What To Do, What To Do

There are days, like today, when I really don’t want to do what I need to. Sometimes I’m procrastinating so badly that I don’t even know what I need to do. But I still need to get my necessary tasks done. I’ve used to-do lists for a long time. I’ve used them in a variety of situations, in various forms, using various tools, and with varying amounts of sophistication (“complication”), and varying degrees of success.

I’ve finally settled on a new to-do list “workflow.” It’s a “workflow,” because tasks flow through it: Tasks are formulated or assigned, added to the to-do-list, and swirl around, being prioritized, completed, procrastinated upon (heh), or even dropped.

Disclaimer

A double-barreled disclaimer, at that. First, this system works for me. For today, for now.  It will change. It may have changed before you read this. (And again before you finish.) Second, this system is an ideal, a goal, some of the time. This is how I would do things if I had immense intellectual stamina and an attention span longer than a gnat. Some days, everything runs according to plan. Others, they don’t—but I still grind away.

So read on. Look at some of these links, if you like. If you see something you like, please try it. If you like it, and it works for you, great! If not, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I’ve tried all of these ideas, with varying degrees of success—but you’re not me.

Me, Me, Me!

I have four basic rules, or techniques, I’ve been using, or trying to, of late, that have been working well. I’ve borrowed these techniques from the Lifehacker productivity blog, http://lifehacker.com, from an article called “How to Make Your To-Do List Doable” (http://lifehacker.com/270404/how-to-make-your-to+do-list-doable): two modes, chunks, 3 + 2, and KISS.

Two Modes

I think of working on my to-do list as being done in two modes. One mode is thinking mode, where I’m the boss; the other is action mode, where I’m the personal assistant. There’s a simple division: In thinking mode, I plan what I need to do, and in action mode, I do it. I have weekly meetings scheduled with my (real) boss, which help keep me focused. The meetings also emphasize for me that when I get or create projects, I’m in a different context than when I actually get work done.

Chunks

Also, if you were setting out tasks for a personal assistant, you would simplify what needed to be done. I break tasks down into doable chunks, whether putting tasks in my to-do list or breaking those tasks down and doing them. (Breaking tasks down on the fly is not a best practice, probably, but see my last rule below.) Merlin Mann, creator of the no-longer-updated productivity blog 43 Folders (http://www.43folders.com/) gives examples of how to do this in his post on “project” versus “next action” verbs (http://www.43folders.com/2006/11/14/project-versus-next-action): use “draft” rather than “implement,” or “call” rather than “handle.” This works because next-action verbs are concrete and specific: “Call Fred about pricing karaoke system for office lounge” is much more doable than “implement Friday karaoke party at work.”

Mann also suggests, in another article (“Building a Smarter To-Do List, Part I,” http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/12/building-a-smarter-to-do-list-part-i) that:

Framing your work in the physical world is easiest when you imagine what’s being done, and the best trick here is to simply phrase your task in a form like: “verb the noun with the object.” That means instead of reminding yourself with the mystery meat of “Year-end report,” you’d more accurately first “Download Q3 spreadsheet from work server.” And, instead of “Get with Anil,” you’d probably want to “Email Anil on Monday to schedule monthly disco funk party.” Get specific in whittling the task down to one activity that you can accomplish completely at a sitting. “A sitting” will vary for you, but I try to never plan a task that would take more than ten minutes (your level of busy-ness might command even smaller-sized tasks).

3 + 2

No matter how organized my to-do list itself is, I find it hard to actually look at the list and pick a task when I’m in action mode. And looking at my whole to-do list can be jarring, disorienting, and kind of a downer. So instead, at the beginning of the day I pick a few tasks—some long, some short—to concentrate on. One technique I really like for this is the 3 + 2 rule, discussed on the Lifehacker blog at “Take a More Realistic Approach to Your To-Do List with the 3 + 2 Rule” (http://lifehacker.com/5853732/take-a-more-realistic-approach-to-your-to+do-list-with-the-3-%252B-2-rule – the original blog post, by Jakub Stastny, is at http://blog.101ideas.cz/posts/the-3+2-rule.html). The simple version: Take three long to-do tasks and two shorter ones, selected by priority, convenience, desire to complete, and write them on an index card, and you have that day’s list. You can even select to-do items that will get your day off to a good start, even if they aren’t the absolute highest priority on your list. Even if my 3 + 2 list is overwhelming, it’s still not as depressing as looking at my entire list when I’m trying to just get work done.

