Reading Time: 7 minutes
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. One of the things I’ve been looking forward to in my new role is teaching. The calendar has rolled around and I was asked to teach next fall, which is really exciting. I’ll be teaching a course on law
David Whelan
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XPath To Scrape A News Feed
Reading Time: 7 minutes
I am sensing a disturbance in the Force. Where things like Google alerts used to be reliable sources of news, their reliance on deteriorating search is becoming visible. Websites are also starting to pull their RSS feeds in favor of emailed newsletters. For every information action, a reaction. I have…
Picking Fights
Reading Time: 9 minutes
I got a new driver’s license. It is my ninth one, as I’ve moved around a bit and all the jurisdictions in which I’ve lived have required you to get a new one. The visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles wasn’t too bad. You can imagine, though, that not everyone…
Standardizing on Duo Multi-Factor
Reading Time: 4 minutes
I have been fiddling with my multi-factor authentication, probably more than I should. I had been using Duo Mobile on Android. Then my workplace required me to add the Akamai app because they use Akamai. I wrote about this a few months ago, because I had been playing with the…
Format Fixation
Reading Time: 7 minutes
I attended a conference focused on online learning. I’ve been making a push to firm up my understanding about teaching and this was an accelerator. It was noted more than once how dissonant it was to have a conference about online learning where the only way to attend was in-person. The…
SSL Certificate Issuance and Cloudflare
Reading Time: 2 minutes
My websites and apps are behind the Cloudflare firewall. I use the web application firewall (WAF) to block anything and everything that shouldn’t be coming through. One periodic request was the quarterly re-issuance of Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. These are a free way to secure your internet connections but it was…
Eating Google’s Takeout from GMail
Reading Time: 5 minutes
For better or for worse, Google’s constant nagging about my shrinking storage space worked. I had already dropped most of their other products but have been using Photos to share images, and Mail has been my primary address for awhile. I’ll continue to use both products but I used the download…
Dream Work
Reading Time: 4 minutes
I was still traveling so I missed the AALL announcement about this artificial intelligence (AI) keyword glossary (members only). It was a project I had worked on, so of course, I was glad to see it get shared publicly. But it had also been a great collaboration, which is not something…
A Chance to Mold the Profession
Reading Time: 10 minutes
I’ve just finished Shaping the Bar by Prof. Joan Haworth. I think it’s a must-read for law librarians in any work context. As I moved recently from a public law library to an academic one, I’ve been trying to get up to speed on changes I’ve missed. This was a…
Dearly Departed
Reading Time: 8 minutes
I’m at the end of my first full week at a new role in Chicago. I had been in California at a public law library for just over 2 years and it was time to move on. There were a lot of reasons, mostly personal, and I had come to the…
Tell Me About Yourself
Reading Time: 6 minutes
I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people about myself and my family over the last half decade. It’s not something I was terribly comfortable doing. In part, this was because it was a persona constructed for the purpose of those interactions. I am now at a point where I…
The Distraction of Magical Thinking
Reading Time: 7 minutes
I am sure I am not alone in my experience with magical thinking in law libraries. I’m sure it’s not unique to law libraries either. We operate in an environment where the people who oversee our libraries often know how to use legal information, perform legal research. There is a danger…
The Warp And Weft of Resilience
Reading Time: 5 minutes
I had an epiphany while sitting in an AALL conference session. As is often the case, I had heard something and it had sparked a thought that distracted me for a moment. I’ve posted here before that I’m not a huge fan of the concept of succession planning. I think,…
Hold the Reins
Reading Time: 7 minutes
My brother was a Russian hostage. That is now in the past but I am still processing it. But as his release started to appear on the horizon, and I was preparing for the media, I put a lot of thought into how to maintain some control in these final moments.…
Tailor Your Outcome
Reading Time: 9 minutes
It is not uncommon to lump similar people together, based on their job titles, or similar organizations, based on their outward facing appearance or context. I tend to avoid this. Even statements as simple as “library directors do X” may be sprinkled with caveats. Do they? Do all directors do X?…
Dueling Authenticators
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Multi-factor authentication is now a permanent part of life. Unfortunately, it is implemented in so many different—and not always secure—ways that it can require a lot of tools to manage. I had done pretty well until recently by relying on Duo’s products. They have a really nice free MFA (or 2FA)…