Ayyoub Ajmi

COVID-19 exacerbated the crisis in access to legal services especially for victims of domestic violence for whom the pandemic made their situations even more precarious. In this article, the author shares his experience of building and implementing an automated solution to help pro-se litigants petition the court for emergency protection orders remotely and without the need to visit the courthouse. The article describes the lessons learned in developing a state court online portal dedicated to educating abuse victims and providing them with an automated way to petition the court for protection orders remotely without the need to visit a courthouse. The article concludes that implementing replicable models in other jurisdictions could create various efficient web-based solutions for helping self-represented litigants access the legal services that they need.

Abstract:

The author describes his experiences working in the Leon E. Bloch Law Library designing and prototyping in-house digital tools to improve communication among internal and external stakeholders. The projects discussed include a custom study room schedule application syncing university calendar to affordable tablets to increase staff productivity, an online data visualization dashboard to help digest large and complex sets of data for better understanding and decision making, and a mobile application to offer students and community easy access to library resources and services. In addition, the author calls for the need to engage in innovative and experimental practices in libraries by encouraging collaboration with external partners to help develop new services and improve existing ones.

Keywords: innovation, prototype, DIY, digital displays, mobile Apps, data visualization, Makerspace, iOS, Android, iBeacons

To learn more about the book visit: https://www.igi-global.com/book/developing-house-digital-tools-library/178179

This book chapter is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10355/62174

In 2014, the UMKC School of Law joined the Google Glass Explorer Program in order to experiment and investigate how wearable technologies in general and Google Glass, in particular, can be used in education to improve teaching and learning experiences.

Among the use cases developed were: a walk-through video tour of the library, Google hangout with prospective students to tour the school and its facilities, students' practice interviews, and social events coverage. The results of this experiment have been published in The Computers in Libraries Magazine (April 2015).

Google Glass for the Educator: A Postmortem Separating the Reality From the Hype and Some Thoughts for Google is co-written with Michael Robak. Robak is the Associate Director of the UMKC Law Library and the Director of the UMKC Law School Information Technology.

This article is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10355/46878

The University of Missouri – Kansas City School of Law launched its newly designed website on January 5th, 2015. Two weeks later Google notified us the website was hacked! And that the search results might label the site’s pages as hacked. We were the victims of a URL Injection.

This article is designed to share our experience with this type of hacking, to describe its scope, to suggest how to avoid it; and if you fall victim to it, how to clean up the mess it leaves behind in your server and in search engines.

This article is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10355/46917

Abstract: The Northeast Campus Library of Tarrant County College District in Texas used a Title III Grant to support an innovative project consisting of repurposing old laptops as digital exhibition platforms available to students, faculty and staff. A small number of the frames are used for library promotion displaying FAQs, new acquisitions, and events. The rest of the digital frames are used for exhibition purposes. The project's mission is to promote student success by increasing library attendance, promote the use of library services by building dynamic and long-term partnerships with other departments, and provide exposure and recognition to students, faculty and staff members. This paper describes the project from the grant application to the preparation and installation of the frames, as well as the evaluation of the project.

Paper originally published in the Library Journal Innovation (SSN: 1947-525X)
This paper is available at:http://hdl.handle.net/10355/43372

Abstract:

The proliferation of digital photography, which can capture and process high-resolution images with low-cost consumer cameras, brought panoramic imaging technology to the mass very quickly. Today’s 360-degree cameras are capable of capturing the entire surrounding environment and provide an immersive experience to the viewers on web-browsers and virtual reality headsets. While these new cameras are often advertised to sport and outdoor enthusiasts, their functionalities, portability, and price make them an ideal tool to capture interactive and high-paced exercises in a learning environment setting. 

In this paper, the author shares his experience using 360-degree cameras for self-assessment in legal education. Skills-based courses such as Advocacy Trials are often hard to capture using regular cameras. Having a panoramic video of student interaction in the courtroom can provide an unprecedented viewpoint for critique purposes and self-evaluation. 

To learn more about Brick & Click Conference visit: https://www.nwmissouri.edu/library/brickandclick/

This article is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10355/62175

Full Conference Proceedings are available for download at: https://www.nwmissouri.edu/library/brickandclick/presentations/eproceedings2.pdf

In the summer of 2015, I conducted a nationwide survey of academic law libraries inquiring about their IT organization. The survey was originally maintained by Ann Puckett, former professor, and director of the University Of Georgia School Of Law Alexander Campbell King Law Library. The last edition of the survey was completed in 2010. With the permission of the author, I conducted an updated version to investigate the latest trends of information technology management and organization among private and public academic law libraries.

The 2015 survey results were published as an infographic with a supporting article in the July/August edition of Computers in Libraries Magazine (VOLUME 36, NUMBER 6 — July/August 2016).

In 2016, with the help of a student assistant, I created an online dashboard for the survey where users can compare data from different years. The first version of the dashboard features the geographic distribution of participating schools, the average number of full-time employees dedicated to IT in law schools and law libraries, the number of schools in a shared services agreement, and ownership of specific IT domains and services.

The article is available at: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/50198

The dashboard is available at: http://law.umkc.edu/itSurveyDashboard

My colleague Michael Robak and I were invited to write a book chapter to expand on our experience with Google Glass in the UMKC School of Law Leo E. Bloch Law Library. After publishing our findings in 2014 we decided to take a deeper look at the potential of mobile technologies in general and wearables in particular and how they can be adapted in academic libraries to improve their spaces and services.
The book was edited by Robin Canuel and Chad Crichton for the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL).

Mobile Technology and Academic Libraries: Innovative Services for Research and Learning.
Chapter 17. Wearable Technologies in Academic Libraries: Fact, Fiction and the Future.
This book chapter is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10355/60599
To learn more about the book visit: http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=12108