KISS

You get it. Keep It Simple, Sunshine. (Or it isn’t.) Don’t mix planning and doing, break tasks up, “verb the noun with the object” instead of writing a complex sentence for each to-do, and so forth. An example: I keep a very short to-do list proper, with tasks I can feed into my 3 + 2 list, and a separate project list (as a separate outline topic). That way, I don’t get confused or overwhelmed by a list of stuff.

Beyond that, I’m not going to elaborate. Instead, I’m going to keep it simple.

Tools

I also try to keep the capturing and organizing part of my to-do list as simple as I can. In addition to Post-Its (how did law school even happen before they existed?) and paper printouts of my to-do list (useful for large-scale reorganizations of my to-do list), I use only three main tools: Workflowy, a whiteboard… and my office voicemail.

Workflowy

Workflowy (http://workflowy.com/), my to-do list manager of choice; a whiteboard; and my office voicemail.  Workflowy is like many outliners and to-do list tools, but it has four  features I really like. The first isn’t a feature, really: Workflowy is very simple. It has a minimum of bells and whistles, and what features it does have are generaly useful in a to-do list manager. Completing a task crosses it off, but you can choose to display completed tasks. You can export a single outline heading and whatever is beneath it, or you can export the entire list at once. Each user has only one document, but Workflowy will let you click on an outline heading, and all you will see is a context view—only the subheadings below it. In fact, the list display looks almost as if nothing else exists. (Because of that, I have separate Workflowy topics for work and personal items—allowing me to keep the tasks separate, but still manage them in the same place, just like my separate to-do and project lists under my work list.) The third feature is that Workflowy has a Notes field for each to-do item. It can contain text, but also weblinks, which let me link to project materials (like Evernote notes). The fourth is that Workflowy is ubiquitous. It works well on a PC, pretty well on my iPad, and tolerably well on my Android cell phone. And Workflowy is working on off-line editing, so changes to your list made without an internet connection will be updated when you get a connection back.

Whiteboard

A whiteboard is where I put my 3 + 2 list. It’s easy, it’s always visible, and it’s right next to my desk. A downside is that, unlike the notecard suggested in the blog post, there’s no way of recording what gets put up and completed. But I take pictures with my cellphone camera (a minor tool), email them to myself, and print them, if necessary.

Voicemail

I use one other odd tool. As organization guru David Allen, author of the seminal Getting Things Done discusses, collecting open loops—bits of information, including project details and to-do items—can be a major problem. So I have a speed-dial button on my cellphone for my office voicemail. As soon as I remember something, no matter how minor, I call my voicemail and leave myself a message. As Allen says, “Incompletions, uncollected, take on a dull sameness in the sense of the pressure they create and the attention they tie up…. You’ll feel better collecting anything that you haven’t collected yet” (p. 232).

One thing I haven’t address is prioritizing tasks. This blog post is about my to-do list system, not my to-dos in general. And prioritizing to-do tasks is still something I’m working on. Perhaps that will be the subject of a future blog post.

So, my organization system. It’s idiosyncratic, and it works—mostly, most of the time, for me. I’ve been looking at time management and to-do-list management for quite some time now; what I’ve mentioned above is not only the tools I use, but the sources (Lifehacker, http://lifehacker.com/; 43Folders, http://www.43folders.com/; and Getting Things Done, http://goo.gl/VV1NW) I’ve collected most of them from. (Workflowy, http://workflowy.com/ , I got from Becka Rich, my boss and a satisfied Workflowy user.)

