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Archive for November, 2006

Guide to Foreign and International Legal Citation

The N.Y.U. Journal of International Law and Politics is very pleased to announce the publication of the 1st edition of of its Guide to Foreign and International Legal Citation (296 pages, PDF).

With a nod to Sabrina Pacifici at beSpacific.

Since I posted this, I see that Michel-Adrien Sheppard has also posted about this on his Library Boy Blog and he has provided some comments. . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

LibWorm

LibWorm is a search engine that allows you to search the RSS feeds of over 1,000 library related blogs. It collects updates from the feeds, the contents of these feeds are then available for you to search, and your search results can themselves be output as an RSS feed that you can subscribe to either in your favorite aggregator or in LibWorm’s built-in aggregator. It also allows you to browse feeds by feed category (each feed searched by LibWorm is assigned a category) or by subject (pre-built searches for common subjects relevant to libraries). To submit your own feed to . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Report on Televising U.S. Supreme Court and Other Federal Court Proceedings

The Federation of American Scientists has made available on its website a report by the Congressional Research Service entitled Televising Supreme Court and Other Federal Court Proceedings: Legislation and Issues (updated November 8, 2006).

“The Supreme Court has never allowed live electronic media coverage of its proceedings, but the Court posts opinions and transcripts of oral arguments on its website. The public has access to audiotapes of the oral arguments and opinions that the Court gives to the National Archives and Records Administration. Currently, Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure prohibits the photographing or broadcasting of judicial

. . . [more]
Posted in: Miscellaneous

Is Google Evil?

I was sent the link to an interesting, and scary article, in Mother Jones with the title “Is Google Evil”? in which the author claims that Google really operates on the basis of expediency and that it is collecting an amazing amount of personal information about google users.

To quote: ” From the start, Google’s informal motto has been ‘Don’t Be Evil,’ and
the company earned cred early on by going toe-to-toe with Microsoft over desktop software and other issues. But make no mistake. Faced with doing the right thing or doing what is in its best interests, Google . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

FPinfomart Adds Globe and Mail

This is big news for Canadian law librarians!

CanWest has announced that its Canadian-based electronic subscription news service, FPinfomart, will be adding access to the Globe and Mail. From its November 27, 2006 press release, FPinfomart Adds Globe and Mail Content:

Through an agreement between The Globe and Mail and CanWest MediaWorks Inc., FPinfomart will license The Globe and Mail and distribute content from the newspaper electronically through the FPinfomart product, including two years of archives and daily feeds. The Globe and Mail will be available to FPinfomart customers as part of the base subscription package.

This . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Psiphon to Launch

The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab is launching psiphon this Friday.

psiphon is a human rights software project developed by the Citizen Lab that allows citizens in uncensored countries to provide unfettered access to the Net through their home computers to friends and family members who live behind firewalls of states that censor.

A description of psiphon and the software are available at http://psiphon.civisec.org/

I blogged about Psiphon back last February, picking up on a report in the Globe and Mail. Now the New York Times has a piece on it in the Technology section. Looks as though psiphon . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

RIN Study on Researchers and Discovery Services

The Research Information Network has released an interesting study aimed at assessing ‘the perceptions of resource discovery services by academic researchers in the UK’.The report is lengthy, but the executive summary makes for interesting reading, especially the varying perceptions by librarians of what the researchers need, and the views of the researchers themselves. . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

119 Resources

The Online Education Database has put out a list of 119 “authoritative, invisible and comprehensive” resources under the rubric of “Research Beyond Google.” Aimed at college students in the U.S., the list nonetheless can be useful for anyone building a compendium of search tools and resource sites or as a guide for someone in the firm who’s ready to go beyond the basics.

[via ResearchBuzz] . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Focus on Culture

Earlier this month Satistics Canada introduced “a new electronic format to the publication Focus on Culture.” This might be a handy resource for those who like to keep tabs on such things as “film and video production and distribution, movie theatres, TV viewing and radio listening, the performing arts, book and periodical publishing, heritage institutions, government and private sector funding of culture, culture trade and investment, the culture labour force, Canadians consumption of culture.”

There’s a chronological index that’s probably the best way in. The current issue is “What Canadian households spend on culture goods and services.”

My only . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

On Lawyers, Librarians and Luddites

Hello, All:

Apropos “Library 2.0 In Action” (Nov 24/06) and Simon F’s “Why is it that librarians are leagues ahead of lawyers in this sort of thing? Huh?

With apologies to L. Carroll, because I’m inverting his question, we might as well ask: “why isn’t a raven like a writing desk?” The legal profession being, on the whole, what it is, the answers we’ll get will probably be even less useful, and nowhere near as humorous. (Those who’ve had the misfortune to have to read anything I’ve had published recently will probably have seen my tendency to quote . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

David Cheifetz

I’m delighted to announce that David Cheifetz has joined Slaw as an occasional contributor. David is a partner at Bennet Best Burns LLP practising “civil litigation primarily in areas that involve the interests of property and casualty insurers and institutional clients.” A lawyer for nearly thirty years, he has worked primarily in litigation but also boasts a stint in the Legal Division of the Research Branch of the Library of Parliament. David has written a text, Apportionment of Fault in Tort, as well as a number of articles for legal journals. And — pièce de résistance — “he was . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous