The French continue to battle to see to it that the web contains as much serious material as possible originating from outside the United States (and that is in languages other than English).See, e.g, Simon Chester’s post We Have Seen the Enemy – And it’s Name is Google. Europeana is a recent part of this effort:

Europeana est un prototype de bibliothèque en ligne développé par la Bibliothèque nationale de France, dans le cadre du projet de Bibliothèque numérique européenne.

Europeana rassemble environ 12 000 documents libres de droits issus des collections de la BnF, de la Bibliothèque Nationale

I’m reluctant to introduce commercial content to SLAW; however, I think some kudos should go to Heinonline for some of the excellent work they are doing in building theme related collections of digital documents from disparate library holdings. I know from previous postings on SLAW that some Toronto law firms are considering subscribing to Hein. One of their new releases is the World Trials Collectiosn which they describe in a brief summary as collections of famous trials from libraries around the world, and from antiquarian book dealers, as well as books that analyze and debate famous trials, as well as . . . [more]

My friend Ron Friedmann of Prism Legal Consulting recently delivered an interesting presentation to an American legal publishing audience that has lots of resonance here too.
Legal Publishers in 2007 and Beyond Ron’s PowerPoint deck is here.
Legal publishers play an important role in the legal market. They have moved from print, to digital content, to assembling an array of services. How will changing technology affect publishers? . . . [more]

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal attacking the constitutionality of a provision in federal legislation providing that detainees in Guantanamo cannot challenge their detentions in US civil courts. Three judges — Breyer, Souter and Ginsbert, JJ. — dissented; and two of the majority rejected the application on procedural grounds.

According to a report by BBC News:

The court’s majority opinion was that “the will of Congress” should prevail and that habeas corpus did not apply to foreign nationals being held at Guantanamo Bay because it is not US soil.

See also the Reuters report in . . . [more]

Erica Anderson, Research Librarian at the Legislative Library, Ontario, asked me to post this news to SLAW:

A collaboration between the Ontario Legislative Library and the Ontario Council of University Libraries’ Scholar’s Portal has resulted in the Legislative Library’s Ontario government documents collection now being available through OZone. This collection is also accessible through the Legislative Library catalogue. The OZone partnership and database will help to ensure the digital preservation of these materials for the long term, create a permanent url for the documents, and housing multiple copies in these two locations will help keep the collection safe

I’m trying, over on the blawg about the Supreme Court of Canada – The Court [www.thecourt.ca] – to start a discussion about the adequacy (or not) of the SCC’s performance in private law areas that generally fall under the “obligations” rubric, although I’ve started it by using tort & damages cases.

My theme is the adequacy of judgments from the perspective of the practitioners who have to use them to advise clients. I’m sure the problem has arisen, recently, in areas other than those I’ve mentioned. Somebody could mention the punitive damages jurisprudence. The thread could expand, of course, to . . . [more]

In the paper world, I make use of document piles to organize my work. You probably do the same. This pile here is such-and-so, that pile there is the tax material, and the red file sticking out has the notes I’ve been making… But on my computer I tend to go neat and hierarchical, with a more rigid taxonomy and maybe overlapping (i.e. piles) of windows. Not so easy to have an intelligent mess, perhaps.

At least, that’s the theory behind BumpTop, a technology in the development stage that would let you make piles of files on your computer . . . [more]

Quick – sign up for Google’s TiSP before they pull the plug.

Have a safe, enjoyable, Pranks Day, and don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want done to you.

Cheers,

David

  . . . [more]