I’m beaming this blog post out into the ether. Please, look my ideas—my borrowings from others—over. Try something out, if you like. And please, signal back and let me know what you think.

Dear Students,

Beginning tonight at 8:00 PM (and continuing for the remainder of the semester), the Law Library will administer a special session of the LLTC’s Trivia Game. Please be sure to check the LLTC’s Twitter and Facebook pages every Monday at 8:00 P.M. for the initial clue regarding a particular week’s trivia series.

Clues are posted weekdays and correct responses are worth up to 50 points if submitted to pz45@nova.edu on the day of release; points awarded for correct submissions will decrease by 10 points following each daily period, i.e. Monday 8PM-Tusday 7:59:59PM = 50 points, Tuesday 8PM-Wednesday 7:59:59PM= 40 points, etc… No points shall be awarded for incorrect responses or for responses submitted after 7:59:59 P.M. on the Saturday following the release of that week’s final clue. All responses MUST be submitted to pz45@nova.edu. Please DO NOT post your responses to the LLTC’s Twitter or Facebook accounts.

Clarification:

5 total clues are released from most difficult to least difficult that lead to a single correct response in one of the following categories: a Case, a Movie, Pop Culture, a Legal Resource or a current Nova Law Professor.

A $50 Visa gift card will be awarded to the points leader at the end of the semester. If there is a tie, then tied players will be entered into a drawing to determine the final disposition of the prize.

Rules:

Multiple submissions are permissible (only one response per 24 hr. period), but the points awarded shall correspond to the daily period during which the correct response was submitted.

Please see the Novalawcity blog for more information regarding the trivia game.

Best Regards,

William Owens, J.D., M.A.

Outreach & Reference Services Librarian

Nova Southeastern University

Shepard Broad Law Center Law Library & Technology Center

3305 College Avenue

Fort Lauderdale, FL  33314-7721

Office:  (954) 262-6171

Email: owensw@nsu.law.nova.edu

Celebrate National Spirit Day – Fly Your Purple!

Please join the Shepard Law Center staff in celebrating National Spirit Day – a day to wear purple to speak out against bullying and to show your support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth.  Today we reject the bullying of LGBT youth everywhere and cheer the progress being made in civil rights legislation as evidenced by recent court rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Yesterday the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (NY) decreed DOMA unconstitutional, stating that the federal law violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.  The court ruled in favor of Widow Edith Windsor, an 83-year-old lesbian who sued the federal government for charging her more than $363,000 in estate taxes after being denied the benefit of spousal deductions.  This is the second court to strike down DOMA as unconstitutional.  Read the opinion here.   In May 2012, the 1^st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston unanimously agreed with a lower court ruling that DOMA was unconstitutional on the basis that it interferes with  individual states’ right to define marriage.

Signed by President Clinton on September 21, 1996, the divisive law bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages by defining marriage as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” and effectively means that states cannot be forced to recognize such marriages from other states. Currently, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and the District of Columbia issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Maryland, Washington, Maine and Minnesota are voting on the issue in November referendums.

Prior to DOMA, the Clinton administration implemented “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT), the official United States policy on homosexuals serving in the military from December 21, 1993 to September 20, 2011.  As set forth in 10 U.S.C. 654, the policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service.  Regrettably, DADT was wielded by conservative groups with anti-gay agendas in a harsh, punitive manner against military personnel and applicants who happened to be gay.  Many fine servicemen and women were unjustly discharged from their positions and military recruiting efforts were gravely undermined.

The Law Library & Technology Center offers a growing number of excellent resources relevant to LGBT to its patrons which I encourage you to check out.  Among our holdings, you’ll find titles like the stellar documentary Ask Not which addresses the negative impact DADT had on hiring qualified military personnel.  The film takes an in-depth look at the tangled political battles that prompted the enactment of the discriminatory law and profiles the charismatic young activists who fought to abolish DADT.  The personal stories shared by gay Americans who served in combat under the veil of secrecy are particularly moving, a grim reminder that we must always remain vigilant to discrimination in all its forms. View the trailer here.

