How do you seek information

There is new research on How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age reported on at thought leader Stephen Abram's blog Stephen's Lighthouse. The report says that college students generally use the same trusted sources no matter what their research needs. I hope that people with research problems in my organization are not in that same rut.

Escape the rut:

• Unfortunately not everything is available through Google, even though I love it and wish I had bought shares when the IPO launched.
  
• There are other search engines too
  
• Use more than the first page of search results
• Remember to use a defined legal research process - while you use the same method, the specific tools will change (see also W. Berkenbosch Practical Strategies slides from the ELLA Head Start Program)
• Wikipedia gets cited in court and sometimes it is not a positive cite
• You need a password for much of the good stuff
  
• Textbooks are your friend
• Speed up your gathering by calling the library

Merry New Year

Wikipedia used in Canadian judgments

The Stream which is a new blog from the BC Courthouse Libraries has some excellent coverage on Wikipedia used in Canadian judgments, and the relevance of Wikipedia as a legal research source.

There are also some very recent academic articles on this topic posted on SSRN.

I recently spoke to the CBA Research Lawyers South subsection on the topic of Social Media for legal research. My slides and the handout are available.