It’s not often that one sees reviews of patrons’ behaviour, so a comparative assessment of the U of A’s libraries as working spaces contained some shockers. Here is what the correspondent encountered at the John A Weir Memorial Law Library

Autumn drops beautiful colours around Edmonton, and campus is one place to enjoy the changing leaves. I wanted to enjoy these rich colours on a warm Thursday (7:30pm), so I took the scenic route to the Law Library. Once inside, I headed up to the 3rd floor, and sat down at a table. It was very quiet, although a woman

Britons were urged to make history on October 17th by contributing to a mass blog for the national record. Part of the national History Matters – Pass It On campaign and inspired by the Mass-Observation Archive, Britons were encouraged to write about how history itself impacted their day (for example, passing by a historic landmark, discussing family history, watching repeats of a TV show). To get a picture of life in the UK on October 17th, the blog is open to anyone who would like to contribute, including UK citizens or people with ties to the UK currently living . . . [more]

On October 18, 1929, the Judicial Committee of England’s Privy Council, which was the highest court of appeal for Canada at the time, ruled unanimously that the meaning of the word “persons” in Section 24 of the British North America Act of 1867 included women.

The Status of Women Canada website has a history of the Famous 5 case:

“In 1927 Emily Murphy and four other prominent Canadian women – Nellie McClung, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edwards – asked the Supreme Court of Canada to answer the question, ‘Does the word person in Section 24 of the

A month ago the British Academy, a counterpart to science’s Royal Academy, published a report on Copyright and Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. After a serious and detailed investigation, the researchers present 10 recommendations, précised here:

1. Copyright policy and authors themselves must recognise that the interests of academic authors do not always coincide with those of the publishers who undertake to exploit their works.
2. Copyright must therefore provide reasonably broad and practically effective exemptions for research and private study and for criticism or review.
3. The exception for research and private study under the 1988 Copyright

To SLAW [cross-posted to TALL-L and CALL-L]:

I would like to compile a fairly complete list of both “fee” and “free” current awareness services available for Canadian lawyers. I realize efforts to compile such lists have been done in the past (see below for partial acknowledgements), but I thought I would update such efforts and seek feedback from colleagues on new services. In addition, although I have been off most law-related listservs for awhile, I made some effort to search the listservs for recent posts on current awareness but fear I may have missed some of the content so would . . . [more]

Well I was feeling guilty that I hadn’t blogged from sunny Vancouver last week, and then I encountered some great posts from Emma Wood covering a couple of my sessions on research and presentations for settlement. Together with Dan Pinnington of Practice Pro fame
and Catherine Sanders ReachWho co-wrote the great study on the feasibility of the digital library for private law firms.
.

Mind you it’s sobering to have your casual thoughts blogged back at you. . . . [more]

I used to get frustrated that I was forced to use MS Excel because I bought the Microsoft Office Suite. I always liked Quattro Pro, and really wanted to mix-n-match my application software… As you can guess, that approach didn’t work out too well for me. There were simply too many features that could be had when they put those products together, and that ‘combined synergy’ was vastly superior to my personal selection plan approach.

Now we’re seeing the same thing happen with the soon to be released web-tool suites — the Google Docs of the world. And I find . . . [more]

I am pleased to inform SLAWers that Michael Lines, a frequent contributor to this blog, will be joining the Priestly Law Library at the University of Victoria as the new “Faculty and Student” services law librarian in mid-December. I’m sure you will agree with me that Michael will be a tremendous addition to the library and to the UVic Law School. I’m sure he will contine you to contribute to SLAW and I have already volunteered him to help out with the ACCESS 2007 conference in Victoria. . . . [more]

I thought I’d typed the wrong number of zeroes, but yes the $18 billion plus place taken by the big three providers in the market for legal information is predicted to expand by 6.3% next year.

The “Big Three” — Thomson Legal & Regulatory, Wolters Kluwer, and LexisNexis (Reed Elsevier) — dominate this segment with a combined market share of 59.1 percent.

Outsell is predicting that the Big Three will keep expanding by acquiring more companies in the legal technology space. In addition, the LTR segment will experience more international acquisitions and joint ventures as publishers seek stronger footholds . . . [more]

Today’s International Herald Tribune reports that Xiamen University in China is requiring law and business students to take up golf, to “prepare them for a business world where deals are made on the golf course”. Apparently golf lessons are available at other universities byut Xiamen is the first to make them compulsory. Its interesting to speculate on the reaction if a Canadian law school attempted the same thing. Contract, Tort, Legal Research and Golf 101. How would credit be awarded? Think of the need to store golf bags – and the difficulty of moving through corridors filled with students lugging . . . [more]

A neat post over at Pandia Search CentralI hadn’t encountered Pandia before – a rival to Search Engine Watch (it looks like). joins the dots together surrounding Google Docs (once known as Writely): it joins

* Google search
* Gmail
* The Google Calendar
* Docs & Spreadsheets
* Google Groups

The blogger says that “this is for all practical purposes an Office package”.

Click on “all my services” and links to the following is revealed:

* Alerts (Google’s email alert service)
* Base (Google’s online database tool)
* orkut (Google’s online community site)
* Page Creator (a web page . . . [more]

La semaine passée, Jonathan Shwartz, CEO de l’entreprise Sun Microsystems, a fait une demande auprès de la SEC pour autoriser l’usage de son blogue pour divulguer de l’information financière. Les blogues c’est bien mais, minute, il me semble que l’on ne pas tout faire avec les technologies de l’information, et ce, quelque soit leur efficacité. Comme disait le général De Gaulle, « Bien entendu, on peut sauter sur sa chaise comme un cabri en disant l’Europe ! l’Europe ! l’Europe ! ». Pareillement, on peut vouloir de l’électronique, de l’électronique, de l’électronique.

Depuis quelques années en effet, il est . . . [more]