Tag Archives: blogs

BLS Bloggers’ Roundtable

Blogging has skyrocketed in the past few years as a means for people to share their experiences and their opinions. In the past few years, Brooklyn Law School  has hosted a series of blogs and bloggers with legal subject expertise in a variety of subject areas.  All  have different backgrounds and perspectives. eff_bloggers2

Brooklyn Law School (BLS) Bloggers’ Roundtable connects faculty, staff and student bloggers and online journalists with each other.  The Roundtable provides training and resources to enhance blogger skills.

We encourage active faculty bloggers  (but are not limited to): Minna Kotkin, Derek Bambauer, Victoria Szymczak and Bill Araiza to join us.  If you are a student blogger, let us know who you are and give us the URL to your blog.

Within BLS Library, we are proud of  this blog and two other blogs authored by:  Harold O’Grady and Rosemary Campagna. Both Harold and Rosemary will be assisting in the training.

Come join us at the BLS Bloggers’ Roundtable, share tips and learn some new ones on December 2, 2009.  We will be discussing  RSS feed readers and news aggregators.  For more information contact Karen Schneiderman, Emerging Technologies Librarian

  • These tools let you follow news and blogs easily, comfortably and efficiently in a dedicated program, on a web site or in your email program.
  • These tools provide either just the blog headlines or the headline and a short description (or even the whole text) of each item. Some readers use a Web interface, some are a desktop program, separate from your web browser. Some readers let you easily post what you’re reading to your own weblog .

Some people call these tools  feed aggregators, they are also known as a feed readers, RSS readers, news readers or simply aggregators.  Technically, it requires a client software or a Web application to aggregate syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.

Here are some resources about RSS Readers:

LexisNexis, Westlaw & Web 2.0 (posted by Jean Davis)

Tomorrow I’m training Brooklyn Journal of International Law new members in using research tools for note topic selection/development.  Below are my descriptions of the new tools that LexisNexis and Westlaw are developing to access law-related blogs, RSS feeds, free websites and more.  At present, I think that students will find clicking on links in the LexisNexis Web 2.0 Law Centers easier to use than entering queries/sorting results in Westlaw WebPlus.

Two questions that I anticipate receiving from BJIL members: Why can’t we access some of the source links in the LexisNexis Law Centers?  (My answer will be: We can access the sources available through a law school license agreement.)  Why are some of the results in Jean’s Westlaw WebPlus sample query so old?  (My answer will be: For purposes of students who are developing note topics, it does help to click tab: News Results and to sort Westlaw WebPlus results by date.  Also, we can provide comments about Westlaw WebPlus (BETA) to Westlaw through http://wwpblog.blogspot.com).


LexisNexis Web 2.0 Law Centers
http://www.lexisnexis.com/communities
LexisNexis is developing legal “communities” that provide data from blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts and other Web 2.0 tools.
TIP: Explore practice areas such as Emerging Issues, International Law and International Rule of Law.  Depending on the sources that you select, you might need to enter your LexisNexis user name and password.  (Some linked sources are not available through law school licenses.)


Westlaw WebPlus (BETA version)
Log on to http://lawschool.westlaw.com and click: Law School tab.See: Search the Web [with Westlaw WebPlus BETA].
Westlaw has developed a Web search engine to provide data from blogs and data from government, nonprofit, educational and commercial websites.Westlaw asserts that Westlaw Web Plus focuses on “legally relevant information.”
TIP: In Westlaw WebPlus, use the drop-down menu to Search for: Legal Issue or News.  For example, your search terms could be: “international law” new developments
TIP: After you obtain Westlaw WebPlus search results, if you click tab: News Results, you can sort results by date.