A little while ago I blogged about legal bibliographies and highlighted some of the work that John Eaton at the University of Manitoba has done in this area. It is very nice to see that John's work has been recognised as he is the 2012 recipient of the Association of College and Research Libraries Marta Lange/CQ Press Award. This award recognises librarians who have made a significant contribution to bibliography and information service in law or political science. The press release from the American Library Association announcing the award can be found here.

Congratulations John!

CanLII President Colin Lachance has just now released his plan for that organization's next three years. "Strategic Priorities 2012 to 2014" is available in a variety of formats: HTML, PDF, and large print PDF. Versions in French are also available, of course.

The report elaborates on four strategic priorities for CanLII:

1. Secure permanent role as foremost source of free law in canada.
2. Continually enrich content to meet the needs of public and professional users.
3. Deliver easy to use professional grade tools and a compelling site experience.
4. Continuously promote and defend free access to law

As readers will likely know, CanLII receives from Canada's courts and justice departments a welter of documents under a variety of terms and conditions:

CanLII will seek to bring as much of that content as possible within a common contractual or policy framework guided by principles of open access and fair dealing.

In addition, CanLII will, among other things:

• seek "supplementary funding" to add to the $34 per lawyer base it currently receives;
• consider incorporating secondary sources and facilitating searches of materials hosted elsewhere;
• improve access to the service for users of mobile phones;
• develop "tools, tips, and training" to make research easier;
• continue to support free access to law here and elsewhere.

Lachance is seeking feedback and can be reached at clachance @ canlii.org

A couple of weeks ago the academic library blog and twittersphere was ablaze reacting to a tweet that “[a]ll of Harvard library staff have just effectively been fired”. As more news came out of a January 19 Harvard town hall meeting it appears that the reorganization at Harvard will not be that extreme – but these will be very challenging times for the Harvard library. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a nice short piece on this situation here. The text of the presentation that sparked the reaction is here. More news is expected next month.

An obvious question is what this type of restructuring may mean for other academic libraries. My gut sense is that Harvard is so big and so different than most academic libraries that their issues are not the same as most. Were many academic law libraries inspired to follow John Palfrey’s approach to restructuring at the HLS library? Academic libraries (not to mention private law libraries) have been quite nimble in facing (and leading) the challenges of the digital age. Perhaps the Harvard situation is more of an example of how much more challenging it is to change the direction of a huge ship than a smaller one.

In any case it will be interesting to see how this proceeds and its impact on libraries and research.

It just so happened that as Slaw columnist Ed Prutschi's "Crime & Punishment in 2012" appeared today, I received the latest emailed copy of Criminological Highlights from the University of Toronto's Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies. I thought I'd pass on the link to those of our readers who are interested in criminal law or the intersection of law and social behaviour.

Criminological Highlights is a digest of selected academic articles,

designed to provide an accessible look at some of the more interesting criminological research that is currently being published. Each issue contains “Headlines and Conclusions” for each of 8 articles, followed by one-page summaries of each article.

The current issue, for example, addresses the following questions:

1. Are long sentences more effective than shorter sentences in reducing reoffending?
2. Why do western countries vary in their imprisonment rates?
3. Do intensive foot patrols reduce crime?
4. Does being apprehended and arrested for a crime act as a deterrent?
5. Why aren’t people deterred by harsh sentences?
6. Will new and better community sanctions reduce imprisonment?
7. How is a period of imprisonment more punishing for Blacks than Whites?
8. Do trustworthy looking people have an advantage at trial?

These are the sorts of issues, I think, that it might be useful to learn about as we proceed with the contentious omnibus crime bill in Parliament.

A number of months ago (but unremarked here on Slaw) The Canadian Judicial Council released a "Reference Guide for Judges Appointed to Commissions of Inquiry," [PDF] those investigative, often palliative, and sometimes corrective events with which all Canadians are familiar. This acts as a resource guide to accompany the Protocol [PDF] governing appointments of judges that the Council released back in August of 2010.

Part I serves as an Introduction to orientate the reader and briefly describe the purpose of the Protocol.

Part II offers a checklist of the types of things any commissioner will likely wish to consider as critical first steps in undertaking the inquiry and ensuring its smooth and effective operation.

Part III provides a list of past commissioners and information relating to the inquiries over which they presided.

Part IV includes sample provisions from previous Orders-in-Council (OIC), which are intended to assist the commissioner in determining whether the enabling OIC contains the necessary powers and authority to complete the commission’s mandate or whether revisions will be required.

Part V provides a list of reference materials including textbooks, academic journals and case law to which the commissioner might refer, when needed.

Most interesting, perhaps, for those of us not on the bench, is the Appendix which contains a "summary of key elements" of nearly 40 past federal and provincial inquiries, the names of which read like a "Who's Who" of Canadian disasters: Ipperwash, Walkerton, Dziekanski, Pickton, Neil Stonechild, and on and on. Surprisingly—or perhaps not—a number of the summaries of earlier inquiries consist of the repeated phrases "Unknown at present," "Terms of reference not available," or simply "Unknown."

Which points up the lack in the Council guide of any hyperlinks to inquiry materials online. As far as federal inquires go, the Privy Council Office and Library and Archives Canada have done a great job of putting a very large number of these reports online, even scanning earlier ones as graphic PDFs. For a semi-relevant blast from the past, you might enjoy looking at the inquiry into Canada's earlier spy scandal, the Gerda Munsinger affair.

Fair use (s. 107) is an intentionally drafted ambiguous provision in the U.S. Copyright Act for the purpose of defending users of copyright works from a variety of otherwise infringing acts. Although often compared to the Canadian fair dealing, the two defenses are quite different. Two interesting documents on the analysis of fair use and its interpretation were recently released.

General Counsel from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released a memorandum on 19 January 2012 on: USPTO Position on Fair Use of Copies of NPL Made in Patent Examination. The memorandum looks at three issues: Whether it is fair use of the USPTO to make copies of copyrighted non-patent literature (NPL) and provide such copies to an applicant in the course of patent examination? Whether it is fair use for the USPTO to provide certified copies of entire file histories, including copyright NPL to members of the public, for a free? Whether it is fair use for an applicant to make a copy of a piece of copyrighted NPL and submit it to the USPTO?

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries was published on 25 January 2012 by the Association of Research Libraries and the Center for Social Media. This document addresses various questions such as how to make libraries' special collection available online; what can be digitized for student use; and, reproducing materials for faculty, staff and other users.

Those who apply fair dealing or fair use or are generally interested in these topics will find the discussions and analysis interesting in both of these documents, though at the end of the day, the application of either of these defenses very much depends upon the circumstances in each particular situation.

I was writing a comment in response to Melanie Bueckert who pointed out that Manitoba is reviewing their law society library services, much like Nova Scotia when I realized the comment was longer than my usual Slaw post. I hope that Slaw readers will indulge me with their attention to issues facing law society libraries, especially in less populated jurisdictions.

Let me preface this post/comment by sharing that I have never worked in a law society library. As a law firm librarian, I rely on law society libraries, locally and in other jurisdictions, their services and collections, to supplement and augment what my team and I provide to our lawyers.

Melanie, Thank you for pointing to the Manitoba situation. I found portions of the linked document disturbing:

The major agenda item was a discussion about the way lawyers do research and the impact of that on how we will provide library resources in the future. We started by talking about why we are in the library business at all. The basic conclusion was that libraries are a tool to enhance lawyer competence which is part of the mandate of the Law Society. We talked about what has changed since Benchers last looked a libraries (2003) and, in particular, at the amazing progress of CanLII, the Law Society-owned virtual library. CanLII is hugely important in this discussion. Not because it is free, or because it holds a huge collection of cases (over one million), or because it has all Canadian statutes with point-in-time searching, or even because it has a powerful search engine.

It is unique and special because we own it. While there are many excellent commercial on-line research products, the most popular ones all have a major flaw. They are owned by American parents and the Canadian product will continue only as long as they feel it is commercially viable. When you buy books you own them. If it is a series like, say the Canadian Criminal Cases, and the publisher stops publishing the books, at least you own the books you already have. If, however, an on-line publisher goes out of business, you have been essentially “renting” the service and the day it shuts down you have absolutely nothing.

Because we own CanLII, we know it is a secure collection and that, Benchers agreed, is very liberating. It enabled us to explore library services in a whole new way.