Thankfully, DADT was repealed by H.R 2965 a.k.a. the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010 and we recently passed the one year anniversary of the repeal. I find it heartening to see follow up news stories reporting that the repeal is having a positive effect on military readiness and that openly gay military personnel are now being promoted.

However, a great deal remains to be done in order to guarantee equal protection for all citizens under the U.S. Constitution.  Civil rights are *rights* — not privileges to be enjoyed by a few select members of the populace.  So let’s wear our purple proudly today and continue working for justice for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, skin color, gender, religion, etc.  Download GLAAD’s resource kit for more ideas on how to participate.

                 

Social Media Use in the Legal Profession

Happy Labor Day!  I hope you all had a relaxing weekend.  It’s my turn to blog for the Law Library and Technology Center this week so I thought I would share an incredible article with you.

I spent most of the weekend researching for an upcoming CLE event that our Alumni Department is hosting this Friday, September 7^th at 12:30 pm (Title:  Law Practice 2.0:  Using the Internet and Social media to Increase Productivity and Manage Your Law Practice SCROLL DOWN TO “UPCOMING CLE EVENTS” for a detailed description).  Students and staff can attend this CLE presentation free of charge and are encouraged to attend.  Registration for alumni is $35.  If interested, register online here.

Several members of the law library staff will demonstrate and discuss various websites, applications, and productivity tools related to the practice of law.  I will be showcasing the “Big Three” social media websites (Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In).  I wanted to find some cases involving attorneys misusing social media so that those who attend the presentation have some practical examples of how the Rules of Professional Conduct apply to this new and growing form of communication.

To clarify, I was researching not because I am a workaholic or hate sunshine, but rather because I couldn’t put the material down.  I highly recommend Amanda Karp’s article, “When Lawyers Take a Faceplant: How the 2011 ABA Proposed Amendments to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct Apply to Facebook”.

For those of you who simply do not have time to read a 51 page article, I will summarize one of the incredible stories from the article.  I use the word incredible not in the sense that it was great, but rather in the sense that I had a hard time believing the story actually happened because the behavior that the attorney exhibits is so ridiculous.

Karp gives an example of a flagrant breach of Rule 1.1:  Competence.  A Texas Lawyer requested a continuance from Judge Susan Criss owing to the death of her father.  No doubt feeling sympathy for the attorney, the judge granted it.  Judge Criss, who was friends with the attorney on Facebook, was then surprised at what she saw.  The attorney had posted several statuses and photos regarding her drinking and partying the week away.  During her time of “mourning,” the attorney had chronicled a night of drinking wine, another spent sipping on mojitos, and yet another motorcycling.  To make matters even worse, the attorney approached the judge at the end of her continuance and asked for an additional month’s continuance!  Not only did this attorney lie to a judge, she also put the client’s interests on the back burner.

Karp’s article has many other fascinating examples of social media misuse.  Moreover, she explains how proposed changes to the ABA Rules of Professional Conduct will go a long way in clarifying what conduct is acceptable or not for attorneys who use social media.  Using some real and some fictional hypotheticals, she addresses some of the ethical implications with which all law students and practicing attorneys should familiarize themselves.

Mobile Blogging… Finally.

Once upon a time, I wanted to start my own mobile technology blog. I was going to blog about what mobile technology could do… using mobile technology to do it, and documenting the process.

This proved impossible, however. When I went to Blogger's entry screen on my iPad and discovered that I would have to hand-hack my HTML–enter the eldritch runes that underly the Web–I was dissuaded. I can do that, but it's very time-consuming and annoying. There's a different degree of eldritchness (eldritchosity?) when you scribe Web runes using someone else's scroll. That is, Blogger doesn't only use basic Web runes–it uses its own formatting runes, which are poorly documented, subtle, and quick to anger.

