A tip to prospective realtors and homeowners

If you want to sell a house, it's best not only to remove the carpeting that your dog urinated on, but also to deal with the flea infestation. If the urine smell doesn't turn off prospective buyers, it's likely that being attacked by hordes of fleas and suffering multiple bites will.

SEALL Institute 2009: The Impact of Electronic Resources on Today’s Law Library

While I twittered a lot of the SEAALL meeting this year, the first day I took notes on paper. With a pen. Here's a quick and dirty summary. I didn't take very good notes as to who was saying what on some of the panels.

HeinOnline surveys (Roxanne Marmion, HeinOnline)

• HeinOnline bound volume survey:


• 24% of libraries surveyed have moved journals in HeinOnline to remote storage


• 43% have discarded journals in HeinOnline


• 67% have cancelled journals not in HeinOnline due to budgetary restrictions


• HeinOnline journal survey


• 50% of journals on HeinOnline are current (latest issue available)


• 23% are all published (discontinued, retitled)


• 17% are added to HeinOnline by volume


• 10% have a one-volume delay or more

Future of tech services (Kevin Butterfield, College of William & Mary)

• At William & Mary, from 2000 to 2009, 1274 subscriptions were cancelled. As a result, there was less work in labeling, shelving, filing, etc. 2FT positions were retooled. 30,000 e-resource records were added to the catalog.


• Trying to follow the Google model (from Harvard Business Review article). 80/20 rule. 80% of an employee’s time spent working on core duties. 20% spent on personal projects that enhance core services. Wants staff members to find projects that they are passionate about and that will enhance core services. Employees are evaluated on the 20% projects.

Communication (First segment vendors, second was Billie Blaine, Supreme Court of Florida, Marian Parker, Wake Forest University and Kay Todd, Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker)

• (I didn’t take a lot of notes on the vendor presentations as I knew about most of the things the concerned vendors were doing. Exceptions were the HeinOnline blog and wiki and BNA’s law school professional information center. I already knew about the Lexis newsletters and West trainings and email newsletters, etc.)


• Libraries using Facebook to push out trainings, workshops, etc.


• Law review requires students to take a certain amount of workshops, on a points system.

The (Almost) All-Electronic Library (Gordon Russell, Lincoln Memorial University)

• Just-in-time model; small staff (model allows for fewer staff members).


• Smaller print collection means less filing, shelving, cataloging and invoices.


• Cataloging records are purchased from YBP, Cassidy and others.


• E-Book licensing model: Purchase from publishers with more open model (allow printing of entire chapters, etc.) and who provide MARC records.


• Just-in-time print model


• Patron-driven purchasing


• Only 4,000 linear ft. of shelving at Lincoln (10,000 at Charleston)


• No journals or reporters in print.


• Main university uses Voyager. LS will use as well, but only print materials will be added to catalog. The others are all in Aquabrowser and Serial Solutions.


• Seminars are offered as 3 credit course. One credit is pass/fail research segment taught by librarians.

Forecast and Impact Today (Billie Blaine, Marian Parker, Faye Jones, Kay Todd, Sally Irvin, Kevin Butterfield)

• 3 lists: Sacred Cows, Endangered Species and Chopping Block. Things are moving rapidly from Sacred Cows to Chopping Block.


• Firms are “deconstructing” libraries. Materials are being moved into practice group offices & satellite libraries.


• Moving to just-in-time model might be more shocking to faculty than anyone else.


• “Students think they know everything because they come in searchers. We need to teach them to be researchers.”


• Staffing changes coming. Librarians will be more like law faculty. Staff members will be fewer but will be more like a bridge between paraprofessionals and what librarians used to do.

Pizza night

Michael Ruhlman declared this week National Make-Pizza-at-Home week. I already had pizza on the brain, ever since making those pies when James and Elizabeth were down from Buffalo. Ruhlman's post was enough to get me to the store to buy more flour, as I was running low, and some cheese. I used to make pizza almost weekly when we were living in Ithaca and a bit less often in Syracuse. I stopped making my own when we moved to Hollywood. The proliferation of decent pizza joints (not an issue in Syracuse) here makes it easier to give it a pass and order out. But, for those outside the five boroughs, a homemade pie is more satisfying than most takeout.


Since I had to stop on the way home from work to get the flour and cheese, as well as herbs for the sauce, I opted for a quick proof dough. I used the basic recipe from Ruhlman's post, but with a whole packet of yeast and some good warm water. I also put a pizza stone on the bottom rack of the oven and preheated it to 200. I had some problems getting the dough wet enough. I needed just a touch more water than called for to get the consistency I wanted. Problem was, I added twice as much as needed. I tossed in a little extra flour and kneaded it in. Catastrophe averted. After kneading, I coated the inside of a mixing bowl with olive oil, tossed the dough in, then covered it with a damp towel and put it in the oven for 30 minutes.

While the dough was in the oven, I put a sauce together. I chopped up some of the basil and parsley I bought and added them to a can of tomato sauce and half a can of water. I added a couple of minced garlic cloves and a little bit of olive oil along with some dried oregano and thyme (no fresh at the store today; at least you can get away with those—dried parsley, not so much).

After 30, I pulled the dough out and cranked the oven up to 450. It was a little too warm on the edges, but that's to be expected when you heat it in a metal bowl. It wasn't unworkable, though. I nicked the parchment paper idea out the comments on Ruhlman's post. I stretched the dough out, then dropped it on parchment paper, sauced it and loaded it on the stone with a peel. Yes, I have a peel and therefore don't need the paper, but I'm out of cornmeal and on parchment, you don't have to be so exact. If you miss an edge, you can grab the paper and move it over. It's ridiculous amounts easier.

I, of course, did not think to pick up any toppings for this pie, so I had to improvise out of what I had in the refrigerator. The black olives were kind of old and scary looking, so I tossed them and pulled out the green ones. I grabbed two slices of ham out of the meat drawer and sliced them up along with a handful of the olives. I added some baby spinach from the crisper.

After 10 minutes, I pulled the pie out, added some cheese, then the spinach, ham and olives and then more cheese to hold it together and put it back in for 10 more minutes. The split cooking is important if you're using oil in the dough. If you put everything on at once, the cheese burns well before the crust is cooked. Yes, the guys cooking on belt ovens put everything on the pizza before baking, but that's because it's faster. Anyone using a belt oven is concerned about speed, not quality.

I sliced it up and cracked open a bottle of the 2005 Firestone Central Coast Vineyard Select Riesling. I read somewhere on the internets that it was a good buy. I forget where, or I'd link. It's a pretty decent Riesling on its own for $10 and it went perfectly with the pizza. The fruitiness was offset nicely by the salty ham and olives. This is one of my favorite recent dinners.