Benchers noted that in today’s environment, paper libraries are not much utilized. We have already closed the libraries in Brandon, Dauphin and The Pas. We already provide free on-line access for lawyers practising outside of Winnipeg to Carswell’s LawSource in addition to CanLII. Thanks to the hard work of LDRC, the Winnipeg court house is already WiFi equipped. As the discussion continued, a vision for the future of libraries emerged. It looked something like this:

1. Continue to enthusiastically support CanLII and offer training to assist lawyers to take advantage of its amazing potential;
2. Over time, stop maintaining our paper collection;
3. Keep the historic collections and some texts and up-to-date technology in our libraries;
4. Train people on other free on-line research tools that are available;
5. Continue to provide free access for out-of-Winnipeg lawyers to LawSource as long as it is required to ensure access to adequate research materials.

Over the next few months we will be developing a business plan to implement this vision."

I LOVE CanLII. It should absolutly be fervently supported by the bar and bench in Canada. As this document states, it is OURS.

CanLII + free online research tools do not and cannot make for a competent complete, reasoned, and effective path to answer a legal research. Law society libraries could decide to discontinue purchasing print reports and statutes in favour of CanLII, but that is no more than a potentially useful cost saving collection development measure.

Would anyone suggest that free internet sources could replace their favourite text? Closing law society libraries, or reducing them to ineffectiveness through budget restraints, will put more money into the pockets of legal publishers as individual lawyers are forced to grow their individual collections. This in turn will increase the cost of legal services to the population.

Why would you hire a lawyer if you could answer your own question with CanLII and Google. Richard Susskind, do you have any comments???

I have updated my Legal Research and Writing website with a new page on resources for teaching legal research and writing.

Included on the page are links to:

• online training video tutorials,

• legal research and writing journals, newsletters and selected articles,

• legal research and writing associations and blogs, and

• general teaching resources for teaching legal research and writing.

I suspect my page may not be complete, so if I have missed something, I welcome comments and suggestions for other resources.

I was shocked to read this headline in yesterday's issue of INFORUM The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society semi-monthly e-newsletter: "Society to reduce Library & Information Services department". The NSBS Library review project has been ongoing since April 2010.

There has been mention of the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society Library and Information Services on Slaw, most notably, when this worthy group of librarians and library technicians received the Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing.

The NSBS offers documents surrounging the review on their website:

• Library & Information Services Monitoring Report (April 19, 2011)
• Memo to Council, Organisational Review – Library & Information Services (January 4, 2012)

From the April 2011 document:

The Society received the Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries annual conference held in May 2010 for the Nova Scotia Annotated Civil Procedure Rules. The annotations are created in much the same way as the Nova Scotia Law News digests, using the roster of volunteers to vet the work of our digesters. Staff process the information and manage the quality. We are very proud of this product and statistics show that it is receiving an average of approximately 3770 visits per month. In this fiscal year (to March 31, 2011) there were 43,117 visits by 18,179 unique visitors.

Of particular note is the cost of maintaining a commercially produced set of annotated Rules. It ranges between $800 and $1,000 annually. The NSBS product is electronic, searchable, with an excellent index and more current than the commercial services. LIS staff routinely report inconsistencies in Rules and amendments to the Courts.

And later in the document:

Libraries are not warehouses of books. This has been true as long as I have been a librarian. Libraries provide services and help users become competent information seekers. It is not only important to find what you need but to understand what you have found and the reliability of your source. Librarians are equipped to help members with this dilemma. In the next year the librarians will shift their training from product specific training to subject specific training – using the research guides as a starting point.

From the January Memo to Council:

In reviewing L&IS under the parameters of the organizational review, the following points are noted:

• Society activities are to be limited to those of regulation that ensure competent and ethical lawyers, maintain public confidence in the regulation of lawyers and uphold the public interest in the administration of justice.
• Council has previously determined, in the course of the organizational review, that it is not the Society's role to deliver programs that contribute to lawyer competence but rather its role is to set the standards for competence and point out to lawyers where programs are available to them. In light of this decision the Society has ceased delivering most of its continuing legal education and other programs.
• In 2004, at the time of the last library study, CanLII was in its infancy. Since then it has become a robust and generally reliable resource for Canadian case law and statutory material including those from Nova Scotia. Like other resources it is not intended to be the sole source for legal research as there are, and will likely continue to be, gaps in its coverage and its reliability. It also fulfils the role of making law publicly accessible.
• Since 2004, the Courts of Nova Scotia have expanded their role as a source of case law and other court-related information including the Civil Procedure Rules. They have assumed their responsibility to preserve case law in the Province.
• The Government of Nova Scotia through the Legislative Counsel Office and the government website preserves authentic Nova Scotia Legislation.
• L&IS consumes approximately 17.1% of the Society's budget and costs about $470.00 per practising lawyer (see page 5).
• It is difficult, if not impossible, to compare the library program of one Society with a similar program in another. L&IS developed to meet the perceived needs of the Society and lawyers as it was evolving. Whereas some other law society libraries receive Law Foundation funding (sometimes this is required by statute), in Nova Scotia, we have determined that but for the Law Stamp, library costs should be borne by the membership…

While I empathize with the Barristers' Society and its need to control costs, I strongly suspect that their decision about the Library & Information Service will cause significant detriment to the bar and citizens of the province.

The January 2012 document confirms that the net library expense has shrunk by nearly a hundred thousand dollars since 2009 – see page 6. I doubt that service provided by the library staff has decreased.

The memo seems to suggest that the cost of library materials at $273,539 can somehow be measured against the cost of CanLII (to the Society) at $57,900. When I look at my own law firm library budget, the cost of collection items that are not available on CanLII is 88% and the cost of decsions and legislation makes up only 11% of my budget – though these are not necessarily availabe on CanLII. The seeming hypothesis that CanLII can replace a law firm library collection – including the texts and other resources necessary for lawyers to competently address legal issues for their clients – is simply absurd.

The memo acknowledges that the L&IS has developed into a modern library. "Its various products and services are designed to anticipate and meet the needs of Nova Scotia lawyers and, to a lesser extent, the public."

There is contact information for the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society in the INFORUM publication for those who wish to communicate with them about this decision.

The start of the winter term means a happy return to the University of Toronto Faculty of Information where I am again part of the team that teaches the perennially oversubscribed Legal Literature and Librarianship class. This year I am co-teaching with two of my colleagues Susan Barker and John Bolan and we will once again feature a guest lecture from Ted Tjaden who taught this course from 1998-2004. (Ted has blogged about his impressions of the class here , here and here).

It might strike some of my non-librarian colleagues odd or quaint that such a course continues to exist. Legal Literature and Librarianship is one of a handful of masters-level courses at Canadian library and information schools that teach future librarians about the literature and tools of legal research as well as the practice of law librarianship. While students in this class obviously do not learn about legal writing and analysis, they do learn a lot about research and the literature. By the end of the course their ability to find just about anything and quickly identify the best secondary sources on any topic, coupled with their ability to advise others on research strategy, impresses me every year.

With it becoming ever easier for any novice legal researcher to muddle through and find something relevant, we continue to need people who can identify the best sources and know how and when to use them. In fact, given how easy it is to find just something there is less incentive to learn the tools and sources well enough to find everything when required. Getting new librarians on the road to becoming this kind of expert is exactly why classes like Legal Literature and Librarianship continue to exist.

I have updated the Reference Tools page of my legal research and writing website with a new section on Law Reform Commission Reports, a topic that – in retrospect – was likely insufficiently treated in my book.

I believe it may currently be the most complete, online collection of links and other resources for researching law reform commission reports. Included, of course, are links to the BC Law Institute Law Reform Database as well as links to individual law reform commission reports websites.

For the older, online Ontario Law Reform Commission Reports, I linked to the listings from the Open Library (sorted from most recent – currently 1976 – to oldest – currently 1965), which act as an "interface" linking to the digital versions on the Internet Archive.

I was also not previously familiar with an excellent online article by Gavin Murphy, "Law Reform Agencies" (Department of Justice, 2004) (PDF, 126 pages), linked to on this section of my site.

I welcome comments or suggestions for improvements.

__________________________

On an unrelated note, I added two "missing" movies to my list of 123 law-related movies:

• Evelyn (2004): Pierce Brosnan, as an unemployed, single-parent father in 1953 Ireland battling for custody of his children taken in by a Church-run orphanage

• Michael Clayton (2007): An obvious oversight on my part, with a stellar cast of George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson playing lawyers caught up in an environmental class action lawsuit.

The 2011 Website Award of the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) went to the Kenya Law Reports.

The winner was announced in December at an IALL meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The Award seeks to recognise and promote free legal information websites that are authoritative, comprehensive, up-to-date, useful, and user-friendly.

Other nominees in 2011 included:

• Europeana
• Global Legal Information Network
• HuriSearch
• International Comparative Legal Guide Series
• Legifrance
• openDOAR
• RIS – Bundeskanzleramt Rechtsinformationssystem
• THOMAS
• War Crimes Research Office, Jurisprudence Collections
• WebLaw

A list of winners from previous years can be found on the IALL website.

Does your law library have a strategic plan? Is the plan available, aligned, and has it been shared? Is process measured against the plan? Is your plan in a document, embedded in your budget report, unwritten?

I have some work to do this January to assemble the strategy of my firm library into a working document that can be referenced by my team and by other members of the firm. While we have a strategy and we are executing it, it is less available than it should be.

Confidence in our library team is high, we had excellent response to a recent survey, our budget and other plans for 2012 were approved without question, and we are very busy with a high volume of work. Why spend time documenting the library strategy when we are very, very busy and there is no present external demand for it? I have a few reasons:

• It is easier to make quick decisions if you have a written strategy to test options against.
• A written strategy is useful for questions where the answer is "No, because…"
• In a commercial enterprise very, very busy can suddenly become not so busy and can also become swamped to the point of adding staff. Having a written strategy will give clues on how to manage volume spikes and dips.
• We have made some significant changes to our library strategy going in to 2012

Does your law library have a strategic plan?

David Mao this week became the 23rd Law Librarian of Congress. The Law Library of Congress was established in Washington in 1832 by the United States Congress and is the world's largest law library.

Before joining the library, Mao worked for the Congressional Research Service. He also held positions at Georgetown University and the law firm Covington & Burling.

The Law Library of Congress blog In Custodia Legis published an interview Mr. Mao earlier this week:

The Law Library issued its Strategic Plan for 2011–16, and, in the short term, I aim to continue the progress toward achieving the goals set out in that plan.

One of the major goals of the Law Library is the formation of the One World Law Library (OWLL). This will bring authoritative and authenticated global legal and legislative information from the Law Library of Congress and external sources under one domain and provide access to these resources in a seamless way for the researcher (…)

One of the most interesting facts I’ve learned is that the Law Library holds the world’s most geographically comprehensive collections of foreign legal materials.

The physical and digital collections contain the earliest and the latest publications and reflect the legislative histories of past, current and future jurisdictions. It’s rather astounding to think that, even if a nation hasn’t yet been officially formed, the Law Library will have all the materials necessary for someone to create the legislative history of that nation once it comes into being.

Colleague and fellow law librarian Sarah Sutherland let me know of her article "On Hiring Library Staff in Rural Areas" in Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research.

The article of course is good and worth mentioning for that reason alone but Sarah's email made me realize I had forgotten about this online journal, which was mentioned a number of years ago on SLAW. As such, I thought I would also remind SLAW readers since many of the articles would be relevant to most of you. In the current edition, for example, articles include such titles as "Optimizing Our Teaching: Hybrid Mode of Instruction" and "Roaming Reference: Reinvigorating Reference through Point of Need Service."

I like that the journal has an open access policy, making it available to anyone and includes peer-reviewed articles.

Unfortunately, the journal does not appear to have RSS feeds, but I registered just now in order to be alerted to new issues.

Words have meaning. The context, tone, and interplay give rise to nuances that is the basis for statutory and case law interpretation. But sometimes the iteration of words have meaning too. The frequency and repetitiveness of certain words can at times given insight into a culture or society.

At Jurix: The 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems in Vienna, Austria earlier this week, Daniel Martin Katz, Michael J. Bommarito II, Julie Seaman, Adam Candeub & Eugene Agichtei proposed the idea of Legal N-Grams in conjunction with a beta pre-release of Legal Language Explorer, a new web interface that graphs every decision of the United States Supreme Court between 1791 and 2005.

They explain the concept of n-grams in their paper,

While well known to linguistics scholars for some time, the concept of n-grams has recently been popularized by the release of the Google N-gram explorer. A byproduct of the Google Books Library Project, the n-gram explorer allows end users to use language as a prism to explore institutional and cultural transformation processes.

Simon Fodden raised the issue of n-grams here on Slaw back in 2009.

The authors envision legal researchers looking at the origin of a phrase and its subsequent usage by providing quick aggregate insights of temporal importance. Social and political scientists will also be able to look at terminology within broader legal philosophies, doctrines and paradigms,

Judges who create dominant common law rules often use words in new and novel ways. Distinctive language and verbal formulae are the raw materials by which judges help establish their reputation as intellectual thought leaders…

This is especially true in common law systems where the strength and importance of a legal rule often correlates with its pervasiveness in opinions and its persistence through time.

The Legal Language Explorer might be useful for a variety of different applications. Consider, for example, the following query that I inputed:

Of course the term "black" can arise in a wide variety of different contexts that have absolutely nothing to do with racism, which is what could be described as "noise," there is a small increase where Jim Crowe laws were enacted, followed by a more substantial increase in the interwar era which precedes a very sharp increase during the Civil Rights era up to the modern day. Although the term "African-American" doesn't substantially plot at all, the more contentious term "Negro" can be noticeably observed even after it fell into disuse in academic and socially acceptable discourse.

Here's the plot of some of the legal n-grams related to doctrines of statutory interpretation:

Although it appears as if "legislative intent" has always been discussed at SCOTUS, it has been featured far more prominently in recent years, especially from the 70's to the mid-90's. Though the term "original intent" also mirrors the trend of the term "legislative intent," the term "originalism" only pops up once, in Missouri v. Jenkins (1995). Even in this case it's not used to explicitly refer to the doctrine of originalism aside from citing a law review article using the term in its title, which again demonstrates the limitations of using this software to make general assumptions. Although the concepts can be found over the years in case law, an explicit reference may suggest a greater acceptance or familiarity with the concept. Similarly, the search for "living constitution" only provides three results, two of which are also references to titles of law review articles during the 60's and 70's. It's only in Rummel v. Estelle (1980) that the court expressly uses "living constitution" to refer to a dynamic application of constitutional interpretation,

It is also true that this Court has not heretofore invalidated a mandatory life sentence under the Eighth Amendment. Yet our precedents establish that the duty to review the disproportionality of sentences extends to noncapital cases. Supra, at 289-293. The reach of the Eighth Amendment cannot be restricted only to those claims previously adjudicated under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. "Time works changes, brings into existence new conditions and purposes. Therefore a principle to be vital must be capable of wider application than the mischief which gave it birth. This is particularly true of constitutions. They are not ephemeral enactments, designed to meet passing occasions. They are, to use the words of Chief Justice Marshall, `designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it.'" Weems v. United States, 217 U.S., at 373 .

We are construing a living Constitution. The sentence imposed upon the petitioner would be viewed as grossly unjust by virtually every layman and lawyer…

[emphasis added]

The authors intend to expand the database to include Court of Appeal and other court decisions, and has tools to modify graph format and export data. You can read more about the tool on the blog post here.

On December 15, 2011, Quebec's Minister of Justice and Attorney General Jean-Marc Fournier announced the filing of a draft regulation aimed at making the Gazette officielle du Québec available free of charge on the Internet.

The "Gazette" provides the province's official government record of proposed regulations, proclamations and other statutory notices, as well as private sector notices that are required by statute to be published in the Gazette officielle du Québec .

It's a valuable source of information for the legal profession as well as any Quebec citizen.

A consultation period of 45 days is required before the regulation is adopted. Once adopted, Publications du Québec will provide free access to parts 1 and 2 of the Gazette officielle du Québec on their website. It will also change the price of the paper based annual subscription as well as fees for notices, advertisements and documents published in Parts 1 and 2 of the Gazette officielle du Québec.

It's about time. Just saying!

I have always loved law reform commission reports. They are great sources for legal research. Many of the reports provide historical background on an issue and you can often find comparative information about how other jurisdictions have responded to a legal problem.