Then, at the American Association of Law Libraries meeting in Boston a few weeks ago, I spent some time with that wonderful thaumaturge of all things law-librarianish, Mary Whisner. She was an official blogger for the AALL Annual Meeting. She was blogging using her iPad, using an application called Blogsy (http://blogsyapp.com/).

I asked her about it. She liked it. She showed it to me. It looked gorgeous. I Googled it. Gizmodo (http://gizmodo.com/5809645/blogsy-for-ipad) said “It's the best blogging app you'll find on the iPad.”

So, here we are. I'm not writing this post in Blogsy; I'm using an outlining and note-taking iPad program I just got called ThinkBook, about which more anon. (I like it, but it's kind of idiosyncratic.) But the next step is to try entering this post into Blogsy, seeing the results, and describing them–and that I will do in Blogsy.

Blogsy. Simple to use, but pretty much every control you could ask for–text format, font family, font size, the other usual shortcuts that will produce the necessary eldritch runes. Which it also lets you look at if you like. You edit your blog post in its “Rich” mode, which looks and works like a word processor–it even has undo and redo. It supports many blogging platforms: WordPress (whether hosted by them–which we use–or yourself), Typepad, Blogger, Posterous, Moveable Type, IBM Connections, and Tumblr. It also supports three convenient, not-so-bloggy platforms: content management systems Joomla and Drupal… and email. You can write a document in Blogsy–formatted, links, even graphics–and email it directly from Blogsy, with no setup required. For some people, that's a $4.99 use case right there.

It's intuitive, too–mostly. I wanted to add a link (to the Gizmodo review), but couldn't figure out how. I'm stubborn about reading documentation (do as I say here, kids, not as I do). So as I poked around, I selected some text–and there was “Link,” at the end of the selection bar.

Blogsy will even let you add media–pictures from your gallery, Picasa, even YouTube videos. An example:

My caricature, drawn by Doug Shannon at Eventoons.com, at the Thomson West booth at the AALL annual meeting. Adding it was pretty intuitive. It did require some mucking about in the iPad settings–Apple's fault–but Blogsy told me exactly what I needed to do.

I will tell you that this blog post was mostly written with a ZAGGfolio Bluetooth keyboard–I wouldn't've been able to write so much with the iPad's virtual keyboard. That said, and especially given the price: If you want to blog from your iPad, try Blogsy.

Oh: that program Thinkbook I wrote much of this post in? Interesting, a useful tool… but unfortunately, I think, not ready for prime time. (I couldn't copy what I wrote to the clipboard; I had to export it to an email, send the email to myself, then copy that. (Sheesh.)

A final note: This blog post was written, printed for proofreading, and posted entirely from my iPad. It never touched a “real” computer.

Posted with Blogsy

Scout: Be Prepared With The Sunlight Foundation’s New Service

Scout, the Sunlight Foundation’s new notification service, will alert you to legislative or regulatory action on issues you want to follow. You can sign up for free email and/or text alerts on the topics that interest you, and Scout will notify you when there is any activity in the U.S. Congress, including speeches. Scout can also track legislative action at the state level, as well as Federal regulations.

Scout’s sources for Federal legislative action include GPO, Thomas (via GovTrack), and the Congressional Record (via Capitol Words). Federal regulatory information comes from the Federal Register, while state activity is tracked via Open States.

You can find a helpful Scout tutorial on YouTube.

Florida Bar CLEs @ the LLTC: What we have, how to find them

The Law Library & Technology Center offers its patrons a plethora of Florida Bar Continuing Legal Education materials on a broad range of topics.  Shelved in the newly reconfigured Reserve area of the library, all CLE titles can be found using NovaCat, the online public access catalog (OPAC) shared by the NSU library family.   To retrieve the entire list of available holdings, simply enter the phrase “Florida CLE current” or “Florida Bar CLE” as a title search.

The search results for the first search string will retrieve the LLTC’s holdings reveal the categories relevant to each DVD or CD set plus the number of credit hours.  The second search will retrieve the LLTC’s holdings in alphabetical order.

