The Spring 2008 issue of the MIE Journal is available in our
Library. The special feature
for the Spring issue is "Access to Justice Commissions and Initiatives" with nineteen
articles on this important topic from some of the best minds in the legal aid and academic communities.
There is a lot that's new on the MIE website, but much of it is
barely visible. For example, we have upgraded the software platform
this website sits on and installed a new search engine in the Library. You'll hear more
about the search engine (TextIndexNG) as we go along. It is much more sophisticated than
our old library search engine. Among other things it utilizes the
Levenshtein Distance. Here's
how it works in practice: Suppose you are looking for articles in the Journal by someone named
Geminani. You do a search on his name and it comes back empty. You could try a "similarity
search" using the Levenshtein Distance by putting a percent sign in front of your search word -
"%geminani." The multitude of writings of Victor Geminiani from the March 1992 issue to the
most recent issue are returned. (In case you didn't notice, you had misspelled his name
the first time. The new search engine allows you to search for similar names.)
At last look there were 2876 documents in our Library.
Sure some of them are duplicates because we try to post many documents in
both pdf and word processing formats. Still, that represents a lot of accumulated knowledge
and expertise. Almost all of those documents were created and / or submitted by our
subscribers. The MIE Library is an awesome resource.
One thing that makes it great is the willingness of our colleagues to share their
failures as well as their successes. A fundraising proposal that didn't work is
often more valuable than one that did.
The Winter 2007 issue of the MIE Journal is finally
available in our Library. Your webmaster is getting
old and slow. There is an inspiring talk by Professor David Hall,
articles on technology, fundraising, IOLTA and much, much more. The special feature
for the Winter issue is "Poverty Law and Law Schools - What's Working, How and Why" with seven
articles from some of the best minds in the legal aid and academic communities. There is a book
review and, of course, the MIE crossword puzzle.
MIE's 2008 training calendar is available in the
Training section of our website. There is something for everyone -
Fundraisers, Executive Directors, Middle Managers, and Supervisors -- Legal Aid,
Pro Bono, IOLTA, P&A, and others. Take a look.
Welcome to erica szuplat. Erica is MIE's new administrative
assistant and electronic librarian. Her predecessor, Victoria
Bilodou has moved to California. We asked erica for a paragraph of introduction:
I am a graduate of Lesley University, where I received my bachelor's in Integrated Arts,
and a resident of Cape Cod, where I was also raised. In addition to working part-time
for a family business, I have recently embarked on a freelance career as an artist,
creating custom illustrations for business logos and personalized murals in both
residences and public spaces. Over the years, I have worked a multitude of jobs,
including once being driver of an ice cream truck! I am, however, very pleased to
join the staff at MIE; even at a young age I was very aware of the injustices that
people face in the world to due to race, class, gender etc. To be even a small part
of an organization that provides support to so many legal groups that are assisting
people with a low-income is something that I can truly believe in. I also enjoy
traveling with my husband and walking my elderly dog. I am trying to learn to cook
better, garden and I am an avid reader, especially of autobiographies.
Here is a tip: If Internet Explorer tries to protect you
from the MIE Journal and won't let you download it by clicking on the link
in the MIE Library, right click instead (use the right button on your mouse
instead of the left) and choose (in IE 8.0, anyhow) "Open," "Open in
New Tab," or "Open in New Window." It should work.
MIE Puzzlemaster, Pat McIntyre, has once again allowed us to publish
the solution to the puzzle
in the current issue of the MIE Journal. This issue's puzzle was "Political
Labels".
MIE's electronic librarian, Victoria Bilodeau has had another
busy month. Among the newest documents in the Library
are domestic partner affidavits and forms from the Northwest Justice Project and the
Legal Aid Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. There are sabbatical and "work at home"
policies in the Personnel Policies section of the Human Resources wing. The Program
Administration wing has a couple of new whistle blower policies, a file retention
policy and several financial eligibility documents.