My highlights from the fall of 2011:

• Of course, the great news is that all of the reports of the former Ontario Law Reform Commission have been digitized (as reported December 12 right here on Slaw)
• The British Columbia Law Institute (BCLI) is launching a two-year project to consider reforms to judge-made rules governing when a person is determined to have the mental capacity to carry out a transaction or enter into a relationship
• Earlier this week, the Law Commission in England published its final report on Intestacy and Family Provision Claims on Death. The report proposes 2 draft bills to bring inheritance law into line with the needs and expectations of modern families, and simplify the law to help the bereaved deal with the property of a deceased family member.
• In late October, the Law Reform Commission of Ireland released its Consultation Paper on Sexual Offences and Capacity to Consent. In the Consultation Paper, the Commission made 15 provisional recommendations for reform, including the repeal and replacement of the existing law on sexual offences involving persons with intellectual disability. The Commission argued that section 5 of Ireland's Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 (a) fails to protect people with intellectual disability from unwanted sexual contact generally and (b) fails to empower people with intellectual disability to realise their right to sexual expression (it does not clearly provide for situations of consensual sex between two persons with intellectual disability). The Commission also looked at practices and laws in England and Wales, Scotland, Canada, and New Zealand.
• In September, the British Columbia Law Institute released a Report on Proposals for Unfair Contracts Relief: "This report recommends reforms to the leading concepts used by contract law to tackle the problem of unfairness. These concepts are unconscionability, duress, undue influence, good faith, and misrepresentation. Over the past years, they have been considered in an increasing number of court decisions. This has led to an expansion of, and a degree of confusion about, their scope. It is now timely to rationalize and consolidate these concepts." The BCLI website also includes a consultation paper on the issue as well as 4 backgrounders.
• The Alberta Law Reform Institute (ALRI) released a discussion report on Estate Administration.

Of course, people often ask whether law reform commission reports have any real impact. Not always, but sometimes. In November, the proposed Family Law Act was introduced in the British Columbia legislature after a major review of family legislation in the province. It is intended to overhaul the Family Relations Act. The proposal contains recommendations for changes to family law contained in four reports of the British Columbia Law Institute:

• Report on Pension Division on Marriage Breakdown (BCLI Report No. 44, 2006);
• Report on the Parental Support Obligation in Section 90 of the Family Relations Act (BCLI Report No. 48, 2007);
• Report on Appointing a Guardian and Standby Guardianship (BCLI Report No. 30, 2004); and
• Report on the Need for Uniform Jurisdiction and Choice of Law Rules in Domestic Property Proceedings (BCLI Report No. 1, 1998).

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some of my favourite print bibliographies. Most academic law library and law society websites include some research guides or bibliographies – here are some of the ones I use the most:

Queen’s Law Library Select Bibliographies. Very comprehensive lists of Canadian materials for all of the core law school subjects. These bibliographies also lists materials from other jurisdictions.

Osgoode Hall Law Library’s Research Guides also cover many of the core subjects but tend to be more selective in their coverage which is useful to the student looking for just the key resources.

University of Ottawa Law Library’s Law Research Guides are using the very versatile LibGuides format which is popular with many academic libraries. These LibGuides move beyond the core first year curriculum and are excellent starting points for identifying key resources. See their Aboriginal Rights LibGuide for an excellent example of the potential of this format

The University of Alberta Law Library also has a good collection of Subject Guides using LibGuides.

At the University of Toronto Law Library, we are working through the process of moving our subject based research guides from behind our “student-only” site to our general site. We will be using LibGuides as well.

Outside of the academic law library world a couple of noteworthy bibliographies include the Suggested Textbooks section of Catherine Best’s Guide to Canadian Legal Research and the Legaltree.ca website’s Resources by Subject Area

When John Palfrey was appointed vice-dean of library and information services at Harvard Law School a couple of years ago, one of the first things he did was create the Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory. Under the direction of Kim Dulin and David Weinberger (also of Berkman Center fame), HLIL explores the ways in which software can "hack libraries…in the good sense of discovering and delivering more capability and value." Specifically, as they say on the FAQ page,

1. We think in public.
2. We build software that demonstrates how libraries can bring yet more value to scholars and researchers.
3. We amplify our effect by eagerly partnering with other groups with similar passions.

Though they're more interested in proof of concept than in the development of generally usable code, there are two interrelated projects that I think Slaw readers would be interested in having a look at, ShelfLife and LibraryCloud. These might be best understood by starting from the point of view of the Digital Public Library of America, an online place, as it were, to demonstrate the power of these tools used in collaboration with a number of institutions. LibraryCloud is a meta-data server that aggregates circulation data, among other things, from participating libraries, making it available through APIs. In the service of the DPLA it makes available millions and millions of bibliographic records. ShelfLife then provides a cunning, visual front end for this mountain of data.

The best way to understand, of course, is to "do." There's a ShelfLife DPLA Demo that offers a video (also reproduced below), a guided tour, and also the chance to thrash about unguided.

Among the many smaller projects that are still in the works, the most useful perhaps is Library News, a simple stream of material (à la Hacker News) on technology and libraries, available on the web and via RSS and contributed by anyone who wishes to create an account.

ShelfLife Welcome from David Weinberger on Vimeo.

When you search for flights between two cities Google now provides you with a chart of options as the first (non-paid) result, making the peripatetic aspect of a lawyer's life just a little bit easier. Thus, for example, a search for flights from Winnipeg to Vancouver yields the result you see below:

Click on the image to enlarge it.

And perhaps I haven't noticed, but new to me is the fact that when you mouse over the chevron beside a result of a Google search, you not only see a thumbnail of the found page, a feature that's been around for a while, but a callout as well that shows you where on the page a sought-for phrase occurs. For instance, my search for definitely not the last time turns up a result from trip advisor.co.uk with the relevant phrase emphasized (on a black background) and shown in context:

Click on the image to enlarge it.

I have just created a custom search engine of Canadian military law journal articles, publications, reports and news. It is available here: http://www.uwindsor.ca/law/library/canadian-military-law-articles

My guide to researching Military Law in Canada (as well as some documents pertaining to Guantanamo Bay) is located here: http://www.uwindsor.ca/law/library/guide-to-researching-military-law

Users can use the new search engine for one-stop shopping for military law journal articles, publications, reports and news from the following sites:

Canadian Army Journal
Army Lessons Learned Bulletin
Army Lessons Learned Dispatches
Canadian Forces College Papers
Canadian Forces College Review
Canadian Military Journal
Canadian Naval Review
Jane's Information Group
Canadian Army News
Canadian Defence Academy Publications
Chief Military Judge Documents
Chief of Defence Staff Publications
National Defence Key Documents
Judge Advocate General Publications
The Maple Leaf
Military Police Complaints Commission Documents
and National Defence News Archives

I used http://www.google.com/cse

In the not too distant past law librarians were valued for their knowledge of "legal bibliography". Great librarians who built the collections of law schools libraries across Canada were experts in knowing what had been published across jurisdictions and legal topics. With the explosion of print and online legal publishing a knowledge of bibliography gave way to the need to know and understanding how to find relevant information when needed.

Still, the art of knowing the literature on a topic and organising and making that literature available to users both expert and novice is still an important (if perhaps somewhat undervalued) role of librarians. I was reminded how important this art is when consulting with Lakehead on what they might want to include in their planned law library. Here are a few bibliographies that I recommend:

John Eaton & Denis Le May, Essential Sources of Canadian Law, (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2009). This gem of a book provides short bibliographies of the most essential titles for 105 areas of law. Most law librarians will be familiar with the titles in this book, but I have found this an excellent source to keep on my desk to jog my memory when researching an unfamiliar area. It's an excellent tool for new librarians, and I would expect that public libraries and other non-law libraries would find this a very useful entry point to identifying the key titles in an area. A nice feature of this book is that it lists both French and English language titles.

Two of the more recent books on Canadian legal research: Tjaden's Legal Research and Writing, 3rd ed (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2010) and McCormack, Papadopoulos & Cotter's The Practical Guide to Canadian Legal Research, 3rd ed (Toronto: Carswell, 2010) also provide bibliographies by topic – Tjaden in chapter 8 and McCormack in the appendix. Since Tjaden's first edition, I must have said "let's look in chapter 8 of Tjaden to see what's out there" to hundreds of law students. Ted's bibliography is a bit less granular, looking at 45 topics, but he goes beyond the essential books and also lists relevant journals, encyclopedia entries, reporters and websites. McCormack looks at 44 topics with many topics including lists of sub-topics where appropriate. For example there are 22 sub-topics for "Criminal Law" including the Charter, Evidence, Sentencing and Youth Criminal Justice. Like Tjaden the approach aims to be more comprehensive than Eaton's focus on essentials.

Outside of Canadian literature, John Eaton has recently published Finding English Law: Key Titles for Non-UK Lawyers and Researchers, (London: Wildy, Simmonds & Hill Publishing, 2011), which like his Canadian book takes a granular approach listing 97 topics. John's approach is perfect for a Canadian audience, as he gives us just enough information to find the right literature without becoming too esoteric. This is an excellent reference source for librarians as well as an aid to collection development.

