Working smarter: a round-up of useful tools

I’ve noticed a lot of recent talk about “working smarter, not harder.”  As a result, I’ve been thinking of what technology I can use to help me accomplish my work more efficiently.  Here’s what I’ve been using so far:

• Boomerang: If you use Google for Education, you can install an extension on your browser to make it easy to schedule an email to send later or have an email “boomerang” to the top of your inbox at a later date.  I often use these to schedule sending reminder emails to look at trials for electronic resources.
• Canned responses: This is one of my favorite tricks!  Do you have similar emails that you send regularly?  If you use Google for Education or Microsoft Outlook, you can create template emails to save as “canned responses,” and insert into a new email when it’s time to send that boilerplate message.  I’ve found canned responses invaluable as I order electronic resources, communicate with our campus procurement office about licenses, and more.  Check out this tutorial for implementation tips.
• Email filtering: Sick of looking at dozens of listserv emails per day?  I filter most of mine into designated folders and set aside time to read and clean out those folders a few times a week.  Batching this work keeps me focused on work-related emails instead of being distracted by disjointed conversations.
• Genius Scan App: This app is great if you need to scan an awkwardly-sized document (or even receipts for expense reports) and get it onto your computer.
• Google Translate App: Is a foreign language material stumping your cataloging work?  With the Google Translate App, you can take a picture of the material with your phone and the app will translate it for you!  Not having to type new-to-you characters into the website is an easy bonus.
• Trello:  Move away from that spreadsheet you use to track where you are in a process, and instead use a visual board to organize your projects.  You can even create public boards to let others know how your project is going, or use it as a collaboration tool for committee work.

What technology do you use to work smarter?  What else belongs on this list?

Library Workflow Exchange

I recently became aware of a new website designed to let librarians learn from each other by sharing their workflows. At Library Workflow Exchange, you can check out what other librarians are doing in a variety of workflow situations. The website launched in June, and it already includes workflows

for processes relating to cataloging, authority control, archives, and a variety of metadata standards among many other topics.

Library Workflow Exchange's tag cloud provides a summary of the topics covered on the site

If you are inspired to share your library's workflow to help populate this resource, instructions are provided to help you do so.

You can also keep up with Library Workflow Exchange through their Facebook page and their Twitter account.

Harvard Law Library "Frees the Law" with Their New Digitization Project

From http://librarylab.law.harvard.edu/projects/free-the-law

Has anyone not heard at least a whisper about Harvard's new "Free the Law" initiative at this point? It's been making its way through the blogosphere since it hit the news in late October...

For those who may not know, the project is devoted to making all U.S. case law freely accessible online and involves some serious heavy lifting on the digitization end as well as additional steps behind the scenes that will make the data truly accessible via search. Harvard Law School Library and Ravel Law, a legal research and analytics company, are joining forces on this project, and certain laws should be online as early as November.

Here's a round-up of recent articles so you can learn more at your leisure...

On October 28th, the New York Times led the pack both in print and online, announcing that "in a digital-age sacrifice intended to serve grand intentions, the Harvard librarians are slicing off the spines of all but the rarest volumes and feeding some 40 million pages through a high-speed scanner. They are taking this once unthinkable step to create a complete, searchable database of American case law that will be offered free on the Internet, allowing instant retrieval of vital records that usually must be paid for."

And librarians throughout the nation found themselves simultaneously gasping at the deliberate destruction and applauding the sincere motivations behind the madness...

The initiative was also announced online in Harvard Law Today - this posting includes Harvard Law School's video "Announcing Free the Law."  Their video documents the process and features interviews with Daniel Lewis, founder of Ravel Law, and Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law Library Director and Law Professor.

Next up - the inimitable Jean P. O'Grady at Dewey B. Strategic had an opportunity to speak with Daniel Lewis, founder of Ravel Law, and fleshes out the basics with additional details which are definitely of interest to librarians, such as "How does this project differ from the caselaw available on Google Scholar."

Want to hear from Jonathan Zittrain of the Harvard Law Library?  Robert Ambrogi at Law Sites spoke to him and after their conversation added some additional notes to his initial posting, such as the fact that "Ravel will create an application programming interface (API) so that nonprofits can write apps and plug into the ecosystem of these cases, to create their own portal into the database."

Ambrogi then spoke to Daniel Lewis and wrote a follow-up post with more exclusive tidbits about the project, including the conversations between Lewis and Zittrain that sparked "Free the Law" started two years ago over frozen yogurt.

Within forty-eight hours of the announcement, a range of other outlets had begun picking up the buzz, with the Christian Science Monitor speculating on how this project may change legal practices by leveling the field and allowing improved access to justice. And even straight techie sites like Techdirt were praising this as a useful and worthwhile project.

Where will this project lead, and what lasting impacts will it have?  Only time will tell.  Until then, I've got nothing but applause for Ravel and the Harvard Law librarians' dedication, bravery and initiative.