This via the BCCLS What’s New Blog:

QP LegalEze has added a Field Search option to its previous search options of Quick, Advanced, and Boolean.

The new Field Search page allows you to focus your search on a specific area of a document, such as:

• Title
• Definition
• Chapter Number
• Regulation Number.

Currently field searches can only be performed on the following types of documents in QP LegalEze:

• Statutes
• Regulations
• Table of Legislative Changes
• Historical Tables
• Supplements
• Rules of Court and Related Enactments
• Private, Special and Local Statutes.

Yesterday’s The Globe and Mail had a brief (but very interesting) article about Microsoft offering to pay a blogger to modify technical articles about the company on Wikipedia. Although anyone can contribute to the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia’s group of volunteer writers and editors block anyone perceived as having a conflict of interest from contributing biased information. So as the article states, paying for coverage in Wikipedia is not tolerated. The article goes on to describe Microsoft’s response to the “online scandal.” . . . [more]

Perhaps I’m not wildly off topic when I hope that everyone knows about the Chicago Manual of Style’s Online Q&A, wherein folks submit style questions and the Manual editors supply often pert answers. Sample from the site today:

Q. As an editor of regulatory documents, I routinely come across sentences in which the subject is an inanimate object but the verb denotes something only a person can do. Examples are “this document analyzes the hazards” and “the analysis considers the environmental impacts.” Does this type of thing have a name? Inappropriate anthropomorphism or personification? Is there a rule I

Good piece in law.com on The Many Hats of a Law Librarian by Tricia Kasting, who I only knew because of her federal statutory research pathfinder, and her piece on how the Millennial generation of law students does legal research differently. . . . [more]

I hadn’t noticed until this morning that the Globe and Mail’s Law Page had articles that only appear on the website and have no print analogue.

I almost missed Jacob Ziegel talking about Class Actions.
. . . [more]

It seems like the interest in India and India law is now on the swell. I received notice today of another Indian online legal research company, this time commercial, which I was unaware of: Manupatra.

This is the company information from their website:

Manupatra.com is India’s largest and most comprehensive online legal & business policy database. Manupatra revolutionized the way in which people do legal research in India. Since a humble beginning in 2001, we have come a long way in being the pioneers in online legal research in India. With 100 people across 15 cities, the company is the . . . [more]

Let me introduce Yahoo’s recent $10M acquisition: MyBlogLog. I just started playing with this site the other day, and so far so good. It’s basically a community building tool, with its most notable feature being a web widget that allows for a live display the most recent visitors.

I’ve created a community for Slaw, and one for the vllb. The community widget is also installed on my blog, if you want to get a handle on how it works.

I now see that Connie has a community, and very shortly (after I invite her), she . . . [more]

Today’s Prospect Magazine has an impassioned (though at times conflicted) assessment of Google by Jonathan Rée as the tool of American imperialism, which must be resisted on principle.

The author marvels over the Google Books engine – and its ability to help him browse through Hazlitt, in the NYPL collection. Then he stops himself:

Thank God for Google, I said to myself. But I nearly choked on the words: in the company I keep, praising Google would be on a par with shopping at Tesco, eating in McDonald’s or speaking up for the political astuteness of George W Bush.

University of British Columbia President Stephen J. Toope today announced a $6 million grant from the Law Foundation of British Columbia to benefit public access to justice and student learning in B.C.

“The pivotal nature of the Law Foundation’s contribution cannot be underestimated,” says Toope. “The impact on UBC Law Faculty’s ability to contribute to the needs of our society will be profound.”

The $6 million grant will contribute to a new building to house the UBC Faculty of Law, the UBC Law Library, the Law Students Legal Advice Program (LSLAP) and the British Columbia Law Institute — a public . . . [more]

What may prove to be the longest, and most constroversial trial, in BC after the Air India trial began today in New Westminster for the accused serial killer Robert Pickton. There has been a lot of interest by the media, and for the first time there will be coverage of the opening and closing statements of the Crown and the Defence. There are already a number of blogs dedicated to the trial, none I could find that were much use, and coverage on the Globe and Mail . The best and most comprehensive site I have found so far is . . . [more]

A new article describes changes in legal scholarly communication as a shift from long, rights-protected mediated forms to short, open-access, unmediated ones. The author, Lawrence Solum, also considers the causes of the change, and the future. His comments are based mainly on his experiences as a blogger.

Solum, Lawrence B., “Download It While Its Hot: Open Access and Legal Scholarship” . Lewis & Clark Law Review, Vol. 10, p. 841, 2006 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=957237

The article appears in a special issue on open access and the legal world. . . . [more]

Ce n’est pas vraiment une actualité brûlante; en fait, c’est une actualité tous les jours depuis bien longtemps tant le phénomène est récurrent. Personnellement, disons que cette actualité est dû à ce que la même semaine, j’ai eu deux interviews sur le phénomène eBay et une de ses excroissances, Paypal. La première mardi à La Facture; l’autre vendredi soir à J.E.

Pour voir les deux reportages, aller ici:

– La Facture
– J.E.

Dans les deux cas, on évoque le problème suivant: un vendeur vend un produit par eBay; produit ayant suffisamment de valeur pour justifier d’utiliser l’intermédiaire . . . [more]