I've had less reason to find US books, but the "Legal Treatises" chapter of the annual Legal Information Buyer's Guide and Reference Manual by Kendall Svengalis has been useful – although aimed at US librarians who are purchasing titles, its annotated list of titles for 61 topics provides a good starting point.

In a future post I'll take a look at some of the best online bibliographies find on law library and legal research websites.

On Wednesday the Canadian Association of Law Libraries will be presenting a webinar with Michel Gamache, Director of Documentation Services, Heenan Blaikie in Montreal. Michel will be explaining how to get started with Yahoo Pipes for working with RSS feeds to customize information for practice groups. Even if you do not work in a law firm, this webinar will help you get started taking your use of RSS feeds to the next level. I myself dabble in the use of Pipes and am looking forward to learning more.

The webinar takes place this Wednesday, November 16, 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. ET. Cost is $45.40 for members and $67.80 for non-members (tax included). For more information and to register, visit the CALL/ACBD website: http://www.callacbd.ca/en/content/webinars.

Here is the full description:

Yahoo Pipes: Slicing and Dicing RSS Feeds for Legal Practice Groups
SPEAKER: Michel Gamache

Yahoo! Pipes has been around since 2007, yet it doesn't seem to have caught the eye of many librarians. However, this is a valuable and simple tool that can be used in the context of web monitoring and information delivery.

This webinar will help you understand what Yahoo! Pipes is all about. You will learn how to create, aggregate, filter and customize feeds. You will also learn how to create widgets so that the contents you manipulate can be made available on intranets.

Michel Gamache has been Director of Documentation Services at Heenan Blaikie since 1999. Previously, he was Library Manager at another law firm in Montreal.

Michel holds a MLIS degree and a Certificate in Industrial Relations both from Université de Montréal, as well as a Bachelor degree in Business Management from Université du Québec à Montréal.

CAIJ, the Centre d'accès à l'information juridique (the network of law libraries associated with the Québec Bar Association), has a revamped website with many new research features:

• the UNIK search engine that allows for simultaneous keyword searching in its caselaw, commentary and Quebec and federal legislation databases
• the eDoctrine collection of free full-text commentary and textbooks including the Développements récents (annual reviews of areas of law), the Collection de droit (Bar School materials), proceedings of the annual Quebec Bar Association congresses and a growing number of treatises from Wilson & Lafleur
• the eLOIS collection of annotated laws (right now in beta): so far, CAIJ offers the Civil Code of Quebec, the provincial Labour Standards Act and the provincial Business Corporations Act – for each legislative section, there is a legislative history, links to parliamentary debates, and links to case law and/or commentary
• enhanced legal news

Some great features that haven't changed include the free JuriBistro TOPO service, the CAIJ knowledgebase of some 2,700 questions and answers compiled by CAIJ's legal researchers based on real inquiries received from lawyers from across Quebec.

If you need to do Quebec legal research and you read French, I highly recommend the CAIJ site.

Save Library & Archives Canada. That is the heading on a new website recently launched by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).

CAUT is using this site to outline some very valid concerns about issues at LAC, which some of you remember as the National Library and some of you remember as the National Archives of Canada.

In 2004, the National Archives of Canada and the National Library of Canada were drawn together by the Library and Archives of Canada Act to create a new knowledge institution for Canadians—Library and Archives Canada, a source of enduring knowledge and the continuing memory of the government of Canada and its institutions.
(links to the LAC About Us page)

Themes of concern that CAUT outlines include:

• Modernization
• Mandate
• Acquisitions
• Services
• Decentralization

The proposed changes at LAC have far-reaching implications for how Canada’s history and cultural heritage are preserved and understood. The "modernization" underway is a direct attack on our collective memory. To prevent the demise of this vital national institution, CAUT has launched a campaign to ensure that LAC maintains its commitment to preserve and make publicly available Canada's full documentary heritage.

I encourage you to read CAUTs open letter to Daniel Caron, linked, in order to understand the issues.

When an association of scholars publicly rasies an issue they feel concerns all Canadians, we should pay attention.

I've come across a couple of new law reviews that might be of interest to SLAW readers…

1) The Washington Journal of Environmental Law and Policy from the University of Washington in Seattle. WJELP is a student run journal. Issues will be available for free online and the first issue is here. You can sign up for e-mail alerts of new issues at the journal's website. All issues will also be archived at the University of Washington's digital repository.

2) The Southampton Student Law Review is a new student publication from the Southhampton Law School in the UK. There are two issues so far, both online.

And while not a new law review, I wanted to plug the recent Canadian law journals tables of contents service that the Bora Laskin Law Library has been offering via our Blog. The October listing will be up in a day or so. You can now sign up to follow our Blog by e-mail.

I have been remiss at mentioning the free online conference Library 2.0 that started today at 9:30 am ET and continues around the clock through to the end of tomorrow. This page has a schedule of sessions listed according to your time zone. For a quick look at the schedule, check out the Eastern Standard Time schedule – sessions typically run for a 1/2 hour.

There is still time to sign up! Register for the Library 2.0 site. All sessions will be run using the Blackboard Collaborate platform. Session rooms have a bandwidth-related limit of 700 attendees. Word via Twitter is that there are approximately 6,000 registrants. There are a number of concurrent sessions, and of course most people will not be watching the full 24 hours. There are over 150 sessions in all. All will be recorded.

The hash tag #lib2011 is being used on sites such as Twitter.

I hope you will at least stop by for one or two sessions!

Aaron Swartz is that rare individual who is prepared to risk imprisonment in order to promote the cause of open access. And we're not talking about liberating "tunes" or movies or, indeed, anything of much "entertainment value"; Swartz goes for the serious, you might say earnest, stuff. At the moment the young man stands accused of various crimes associated with his downloading of 4.8 million articles from JSTOR. (Many, but by no means all, readers of Slaw will know that JSTOR stands for "Journal Storage" and is a not-for-profit, but paywall-protected, online archive for academic journals.)

There are good accounts of his career and escapades online, so I'll only hit some of the highlights here. If you'd like a fuller picture, try the New York Times article or the excellent recent piece by Nancy Sims in the College & Research Libraries News.

Of interest to law folk will be the fact that back in 2008 Swartz, then a research fellow at Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics, used a program of his to download 20% of the documents made available by PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) — "more than eighteen million pages with an approximate value of $1.5 million," according to FBI documents — and released them to the public en masse. This brought the project to its knees but resulted in no criminal charges for him.

Click on image to enlarge.

The current spate of downloading, however, has gained him a number of criminal charges of a serious nature, in part because it's alleged he went into a closet at MIT containing access to the MIT network and hooked up his computer directly. According to the indictment on his arrest warrant (available online along with many other documents relating to the criminal matter), these charges are: wire fraud, computer fraud, theft of information from a computer, recklessly damaging a computer, and aiding and abetting. Click on the image above to see the document and the relevant US Code numbers. It would appear that the trial is about to begin.

A great many issues arise from Swartz's self-made plight, which is presumably what he intended. For academic institutions such as universities and scholarly databanks, it's important to consider the implications of their access policies having become the basis for criminal charges. On a broader plane, we need to continue to debate the degree to which it's appropriate to speak of "theft" of data in such a way that there's an equivalence, explicit or not, between taking data and taking someone's car or money, for example. In this respect, you might take a look at "Asked and Answered: Here’s What I Think the Aaron Swartz Case Means," by Rick Anderson, Associate Dean for Scholarly Resources and Collections at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library (in response to which one commentator believes it is an argument to repeat "stealing is stealing").

This has been Open Access Week across North America and even further afield. There have been many events. In Canada, CARL/ABRC has a list of OA Week events, but not everything is noted there. UVic's own events, for instance. The ACRL Blog has collected a few highlights.

Of course, it is libraries that are often organizing these events, as librarians are best positioned to witness the daily spectacle of publicly funded research given away for peanuts or less into private hands. These in turn do very well by it, whether it is delivered in print or electronically. Libraries seek relief from the escalating costs. Between 1984 and 2005, journal prices increased 637%, and Law titles by 386% (see Table 9) in the US, while distribution and printing/binding costs, presumably, were much reduced. This is compared to a CPI increase over the same period of 188%. Remember, remuneration to authors or universities for these materials is unheard of. And of course, the public is not allowed access.

The staff at HeinOnline have a new, free HeinOnline iPad app to access their database.

Logging into the app is easy and users are invited to have their login and password information remembered.

Once logged in, one gets a table of contents of the various libraries in their database, depending on the scope of one's subscription (e.g., Law Library Journal, US Reports, English Reports, Legal Classics, and so on).

