Michael Lines and Kathryn Arbuckle have both pointed out the difficulty of collecting print copies of much grey lit, and yet library users are reluctant to pore over screeds on screens. Might it not be sensible to explore print on demand as at least a partial solution. (I’m referring to the abililty of libraries or other information centres to quickly print and bind digital material, not the many “vanity” presses that now offer authors inexpensive print runs of their works — those these, too, may have their place: think about a well-done law school casebook printed off site.)

All the . . . [more]

The postings on grey literature are great so far. I’m not sure it has specifically been covered in the postings and comments that I have read, but the control of grey literature in academic institutions is included in the concept of institutional repositories. This is really related to the changing nature of the academic publishing paradigm away from printed journals to e-journals. The aim is to capture everything produced by a university or research institution before publication, to preserve the knowledge, as well as to make the knowledge available to other researchers and scholars.

In law, this has taken . . . [more]

The various postings on grey literature have been highly interesting and informative. I don’t know whether it comes within the definition (such as it is) but I find regular reading of news magazines an extremely useful current awareness sources, as well as a treasure trove of all sorts of information about interesting developments in the law. Presiding over a major academic law library (and its acquisitions budget) gives me an advantage here in terms of the range of titles we can sunscribe to (and to me in that I get them routed to me first for subway reading) however I’d . . . [more]

Courtesy of Todd BennettWest Coast head librarian for Thelen Reid & Priest here is what’s been filling his days in dog-familiar August

The list wouldn’t be that off North of the 49th parallel:

Teaching young attorneys how to do legal research in the real world

Warning summer associates about are the drawbacks of Googleization

Meeting with the firm’s chief information officer, to whom our library directly reports

Approving this week’s batch of library invoicesHe notes two myths:

There are two modern myths that many of us grew up with that I find are complete lies. One myth is that computers

As promised a few weeks ago, WorldCat.org is now online and ready to take your searches.

By the way, Frederick G. Kilgour, who founded OCLC in 1967, the organization that produces WorldCat, died last week at the age of 92. You can read the N.Y. Times obituary to learn more about this remarkable innovator. . . . [more]

Reviewing Kathryn’s post in advance, I see that she’s identified a group of issues that the prospect of collecting GL in a major academic law library raises. In coordination with her comments, I’d like to ask 3 questions:

Do Canadian law libraries currently collect legal GL, and to what extent?

I would think it depends on the library:

Academic law libraries: gov. docs. (and not only Canadian), reports of various types of legal societies such as this one , or this one , internet or Microform access to other collections that include GL, and internet guides to, for instance, international . . . [more]

The following is by guest blogger Professor Kathryn ArbuckleProfessor Kathryn Arbuckle is Law Librarian at the John A. Weir Memorial Law Library, University of Alberta. She teaches legal research, and has lectured in legal information sources at the Schools of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta and Dalhousie University. Kathryn was previously employed as a librarian and FOIPP administrator with the Nova Scotia Civil Service and as a researcher with the Nova Scotia Royal Commission on Health Care. She has been the treasurer of the Canadian Library Association, and is active in a number of professional . . . [more]

Ce concept de “Grey Lit”, tel que défini par Michael Lines ce matin, m’était totalement inconnu avant que les responsables du présent blogue eurent la bonne idée d’en faire un thème particulier. De plus, je fus ravi de constater en lisant ce même billet, dans une liste d’illustrations offertes par Michael, que ma dernière intervention sur la récente convention internationale sur les contrats électroniques constituait justement du “Grey Lit”.

Michael, comme Monsieur Jourdain disait à son Maître de philosophie dans le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, je pourrais donc vous dire:

« Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que

Although it’s not quite grey literature, the announcement by the UK’s OPSI (Office of Public Sector Information) that it has has started providing RSS feeds for Acts and Statutory Instruments for UK, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales is a case of nice timing for this week’s theme on SLAW. It is some consolation for not having official UK statutes online yet! The link from the feed takes you to the full text of the act, the S.I., draft S.I. or Explanatory Notes – a good new resource for those tracking current UK legislation. . . . [more]

Despite Simon’s description of me‘Redoubtable’ has a fairly mixed range, from prominent and esteemed, through formidable, to “appalling, dire, dreadful”, I can’t claim to be much of an expert in GL, so my approach to being the “lead” of this Theme Week will be less as an august guide (though I suppose I am an August guide), and more as a tourist, perhaps even a “redoubtable” one. In any case, I’ll make my comments and hopefully the rest of you can fill in the important bits I miss.

Because GL in the legal world is considerably less known and collected . . . [more]

I’m not often kind to Microsoft. Oh I try to keep my skepticism, shall we say, in check here on Slaw, but left to my own devices, as I am at home, I live the smug life of the switcher, using Firefox on my Mac and forgetting to worry about virus protection. But inovation happens at MS too, and this Fillip is about one of their rather more remarkable achievements, Photosynth.

Photosynth has the ability to unify a number of images by identifying common reference points and building a combined image out of the parts. This might not sound . . . [more]

An article in today’s Globe and Mail came to attention this morning, and I thought it may be of interest (though not necessarily news) to Slaw readers, perhaps in particular other Canadians and Wikipedia users. It seems a young man from Ottawa, Simon Pulsifer, is Wikipedia’s “busiest contributor”, having created 2000-3000 articles under his own name and edited 78,000 others, according to the Globe article.

I say this is not necessarily news as the Globe by no means broke this story: a quick web (not wikipedia) search on Mr. Pulsifer yielded several interviews and articles from earlier in the year . . . [more]