The materials from the 2010 Public Libraries and Access to Justice Conference, which took place on January 11th and 12th in Austin, Texas, are now posted on Webjunction and selfhelpsupport.org (membership required). Our previous post about this conference is available here. -M
As part of its Public Service Graduate Education Resource Center, Idealist.org has developed an excellent resource for prospective graduate students contemplating a career in public interest law. Available as a downloadable PDF, it provides a wealth of information on what to look for in a law school, the law school application process, possible career paths, and the challenges facing public interest lawyers after they graduate. -M
The Social Science Research Council just published a new study, "Broadband Adoption in Low-Income Communities," by Dharma Dailey, Amelia Bryne, Alison Powell, Joe Karaganis and Jaewon Chung. The study is based on “170 interviews of non-adopters, community access providers, and other intermediaries conducted across the US in late 2009 and early 2010 and identifies a range of factors that make broadband services hard to acquire and even harder to maintain in such communities.” More information and a link to download the study is available here. -M (Thanks, @shrivercenter!)
I recently came across this impressive online database of social media policies, which includes over 100 policies from several different industries. The nonprofit and government section includes examples from both large and small nonprofits and government agencies. For more information on crafting a social media policy for your organization, check out thisrecent post on NTEN’s blog and this white paper on Social Media, Risk, and Policies for Associations. -M
Aviary, a robust online image editor that used to cost $24.99 a year for the full version, is now available for free. According co-founder Michael Galpert, a "recent round of funding (by Spark Capital, Bezos Expeditions & others) enables [Aviary] to finally achieve this goal." The full announcement is available here. -M
For over 10 years, the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada and the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas have partnered to teach community education classes covering several areas of law for the public. In order to extend their reach, the law school and legal aid program collaborated with their local PBS affiliate Vegas PBS to record one of their bankruptcy classes. Now this class is available to everyone on YouTube in seven short segments. - K
Creative Commons is "a nonprofit dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright." They provide six free licenses that you can use to license your creations:
A while ago, Hugh Calkins asked whether the legal aid community should be licensing its community and self-help materials under Creative Commons licenses in his posts Creative Commons and I Get All the News I Need on the Boing Boing blog (Episode II).The legal aid community seems to be slowing warming to these licenses. Technola is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License, and the LSNTAP website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Personally, I really appreciate Creative Commons licenses, especially when I'm looking for a picture to add to a presentation or post. Flickr, an image-sharing site, lets you search for Creative Commons-licensed content, which means that I can quickly find pictures that I can use without violating copyright. However, I struggle with how to comply with the attribution requirements of the license. Recently, I came across a great post, How to write attributions for the Creative Commons licensed images you use on your blog from In Propria Persona, that sets out guidelines to follow: add the label "[title] by [person], used under a Creative Commons [license type] license" with links as appropriate. A great, simple way to comply.
Have you been using Creative Commons licenses to license your content? Have you been using Creative Commons-licensed content? What have you been doing to comply with the attribution requirement of the license? - K
The Center for Access to Justice & Technology and the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction released A2J Author 3.0 last week. With A2J Author, non-techies can create user-friendly interfaces that help self-represented litigants fill out court forms and other legal documents. Several states with great A2J Author interviews, including New York, Washington state, and Washington, DC, have been highlighted on Technola previously.
New features included in A2J Author 3.0 include the ability to
You can download A2J Author 2.0 from the A2J Author community website. A2J Author is free for noncommercial use. - K
After I posted "We Love the Cloud; We Hate the Cloud," I noticed a tweet from Tim O'Reilly: two free webcasts on cloud computing on January 20.
Both sessions are led by the authors of "Cloud Security and Privacy." You can register for one or both online. - K
This month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to examine the security risks of cloud computing as the FCC puts together the national broadband plan. This request grew from the FTC's concerns that Americans love cloud computing but don't understand the risks of storing data on remote systems.
Cloud computing is something I've written about before (Cloud Computing Explained) and something that I've become enamored with. I like not being tied to one computer and not worrying about losing a lot of information if a computer fails.
But I know that cloud computing comes with risks that stem from no longer being in control of my data. Perhaps someone will intercept my data transfer, the provider isn't as trustworthy as their privacy policy and terms of service suggest, or maybe they don't care about security as much as they should. Each time I add data to the cloud, I need to think about whether I'm okay with the risk.
For a more in-depth analysis of the security Software as a Service (SaaS), a type of cloud computing, check out two articles from Idealware: Is SaaS more secure? and SaaS and Security - the Response! - K
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