Browsing by law journal title and volume is easy to do. At that stage, there is an option of viewing the table of contents for the particular volume. The screenshot below shows the "view" of the first page of a recent article on HeinOnline from the Canadian Law Library Review written by SLAW's own Mark Lewis.

When viewing the articles in PDF, it is easy enough to expand the text or slide from page to page.

One can also search the full-text of the various libraries by keyword. The screenshot below shows the search example they use in their iTunes page, being:

<< title: "Right to Privacy" >>

This search, when run in the Law Library Journals library, returns articles with that phrase in the title of the article.

Prior to this app being available, I was accessing HeinOnline on my iPad using the Safari browser. The app is definitely easier and quicker.

No doubt many libraries in our community have already heard the news: SydneyPLUS has just purchased a big piece of the Inmagic pie. This includes Inmagic’s DB/Text Library Suite of products: DB/TextWorks, DB/Text WebPublisher Pro, and Inmagic Genie.

According to Kathy Bryce via Andornot's blog:

The move will strengthen both SydneyPLUS and the new Inmagic division by bringing together complementary technologies to meet the needs of special librarians, while allowing Inmagic, Inc. to focus on new markets.

Inmagic, Inc. (the company) will retain its Presto technology and its related products PrestoKnowledgeNet, Presto AssociatioNet, and Presto IdeaNet.

It sounds like the two companies will be working more closely together. According to yesterday's press release:

Inmagic’s Presto for Social Libraries, which the companies will co-market and support under a strategic partnership, is an integration of Inmagic Genie, an integrated library system, with Inmagic Inc.’s Presto. Presto for Social Libraries is a Social Knowledge Network (SKN) application that integrates library workflow with knowledge-based content and the “wisdom of the community” to create a “Library 2.0” environment to support the research and business objectives of organizations.

Everyone is promising "business as usual" for the customers. Time will tell if this is the case, or if some customers take this opportunity to look for new alternatives. As a one-time customer of Inmagic, I watch with interest.

Ever since I set up a shingle four years ago to consult independently, I have been asked periodically as to whether I do legal research. Most recently, a few people have asked if this is a service I provide for the public. My response until now has been that I really don't know of anyone who does any substantive legal research for the public. It would be great to have the great collective mind of the Slaw community work on a solution since it is something I haven't been able to crack myself.

Some libraries (public and academic) may be able to direct the public to hard copy sources for their research or retrieve specific documents from online sources. Earlier this year I also asked my colleagues via the law library listservs as to who does independent Canadian legal research. Most who responded positively and were willing to do so unfortunately did not have their own licensing arrangement with the commercial vendors and would have to rely on the requester to provide access.

Where does this leave the general public? In addition to pro se litigants, I can imagine there are likely historians and scholars doing research leading to the writing of reports and historical treatises. And possibly other types of research, too. How do they do it??

The challenge of providing any kind of substantial legal research from online sources for the general public seems a tad insurmountable:

• Typically Canadian online commercial legal research sources are made available by flat rate subscription, not transactional fees. My perception has been that this would make setting up a legal research service prohibitively expensive for someone working independently.
• Much as with in-person inquiries at libraries when the public look for research in hard copy sources, emphasis would need to be placed on explaining that no interpretation by the online searcher could take place (well, unless the searcher was also an insured lawyer willing to take on the risk). I wonder how meaningful search results would be if no interpretation could take place? An approach to this would need to be taken and policies would need to be put in place.
• Liability would be a huge issue. When law librarians do legal research for client files in a law firm setting, it is understood that the lawyer on the file is ultimately taking responsibility for the results found and their interpretation. And is insured for this responsibility.

I was brainstorming some ideas with Liana Giovando (a newly-minted fellow independent law librarian), and this is what we have come up with so far:

• A consortium of some sort might be best to take this on rather than one or two independent consultants. Having the backing and resources of a larger group would go a long way to mitigate the costs and liability.
• Alternatively, perhaps a law firm would take this on as a service, providing the backing in terms of liability, providing the service of lawyers to review (and interpret?) search results.
• If commercial legal research sources are prohibitively expensive, then perhaps research could be done solely from publicly available sources such as CanLII, advising the research requester of the difference between free and fee sources.
• Access to a library with hard copy resources would also be needed to supplement the online research. Would it be acceptable to use a public library resources for this type of (presumably paid) service, or would an agreement need to be made with an existing law library to give access? Perhaps access to a number of otherwise private libraries would be needed.

That is as far as I've gotten with thinking this through. The next step is to determine whether there is a real need for such a service. Is this something that comes up only periodically, or frequently? What types of requests are there? Is it worth setting up such a service and what would be the business model? Thought would also need to be given as to how to deliver this type of service and how to market it.

I invite you to share your thoughts and suggestions, especially something that will move these ideas forward (I've already got lots on the negative side, thank you). Is there a service like this already that I have not yet found? How could one be set up? Would you be willing and able to help move this forward?

The library of the Supreme Court of Canada recently updated its online bibliography about the court. New material from the period 2008-2011 has been added.

The bibliography contains articles, textbooks, earlier bibliographies, rules of practice and statistics about the Court.

Speeches by Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada as well as scholarly articles about the court's rulings are not included.

[Cross-posted to Library Boy]

Bill C-11, An Act to Amend the Copyright Act, received second reading in the House of Commons on 18 October 2011. Discussions focussed on balance, openness to listening to interest groups, and specific provisions and scenarios covered and not covered by the bill. If you want a quick catch-up on copyright reform in Canada, take a look at Hansard.

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries has a brand new website.

There are some really great features of the new site including job postings, easy links to committee publications including items like the Vendor Liaison Committee's Cost Containment Strategies and the Code of Good Practices for Loose-leaf Publication the Knowledge Management Special Interest Group's suggested resources and the Courthouse &Law Society Library SIG's Standards document.

The best parts of the new CALL/ACBD site are reserved for members, and membership is open to those who support the objectives of the association.

The Association is soliciting feedback on the new site as it is a work in progress. Connie Crosby, Liana Giovando and Mike Hu from Paralucent were acknowledged for their work on the project in a message to the membership yesterday. Way to go team! Library Boy also has a post about the new site.

I had written about the Just A Click Away project in January 2011. Just A Click Away is a Canada-wide initiative on public legal education and information (PLEI).

It organized a successful conference in Vancouver last February on how to use Internet and social media technologies to better educate the general public about the law.

Just A Click Away is continuing its efforts to bring the law closer to every Canadian and has just announced that it has received funding for Phase 2 of its work with a focus on "Supporting a Culture of Sharing".

Phase 2 involves 4 organizations: PovNet (a poverty-law network), Community Legal Education Ontario (CLEO), Éducaloi (Quebec-based public legal education site), and Courthouse Libraries BC.

Phase 2 will have four (4) elements:

• An online community of practice. Led by PovNet, we will provide a private online space for PLEI practitioners to have frank conversations and share experiences and learning about technology and PLEI on an ongoing basis.
• A series of webinar broadcasts. Led by Éducaloi, we will hold a series of 8 broadcast webinars over a two year period where PLEI practitioners, managers, and funders from across Canada can learn about key topics relating to technology and PLEI.
• A series of hand-on web labs. Led by CLEO, we will hold a series of 8 hands-on interactive workshops over the web aimed at PLEI practitioners who work directly with online technologies.
• Documentation of best practices. Led by Courthouse Libraries BC, we will create online PLEI best practices guides, developed from the exchanges in the online community of practice space, the webinar broadcasts and the hands-on web labs.

Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Gus Van Harten and his team have launched a website and database on "International Investment Arbitration and Public Policy." At its heart, IIAPP offers a database of summaries of some 150 cases brought by investors against states under treaties channelling disputes into less costly arbitration. Examples most familiar to Canadians will be those investor-state arbitrations carried out under NAFTA's Chapter 11. Investor treaties touch upon a great many policy areas critical to a state's functioning, areas including agricultural, environmental, human rights and public health policies.

Along with the database come a series of informative pages that can function as an introduction to this area of conflict and dispute resolution:

• Cases and Regulatory Impacts offers an overview of who has been sued, which nationals have done the suing, and what the affected areas of policy are (with links to relevant cases);
• Treaties touches on the more important treaties that give rise to investor-state disputes and links to an analytical report [PDF] of known cases under these;
• Arbitrators outlines the role and powers of the arbitrators who resolve these disputes; here IIAPP voices some concerns about the system that does not incorporate the safeguards we enjoy in our domestic courts;
• Responses and Alternatives examines government responses to international investment arbitration and other forms of dispute resolution that may be available.

