How do you protect your reputation online

The Sydney Morning Herald article linked discusses issues of concern regarding how people, or robots can trawl through the social media maze locating amazing information about yourself. This can be quite dangerous with respect to your status or reputation at work or industry. So should you then restrict your personality in the social media space to avoid anything that will reflect badly on you? Regards Lisa Sylvester

Publisher Trial - LawOne with Cases from Timebase

After completing the trial, please add you comments here. These comments will be useful for other ALLA members to read in making purchase / subscription decisions, and the comments will also be fed back to Timebase. Back to publisher trials page

Publisher Trial - Personal Property Securities in Australia (PPSA) from LexisNexis

This trial is available to ALLA members until Friday 26 November 2010. We'd love to see triallists' comments here, and we will feed this back to Lexis. Back to publisher trials page

LexisNexis Customer Panel

Following is a brief update regarding the LexisNexis Customer Panel meeting held on 20 April 2010. I found it to be a very enjoyable experience and appreciated the opportunity to provide constructive and honest feedback to LexisNexis across a range of areas including: products; services; pricing; and staff. Other panel members spoke about their experiences with Practice Management and Workflow solutions. It was terrific to also have the opportunity to speak with staff who work behind the scenes, such as the finance officers, editors and product developers in addition to the Customer Relationship Managers. I certainly recommend the customer panel forum be undertaken on an annual basis. Leanne Cummings

Working with contracts?

I don't know about everyone else, but every year I wrestle with the annual renewal of a variety of contracts, squinting my way through the terms & conditions (8 point font anyone??), and puzzling as to why it is still a regular struggle to settle the agreement. Luckily I have the assistance of our inhouse counsel. They are fabulous people who with much patience and support, help make sense of the legalese, point out what I should get clarified, changed or removed, and who put it all in a commercial perspective. I have been doing this for some years now, so I thought I would use the ALLA blog to share some of the things I have learned and to give everyone the opportunity to share their own insights and experiences. I look forward to hearing from everyone. In the meantime... Tip #1. Always read a contract with the view that most things are negotiable! Cheers Lianne

BIALL Conference 2010

With thanks to Justis, sponsor of the BIALL Annual Study Conference Scholarship, I will be heading off to the UK shortly to attend the British & Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) annual study conference. This year’s conference has the topical theme Risks and Opportunities: Managing information in difficult times, and will be held in Brighton, 10-12 June 2010. The BIALL conference offers an appealing programme, which includes an interesting paper by Australian librarian Alissa Sputore from Melbourne Law School, "A Blue Chip Investment: Law Research Services to Support Academic Research". I would be happy to hear from anyone interested in the conference in general, or in selected papers. Of course, I will be reporting back from the conference. I would like to thank Justis once again for sponsoring the scholarship, ALLA for selecting my application, and of course, conference hosts, BIALL. I would also like to thank Jean McKay and Dennis Warren, previous scholarship recipients, for their invaluable conference and travel tips. For those interested in attending future BIALL conferences, do remember the BIALL Annual Study Conference Scholarship - details and guidelines are located under Scholarships & Awards. Kind regards, Tracey

Outsourcing legal and business research services

Foot Anstey is a reasonably sized firm (40 partners, 350 staff). http://www.integreon.com/news-resources/press-releases/2010/foot-anstey-engages-integreon-for-library-and-information-services.html "Foot Anstey turned to Integreon for its unique Library and Information Services offering, which includes legal and business research, journal management, information supplier management and procurement, and related library and research services. By engaging Integreon, Foot Anstey was able to expand the breadth and depth of support available to its lawyers and staff without increasing costs, ultimately enabling it to provide a higher quality, more cost-effective service to its clients. "Through our relationship with Integreon, we have gained access to a large team of information specialists with greater breadth of expertise, depth of experience and capacity for meeting our growing information needs," said Richard Gardiner, Foot Anstey's director of business development. "Integreon provides all the support and expertise we need at an affordable price and without the administrative and management challenges." What are your thoughts?