There have been lots of other additions to our Library, as well. You should
spend some time browsing the Library. In each section of the Library
the most newly submitted items appear first. By using the advanced search
feature from within any section of the library you can search only that
section, or you can search the entire library.
MIE has built quite a sophisticated database of job descriptions
for the legal aid community. When the library started, job descriptions consisted of
"attorney, secretary and paralegal." The newest additions to the Human Resources wing of
the Library include job descriptions for "Senior Manager," "Database Administrator,"
"Grants and Compliance Administrator," "Assistant Comptroller," "Accounting Assistant,"
and many more. There are still plenty of new and improved job descriptions for our
more traditional jobs.
Even if you aren't a subscriber to MIE, you can still look at the
table of contents and three
of sample articles. But you know you should be a subscriber. Take a look
at our section on how to become
a subscriber.
Every month legal services managers from around the country submit some
of their best work to share with their colleagues in the MIE Library. Some of our
newest additions
include ED performance appraisal documents from Massachusetts, Connecticut and
California and job descriptions from Virginia, Texas and the Philanthropy
Center. There are newsletters from Illinois and Kentucky and photo
releases from North Carolina, Virginia and Connecticut. There are
fundraising documents from Ohio and Oklahoma and a hotline proposal
from Maryland.
That's just part of a month.
The
Performance Appraisal section of the Supervision and Training wing
of the MIE Library has Client Satisfaction Surveys from Legal Services of Oregon in
both Spanish and English, together with the survey results.
The Library has new documents in the
Personnel Policies section of Human Resources and the Standards of Practice
section of Supervision and Training. These are the Legal Assistance Foundation
of Metropolitan Chicago's Office Attire Memo - "not a policy, just a memo,"
and Bay Area Legal Aid's case checklist for case closings.
MIE is developing quite a library on Providing Legal Services to
Clients with Limited English Proficiency. Most recently added to the
Communications and Marketing wing of the Library are the "Limited English
Proficiency Manual" of the Legal Aid Society of Mid-New York and the Legal
Aid Foundation of Los Angeles "Policy and Procedures on Providing Legal Services
to LEP Clients." These and most of the
library documents are available in both as PDF format and and word processing
format for easy quoting, cutting and pasting.
Topping two thousand documents MIE's library has twelve new submissions
to the "additional administrative policies" section. These include policies and
procedures for disaster recovery, sick leave, trust accounts and more. In the
Communications and Marketing wing of the library check out the Poetic Justice
newsletter from the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.
Diversifying Your Funding Read about MIE's Custom Resource
Development Support, a recently added feature in the Fundraising section of our website.
If you haven't tried the advanced search feature of the MIE library for a
while, check it out again. By searching from a particular section of the library, it
allows you to focus your search on just that section. For a while the feature wasn't
working, but no one told us. If you see anything in the MIE website that doesn't
work like you think it should, or if you have any ideas for improvement please let us
know. Use that feedback button at the top of the page (the top of every page, actually).
You can submit your own documents into the library, and we encourage you to do so.
The library tells the type of file by its extension, so be sure your documents carry the
default extension for its document type, e.g. ".doc," ".wpd," ".txt," ".xls," etc. The
document submissions will go to MIE staff for approval. As good as it might be, we really
don't want your recipe for blueberry pie. MIE staff will try to add a .pdf version of each
document that is submitted.
Your feedback is very important to us. There is a feedback button at the top
of this page and every page in the site. Please use it to tell us of problems you find,
bugs you run into, or ideas you have for improvement. There are bound to be problems and
bugs in a new and complex site like this one. MIE is a collaborative effort, and we encourage
your collaboration on the website. If you just want to give us a pat on the back, we'll
accept it.
The MIE website was developed by Kaivo Software,
to whom we are very grateful. It is built on an open source Zope software platform and is
part of the growing open source movement in the legal services community.