Recent additions to the CLE collection include the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – Patient and Provider, Agricultural Law Update,  2012 Survey of Florida Law and many, many more!  Please stop in to check them out.

 

Congressional Record App now available for all iOS Devices

Andrew Weber at the Library of Congress announced in his blog entry for today that the Congressional Record App has been updated to include iPhone users.  While the previous version was available exclusively for iPads, the 1.5 version includes all iOS devices.  Now users can read the daily edition of the Congressional Record on the iOS device of their choice – iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.

The Congressional Record App is presented by the Library of Congress using data provided by the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, and the Government Printing Office.

The Congressional Record display as viewed using an iPhone:

 

Mindmapping: A Diagram is Worth a Thousand Thoughts

I often get frustrated when I’m brainstorming. Trying to come up with ideas, or see how related ideas interact can get very frustrating. Outlines and lists can work well, if your topic or interest is linear enough. But if not, what then?

One technique I find very useful for this is called mindmapping. And while I use it a lot, I haven’t ever been able to learn to use it formally, or systematize my use of mindmapping, though I have tried.

One reason for this is that it’s hard to find resources about mindmapping that don’t refer to or borrow from the approach of mindmapping’s creator, Tony Buzan (though Wikipedia traces similar techniques back to the 3^rd century). While Buzan’s approach to mindmapping itself is useful, his writings are larded with pseudoscientific popular psychology about how to use more of your brain and how to use different parts of it. So while I’ll link to one article about mindmapping inspired by Buzan, I’ll mostly make some suggestions myself.

 What is a Mindmap?

Mindmaps are diagrams that begin with a center word or concept, with lines connecting to related, subsidiary concepts. Those concepts also have lines connecting to related concepts subsidiary to those concepts. And so on.

This is a mindmap about mindmapping. It’s a template from MindMeister (http://www.mindmeister.com/), an excellent cloud-based mindmapping application, which also has iPad/iPhone and Android applications.

And here’s an example of a to-do list mindmap, also a MindMeister template.

Some mindmaps aren’t so strictly hierarchical. In these, related concepts can connect to one another “horizontally,” instead of connecting vertically to a higher-level concept. Here’s an example of that, using MagicalPad (http://www.magicalpad.com/), a good iPad mindmapping and outlining application.

Doing Mindmaps

Because mindmapping is a creative endeavor, there are no absolute rules (though most applications require mindmaps to be hierarchical). I do have some suggestions, though, based on what I’ve read, and my experience.

My suggestions:

1. Work from the center out

2. Go from large to small as you go out

3. Use graphics and colors

Buzan’s guidelines, according to Wikipedia, are:

1. Start in the center with an image of the topic, using at least 3 colors.
2. Use images, symbols, codes, and dimensions throughout your mind map.
3. Select key words and print using upper or lower case letters.
4. Each word/image is best alone and sitting on its own line.
5. The lines should be connected, starting from the central image. The central lines are thicker, organic and thinner as they radiate out from the centre.
6. Make the lines the same length as the word/image they support.
7. Use multiple colors throughout the mind map, for visual stimulation and also to encode or group.
8. Develop your own personal style of mind mapping.
9. Use emphasis and show associations in your mind map.
10. Keep the mind map clear by using radial hierarchy, numerical order or outlines to embrace your branches.

This list is itself more concise than a prose version of the same information and the mind map of these guidelines is itself intended to be more memorable and quicker to scan than either the prose or the list.

Here is a mindmap (from the Wikipedia page about mindmapping) of the same concepts, which gives a good comparison of a list (or outline) and a mindmap:

A post at the excellent productivity tools and tips blog Lifehacker called “Boost Your Brainstorming Session with MindMeister” (http://lifehacker.com/398476/boost-your-brainstorming-session-with-mindmeister) has quite a bit of information about MindMeister ad mindmapping in general. James Cook University, in Australia, has a good website on mindmapping (http://www.jcu.edu.au/tldinfo/learningskills/mindmap/). Though it concentrates on Buzan’s paradigm, it has excellent materials, such as this introduction to mindmapping (http://www.jcu.edu.au/tldinfo/learningskills/mindmap/howto.html).