I just stumbled upon the fact that the decision to discontinue publication of the print version of the federal Table of Public Statutes was reversed.

An issue, up to date to Sept 30, 2011 is now available from:

Queen's Printer

or from

Federal Publications Inc.

This is good news!

A recent ethnographic study at a number of Illinois academic libraries suggests that students who have grown up with computer and Internet access are not as sophisticated at accessing the world of online resources as is often assumed. A very brief article on the project appeared in many daily papers last month and my colleague Humayun Rashid brought a much more detailed report in Inside Higher Education to my attention. The Inside Higher Ed. article provides an excellent summary of the study.

The results of the ERIAL Project (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) are perhaps not very surprising to those of us who work with the students that the literature has dubbed "digital natives" – but they are nonetheless very interesting and instructive. The ERIAL Project is a two year study of how students do research. The study's research methodology was much more sophisticated than the typical library use survey and included anthropologists observing how students work at research, as well as interviews and other exercises such as keeping diaries. A book reporting on the project is coming out soon: College Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know (Table of contents here)

Some highlights noted in the Inside Higher Ed. report include:

- Students overuse Google and do not know how to use scholarly databases. Online searches tend to be simple and do not take advantage of more sophisticated searching features. Anthropologist Andrew Asher from the Inside Higher Ed. article: "“Just because you’ve grown up searching things in Google doesn’t mean you know how to use Google as a good research tool.”

- When students do use scholarly resources they tend to not use the appropriate ones for their subject or needs (e.g. an over reliance on JSTOR at the expense of more appropriate subject resources)

- It turns out (as we knew all along), the explosion of online information makes the need for experts in collections and the research process even more necessary. Unfortunately, the study observed that students do not ask librarians for help or think of them as possessors of knowledge about the research process.

I know that in the law world things are different, in that librarians are relied on heavily, both in the academy and in the firms (I've forgotten how many times recent grads have dropped by the library and mentioned how their firm librarian has "saved" them.) Still the results of this study are very sobering and the implications for how students research and learn are great.

I've just skimmed the surface of this very important study. I encourage you to read the Inside Higher Education article. I'm looking forward to reading the full report when the book is published.

I have in the past complained about the abysmal lack of online access to Canadian court dockets at the same time as trying to compile a list of known links to Canadian court dockets to my Case Law research page on my legal research and writing website.

In addition to the new LexisNexis Canada dockets service I mentioned last week, a colleague has pointed out the free Canadian Federal Courts dockets service at IPPractice.ca, a website maintained by Alan Macek of Dimock Stratton LLP, a great site that does not yet appear to have been mentioned on SLAW (there is also a blog on the site, here).

At the Federal Docket Browser on the site, you can enter the court file number (e.g., T-780-08) and be brought to a free results page that provides more enhanced information than the actual dockets page from the Court, including links to any published decisions in the matter, appeal information and detailed docket information. A great feature!

The site also includes a Federal Court Hearing List, although this information appears to simply mirror the hearing information on the Court's website.

I have updated the court docket information on my website to include both the LexisNexis Canada service and this free Federal Courts dockets service from IPPractice.ca.

Library and Archives Canada announced today that, to celebrate the 170th anniversary of the Canada Gazette (on October 2), the back issues of that publication have been made available and searchable online. There are four entry points to the database:

• Keyword Search
• Advanced Keyword Search
• Search the Consolidated Regulations of Canada
• Find an Issue

Issues published since 1998 have been available online for some time.

[hat tip: @richards1000]

The following post just went live on the VLLB, but it's appropriate for the legal research community here at Slaw too. One of Stem's clients, Quickscribe, has announced the relaunch one of BC’s most treasured legislative research tools, the BCLD. In the narrative below, you'll find a brief history of the collection's origin, custodianship, and how members of our West Coast law library community contributed to its digital rebirth.

The British Columbia Legislative Digest: A Brief History

The British Columbia Legislative Digest (BCLD) was conceived of in 1979 by librarians at the BC Courthouse Library, now Courthouse Libraries BC, who needed a timely way of tracking changes to provincial legislation. They developed a tool that allowed the user, at a glance, to determine who introduced a bill, what stage it was at, whether it would have consequential amendments, and when and how it would come into force. Library staff issued weekly updates that subscribers would incorporate into their BCLD binders so that they always had the most current information. It must be noted, pre-dating the age of the Internet, this was no small undertaking.

Soon the BCLD, well-thumbed in its signature burgundy binders, could be found in libraries and law offices across the province. Over the next 30 years it would become an invaluable source for anyone responsible for monitoring or researching current laws, or conducting historical legislative research in British Columbia. The Canadian Legislative Index (CLI), the BCLD's federal counterpart, was equally well-used.

But by 2010, the legal information landscape had changed drastically. More information than ever was available online, and the cost to publish the still paper-based BCLD and the CLI collections had become difficult to justify. In light of this, and the growing demand for staff time on more public-facing digital initiatives, the Courthouse Libraries made a change to their strategic direction. The resulting, and very difficult, decision was made to discontinue both titles.

The fallout would soon come from legal researchers across B.C., including many members of the Vancouver Association of Law Libraries (VALL), who were disappointed with the decision. Nimble as ever, law librarians made do by piecing together information from various alternative sources, but the ease of use and trusted, comprehensive data the BCLD offered were sorely missed.

A Second Chance

Enter Quickscribe, the Victoria-based provider of hardcopy and electronic legislative information, which has developed a number of innovative products throughout its 25 years of business. Seeing an opportunity to revive and integrate the BCLD within his web-based legislative service, Quickscribe president Mike Pasta reached out to Courthouse Libraries BC with his proposal. The response went beyond expectations. He not only received the Library’s blessing to redevelop the product, but found integral group of supporters who would help guide the BCLD towards digitalization.

Over the coming months, support of the BCLD project continued to grow. In August, Mike Pasta appointed an Advisory Group of experienced law librarians, including several former BCLD caretakers, to help consult on the integration. Members of this support group, including Thea Schmidt (Borden Ladner Gervais LLP), Ana Rosa Blue (WorksafeBC), Gillian Crabtree (Edwards, Kenny & Bray LLP), and Tracey McLean, Alex McNeur, and Kat Siddle (all of Courthouse Libraries BC), continue to advise on the BCLD’s ongoing digital direction, and help ensure it remains a comprehensive and relevant research tool. Needless to say, Quickscribe is extremely grateful for the advice it has received.

The New BCLD

The new BCLD is now being relaunched as a digital product available to subscribers of Quickscribe Online. It offers a weekly Digest (similar to the Highlights, Proclamations and Regulations sections of the print edition), a dynamic "status checker", and a hyperlinked progress of bills chart that provides an overview of the year's legislative activity and chapter/bill concordance.

The BCLD also offers an email alert service for tracking bills as they progress from first reading though Royal Assent and into law. A subscriber can sign up for customized alerts that include all legislative changes; changes to topical groups of legislation; or changes to selected bills, acts, or regulations. Subscribers may also create multiple email alerts for the benefit of groups or individuals within their organization.

Ultimately, the goal of the new BCLD is to honour the spirit of its predecessor publication, while establishing itself as a new, invaluable tool for legislative monitoring and research in British Columbia.

To see the British Columbia Legislative Digest in action, see the video tour posted on the Quickscribe website. For those interested in having a look at this new resource, Quickscribe is also currently offering a two-month free trial just in time for the upcoming legislative session.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) has invited citizens to submit short papers (six to eight pages) toward a dialogue on human rights, specifically relating to religious belief and practice as shaped by the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Several papers that make the final selection will be presented in January 2012 at a community dialogue, featuring diverse communities, academics and human rights lawyers and practitioners, hosted by the OHRC in partnership with the University of Toronto’s Religion in the Public Sphere Initiative and the Faculty of Law.

The commission is accepting brief proposals (one to three pages) until October 14, 2011. The topics include:

• Human rights and the protection of religious belief and practice in a secular society.
• The general exemption in Section 24(1)(a) of the Ontario Human Rights Code that applies to religious, philanthropic, educational, fraternal or social institution or organization:

The right under section 5 to equal treatment with respect to employment is not infringed where:

(a) A religious, philanthropic, educational, fraternal or social institution or organization that is primarily engaged in serving the interests of persons identified by their race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, creed, sex, age, marital status or disability employs only, or gives preference in employment to, persons similarly identified if the qualification is a reasonable and bona fide qualification because of the nature of the employment.

