all, folks! Great conference!


Aaron Kirschenfeld Posted on March 31st, 2015

#LawRepositories - Breakout - LIPA (Margie Maes)



Mission:
  • Preservation in print and digital form.
    • PALMPrint for primary law print (facility in Massachusetts) in partnership with NELLCO.
    • Legal Information Archive for digital (with OCLC).

Law Libraries Should Know:
  • Archiving law review materials in bepress in CLOKSS available.
  • Partnership with Archive-It (for Web archiving).


Lots of interactions not captured here. Very well-attended breakout.

Aaron Kirschenfeld Posted on March 31st, 2015

#LawRepositories - Is Digitization Preservation?


Sharon Bradley:
Yes!

As a librarian interested in preservation, people are the enemy. They eat, they have dirty hands, they lose things. (Tone was sarcastic, folks!)

LLMC / Jerry Dupont - Use means digital use. Content is what folks are interested in.

Digitization Myths:
  • We’re too small, it’s only me.
    • Do what you can, and then you’ve done it. Your own small part.
  • We can’t afford it.
    • Student labor, equipment not too expensive. Fuji ScanSnap worthy of lust!
  • We don’t have the technical skills.
  • Not a priority.
    • It can’t wait. The books are falling apart.

Beth Williams:
Agrees with Sharon more than disagrees.

Digitization Myths from the managerial perspective:
  • It’s (primarily) about (open) access
    • “Intellectual output" = call for new term needed!!
    • Editorial input might be the sine qua non of publishing, but are publishers doing it?
    • Digitization means creating something new.
    • Digitization is about both access and preservation.
      • Need to be considered independently.
  • Preservation is backup and recovery
    • Backup and recovery is a disaster-planning mechanism, not for access or preservation necessarily.
    • Bit rot is probably the most dangerous thing.
  • Acquisition of a turnkey repository is enough
    • We need to be doing more with repositories.

Sharon:
Stewardship
  • What’s the goal?
    • Maintain the object for as long as needed that is authentic and accessible.
    • Reduce handling.
  • Ensuring authenticity
    • When you digitize, you’re the custodian.
  • Trusted Digital Repositories (TDRs)
    • Most have decided that bepress meets the needs, but it’s not open-and-shut.
  • Control and Structure
    • It’s a constant process of evaluation.

Beth:
Stewardship

Sharon:
  • No single preservation strategy
    • We’re talking about tools but also where things will be in the future.
  • Migration
    • 3 to 5 years. Seems like a lot. But keep it in mind.
  • Structure
  • Processing
    • Less process, more product.
    • We can get caught up in the details, leading to delay.

Beth:
Guidelines from OCLC
  • Do no harm
  • Don’t preclude future use
  • Don’t let the first two be obstacles to action
  • Document what you do

Final point is that the data is your data.

“Digital information lasts forever — or five years, whichever comes first."
- Jeff Rothenberg

Q&A from Carol and Audience
Have you chosen not to digitize something at all?
  • Not volitionally, but because the things have not been identified.
  • Materials not significant. Intellectual value.

Interesting question → Work of an archivist as opposed to the work of a digitizer.
  • But, leave the organization of the creator in place if you can.
  • Archival students can be helpful. Box-level content organization can be done rather easily.

Grants for preservation or digitization?
  • St. Mary’s (TX) has received grant, but had a bad experience with a particular set of papers through DPLA Hub.
  • Have been several grants recently, Univ. of Utah (IMLS)
  • LYRASIS (mass digitization), Sharon has worked with them.
    • Margie Maes mentions it’s a challenge with smaller law collections
  • Duke has its own digitization center university-wide, can do small projects.



Aaron Kirschenfeld Posted on March 31st, 2015

#LawRepositories - Lightning Talks


Todd Ito & Thomas Drueke
  • University of Chicago (Chicago Unbound)
  • Databases and scripts
  • A real-live relational database!
    • UI is MS Access

  • Mostly Python and SQLServer
    • Excellent third-party tools that are helpful in academic law libraries
  • Customizations built on DigitalCommons
  • Selenium for browser automation

David Holt
Migrating student journals
  • Different strategies employed by different libraries.
  • Why automate?
    • Saves time...
    • Saves effort...
    • Consistency

How to get metadata into the repository (batch upload):
  • Journal structure
  • Public links from Dropbox
  • bepress spreadsheets filled out well

Screen scraper used at Santa Clara is OutWit Hub.
  • Also harvesting from ILP

Parsing the data:
  • The most difficult part

Information & instructions available:

Sean Chen
Leveraging OAI-PMH
  • Repositories are necessarily for content
  • Content reuse requires shaping content

Metadata Harvesting — You’ve got to have a way to get the content out
  • OAI-PMH is simple
  • and stable
  • and used by bunch of different languages

eTOCs → Can be generated
Batch XML used in Wordpress

Use harvesting to create CrossRef records, DOAJ, indexing and abstracting for vendors.

With Law Journal Publishing:
  • Student editors
  • Challenging publishing environment
  • But the product is important!

Mark Williams & Dan Blackaby
Combination of Cornell Law with LII
  • Addition of 22 additional fields to those required by bepress.
  • A way of connecting things in the Google search results.
  • Addition of a Google Author ID
  • SSRN IDs are also identifiers



And now, it’s time for dinner. Will be back tomorrow at #LawRepositories


Aaron Kirschenfeld Posted on March 30th, 2015

#LawRepositories - Breakout - Metadata


No description.

Ha. ha. ha.





Aaron Kirschenfeld Posted on March 30th, 2015

#LawRepositories - Hollie White and Avery Le - Using Metrics to Make Repository Decisions



Collecting the numbers:

The Obvious:
  • Number of papers
  • Number of downloads
  • Email of monthly usage from bepress
  • Author reports

Systematic Collecting:
  • What’s important to community?
  • When will you collect it?
    • Regularly!
  • Who wants to know?

bepress usage reports allow drilling down into the data.
  • For DOWNLOADS
Google Analytics.
  • For VISITS

Hollie collects:
  • Overall and collection level downloads.
  • Article level collections
  • Visitor information, looking for spikes.

Visits ≠ Downloads ≠ Citations
100 DLs to 1 Citation? Research a bit stale on this.

Communicates raw numbers to library leadership.
Also, to journal editors.
  • 9 student-run journals.
Monthly newsletter.
Annual celebration.

What’s Normal?
  • Every repository is different.
    • But, custom alerts in Google Alerts. Close to real-time monitor.
  • Spikes in traffic:
    • Is it a bot?
    • Is it conspiracy theorists?

Research Questions
  • Correlations and Multiple Regressions for statistical analysis of collection
    • Analysis in STATA
  • Example: Do metadata and downloads correlate?
  • Ranking of downloads


Visualizations of metric data:
  • Who do you show this to?
    • Faculty
    • Administrators
  • Search Queries (from Google Analytics)
    • Tool: Tagul
  • Donut Chart (social media data)
    • Tool: AmCharts
  • Map (network domains)
    • Tool: Google Fusion Tables

Use — turn metrics into metadata. Some keywords more searched then others? Why not use them?


Aaron Kirschenfeld Posted on March 30th, 2015