Mindmapping Uses

I find mindmapping very useful for brainstorming, whether just to clarify or arrange my thoughts about some subject, or for a project like a seminar paper or a class presentation. It is also useful for the three-dimensional equivalent of outlining, either for a law school class or any place you would think to use an outline. I know an NSU Law alumn who thinks very highly of mindmapping, who used it throughout law school, and credits it in part with his excellent performance in law school. My MagicalPad mindmap above, about “Attorney Admission and Discipline as Discrimination and Social Control” was done as part of a paper I am working on.

Tools for Mindmapping

MindMeister (http://www.mindmeister.com/)

The program I usually use for mindmapping is called MindMeister, for three reasons. It’s easy to use; it produces great, good-looking results; and it works on pretty much every platform under the sun: Web, iPad/iPhone, and Android. MindMeister offers a limited free account. Subscriptions start at $4.99/month (with a discount for educational users). The iPad and iPhone apps are currently free, though they require at least a free MindMeister account. MindMeister also allows for collaborative editing and static sharing of mindmaps.

MagicalPad (http://www.magicalpad.com/)

MagicalPad is a good, if somewhat funky, mindmapping app for the iPad. It produces good results, though the user interface can be somewhat confusing, and the combination of mindmapping and outlining was a little weird for me at first.

FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/)

FreeMind is an open-source freeware mindmapping application. It works well, has a good function list, and works under Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Wikipedia has an extensive list of mindmapping programs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept_mapping_and_mind_mapping_software).

Mindmapping can be fun and useful, but it’s not for veryone. I would suggest that you pick an app, play with it a bit, look at some examples and advice, then just do some mindmapping. It’s very much an experiential, try and try again process. So try it, see if you like it. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.

What Are Your Summer Plans?

After winter, spring, and fall, summer is my favorite time of the year; and it always has been.  Living in Florida, I sometimes have to imagine what the other seasons are like.  I’ve actually lived in regions where they do have recognizable seasons, but since it’s summer and I’ve long since forgotten, I’ll just take a stock photo from my memory box, to remind myself of what the other seasons are like.  I’m sure that I’ve filed it away some place.  Ah yes, apple cider, snowmen, and tulips.  That sounds about right.  In my opinion, what really sets summer apart from the other seasons is the potential for new beginnings in what I would designate as the serious parts of the year, which are also known collectively as the school year, for those who still adhere to an academic calendar.  So, let’s think of summer as the New Year’s Resolution’s flip flops wearing cousin, who in exchange for warmer weather, has agreed to give us three months to plan for what we’d like to do in the coming year—because after all, it’s summer, and what can you actually accomplish when there are so many talent contests to watch on TV?  In all seriousness, there is much to be done during the summer, especially at the law library.

For me, summer is about new ideas and it’s also about goals.  As my first foray into Summer 2012—and I think it’s technically still spring, but I like to get a jump on things—I’m going to identify new outreach goals for students to be implemented in the coming year, and then I will work diligently with the help of others to see that the goals are realized.  In summer reading terms, this is chapter one, and chapter one for this outreach librarian begins with students.  Last year, we offered workshops, book giveaways, movie nights, and presentations for student organizations, among our other efforts.  For all the Nova law students that follow our blog, I invite you to share with us your summer wish list of law library services that you would like to see us offer in the next academic year.  We’ll be here all summer if you would like to talk to us in person, so please stop by the reference desk, or if you would like, please send an email to rosenberga@nsu.law.nova.edu.  If you’re working on a project this summer, as I am, here is a link to inspirational words from a sampling of this year’s commencement speeches, which are in full bloom this time of year and are yet another reason to enjoy summer.  Although commencement speeches vary in degree of motivational strength, I always find that I can take away something, even if I’ve heard the advice before—and I’m spared having to sit quietly in an auditorium and wear the itchy graduation regalia.