• Intersection of Code grounds: Discrimination issues often arise because of a combination of human rights grounds. For example, a young lone mother receiving social assistance who is looking for housing or employment might experience discrimination based on her sex, age, family status and receipt of social assistance. If she is a racialized person or is a member of a specific creed, or has a disability, her experience of discrimination may change or be compounded.
• Extension and limits in providing and designing accommodation of religious beliefs and practices in diverse organizational contexts.

More information on other potential paper themes and selection criteria can be found here.

Although it is impossible to establish a standard method for resolving conflicts between religious freedoms and human rights, this dialogue is a welcomed one. In light of the present trends toward multiculturalism, globalization and increased religious intolerance, developing a common understanding of human rights is becoming even more essential.

Ensuring the dialogue involves religious groups, as well as those who uphold, practice, write and teach the law, will make it more relevant.

At a 2005 human rights panel, Piet de Klerk, the Netherlands' Ambassador at Large for Human Rights stated,

Some say freedom of religion is the mother of all human rights," and “all human rights are universal and interconnected.” Further, “the degree to which freedom of religion or belief is upheld reflects the general human rights situation in a particular country.”

In other words, the more a people respects others’ freedom of religion or belief, the more the people respect human rights in general. And vice versa.
There’s no doubt that religious tolerance is crucial to functioning societies. Intolerance breeds resentment and anger, which often gives rise to violence, discrimination, oppression, incitement, fear and other antisocial acts.

The only way to counteract intolerance is through education and understanding, best facilitated by public dialogue. This is, in part, the intent of the OHRC’s discussion panel, featuring the selected papers. The other part is to help citizens understand the role of our existing human rights regime when it comes to dealing with freedom of belief, and possibly to understand the system’s shortcomings and how it might be improved.

What do you think? Does tolerance of religion and creed indicate how well a society respects other human rights? How important is human rights law to support tolerance and respect? Can we hope to eradicate intolerance with dialogue and debate? Is an academic forum like the one proposed here the answer? Is there a more direct community-oriented method to increase civic understanding of human rights issues?

I see that LexisNexis Canada has announced a new court docket service in Canada for dockets at the Federal Court, Federal Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada:

From one intuitive online interface, LexisNexis CaseConnection Dockets enables fast access to key case information for ongoing and new proceedings filed with the Federal Court, Federal Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada. This information helps law firm, government and corporate professionals stay on top of emerging legal issues and cases quickly, cost-effectively and securely.

The press release was not clear on cost of the service, although registration here was free. I registered and there appears to be small charges for searching dockets or running saved searches to monitor docket activity. At this stage, it does not appear that one would be able to obtain the full-text of court filings from the Federal Court or Supreme Court of Canada (or at least the press release is silent on this point).

In addition, their litigation services appear to open the door to lawyers and law firms to serve court documents with an option to also sign up for their US court dockets service (trade-marked as CourtLink, a "fee" service I already use to access US court full-text court filings).

Having now mentioned this service on SLAW, I imagine I will be contacted by my LexisNexis Canada rep who may be able to provide more information or clarification at which point I can update this post in the comments if there is any additional information.

In what is very welcome news, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has released a practice direction, effective 1 October 2011, authorizing the use of reliable online versions of court decisions for filing in books of authorities and providing for special citation rules:

Practice Direction Regarding Filing of Judicial Decisions from Electronic Databases, and Regarding Citation of All Judicial Decisions

Practice Direction

Judicial Decisions from Electronic Databases

Effective October 1, 2011, copies of judicial decisions obtained from approved electronic databases are acceptable for filing provided the report of the judicial decision contains paragraph numeration consistent with the numbering of the paragraphs in the decision as released by the court. “Approved electronic databases” are databases that are dedicated to the publication of judicial decisions (e.g. Quicklaw, CanLII).

Parties should be aware that judicial decisions posted on electronic databases may be subject to correction or editing within a few days of the initial posting and, accordingly, parties should ensure that any decision obtained from an electronic database has not been subsequently amended.

Citation of All Judicial Decisions

Parties citing decisions from electronic databases should provide the citations for any paper versions of the decision in addition to the citation of the electronic database.

Parties should provide the date that the copy of any decision was obtained from an electronic database, as part of the citation information.

For decisions of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice released on or after January 1, 2010, parties should provide the neutral citation number (e.g. 2010 ONSC 1) in addition to the other required citations.

Osgoode Hall, Toronto
September 1, 2011

The Honourable Heather Forster Smith
Chief Justice, Superior Court of Justice

A few comments:

• "Approved electronic databases": The practice direction unfortunately gives what I assume is an unintentional, inadvertent limited view of examples by mentioning only Quicklaw or CanLII as approved electronic databases. Ideally, the practice direction would have preferred or encouraged the use of CanLII, where available, and then either referred more generically to the commercial databases or to include a more exhaustive listing (e.g., Westlaw Canada, BestCase, Maritime Law Book, SOQUIJ, DCL/REJB, and so on) or simply identified the major legal publishers as opposed to specific databases.

• Citation: I don't think I have a problem with including both a citation to the print-published version of a decision (if available) along with the online citation. I do find it interesting (and different) for the court to require "the date that the copy of any decision was obtained from an electronic database." If the court was going to otherwise change McGill Guide style, I would have liked if they had gone further to provide that, for decisions on CanLII, citing the neutral citation alone would be sufficient. In addition, the practice direction is ambiguous in its example of citing to the neutral citation for Ontario Superior Court decisions. A more preferable practice direction would have stated something along the lines that counsel are encouraged to file decisions from CanLII from all courts (not just Ontario) and when so doing may include only the neutral citation.

Despite these nit-picks, all-in-all this is a welcome and long overdue development.

PACER fees will be going up 25% effective November 1st.

A a press release on the U.S. Courts website explains:

The increase in the electronic public access (EPA) fee, from $.08 to $.10 per page, is needed to continue to support and improve the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system, and to develop and implement the next generation of the Judiciary’s Case Management/Electronic Case Filing system.

PACER fees are set by the Judicial Conference of the United States. The electronic public access fee has not changed since 2005. If my memory is correct, in 2005 the price rose from 7 cents to 8 – a bit more than 14%.

Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts, and the PACER Case Locator via the Internet. PACER is provided by the federal Judiciary in keeping with its commitment to providing public access to court information via a centralized service.

Slaw posts about PACER:

Mirela and her staff at NYU have kindly uploaded my updates to my Researching Canadian Law Guide on their GlobaLex website.

Updated guides have also been added for Bhutan, Latin America, Kenya and Sweden.

I regularly use these foreign law guides (along with the international law guides) when doing international and foreign legal research.

If you've done a CanLII search in the last few days, you'll have noticed that they've introduced contextual snippets into the search results. The searched for term is highlighted and shown with some surrounding text, apparently in a number, if not all, of the instances in which the term appears in the relevant document. The graphic below illustrates:

The snippets apply to both caselaw and legislation results.

This is a welcome (albeit stealthy) addition to a fine service.

Ted Tjaden's post today on “Legal Research and Writing Skills in Law School” could not have been more timely for me and my colleagues at the Bora Laskin Law Library.

For the first time that anyone here can remember (*however, see comment 3 below), the UofT Faculty of Law is offering a stand-alone mandatory legal research and writing class for its incoming first year class. It is a 10 week programme of hour-long classes that attempt to address many of the challenges that Ted outlines. This programme was long in the making and was driven by the Law School’s Standing Curriculum Committee and ably marshaled into place by our Assistant Dean Sara Faherty and a group of faculty and librarians.

The first week was taught by faculty member Simon Stern, who is passionate about LRW. The subsequent nine weeks will be taught by Sara, four legal writing instructors (doctoral students – Gail Henderson, Hélène Maynard, Mike Nesbitt and Mike Pal) and three librarians (myself, Susan Barker and John Bolan), thereby exposing our students to experts in writing and analysis as well as in the process and tools of legal research. Classes will be taught in small groups of about 15 students, with a combination of lectures, in class exercises, and hands-on computer lab instruction.

It is early days for our programme and it will be a challenge to address all of the issues that Ted outlines. For example, we expect that by the end of the programme that our students will be familiar with writing a memorandum of law, but finding room to teach about CLE materials and “words and phrases” services will be a challenge. The programme will give students a foundation in LRW that still leaves lots of room for our instructors in the upper year Advanced LRW classes, and our law firm librarian and research lawyer colleagues to build on.

Still, our programme is an exciting start for UofT and an important step in addressing the concerns expressed by Ted and so many of our law library and research lawyer colleagues.