I know this entry is not likely to set many (if any) lawyerly hearts a-flutter, but I thought the discovery worth mentioning in any event, because it shows the value and power of digitization of records and their distribution on the internet. The scholarly, and recondite, journal Russell “is devoted to the study of all aspects of Bertrand Russell’s thought as well as his life, times and influence.” First published in 1971 by McMaster University Library, where much Russellania is held, the journal was recently digitized and made available to the world about a month ago. As the editor, Ken . . . [more]

Hello everyone. I just swapped emails with Simon and it looks like our comments database problems are thankfully coming to an end. Over the past couple days Simon has put in countless hours on our behalf, trying to recover what must be thousands of hours of our cumulative work.

So this is a quick note to say, Slaw doesn’t exist without you, Simon. We all know that, and we know this has been a very stressful time. And let me be the first to say it … Thank-you for your work over the past few days. And over the past . . . [more]

There has been a recent redesign of the ABA Journal website with all sorts of interesting features.

• There is a constantly updated daily news section
• There is a section of news articles organized by topic.
• There is a very well-organized blawg directory (broken down into topical categories, author type, region and law school). At the moment, the editors have only identified 13 Canadian blawgs.
• There is a feature showing the most read articles of the day, the past 7 days and the past 30 days.
• There is another feature showing the most popular blawgs of the day, past 7

Do you or any of the lawyers in your firm use LinkedIn as an effective business development tool? Please send them over to this question posted by Janet Ellen Raasch, who frequently writes articles for the CBA National, to share their experiences.

Janet is looking for responses from Canadian lawyers in particular, and any help would be much appreciated! . . . [more]

I’m delighted to announce that Evan VanDyk is joining Slaw as a core contributor. Evan is a recent Osgoode grad and was a founding member with me on The Court and is a seasoned blogger. He’s also, not incidentally, clerking this year at the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Welcome to Slaw, Evan. . . . [more]

I just had a read of Peggy Garvin’s current The Government Domain column in LLRX.com, and wanted to bring it to the attention of Slaw readers. The sites that Peggy reviews, most of which are drawn from a list compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, are wonderfully – I don’t know about insanely – useful components of a U.S. government/legal research toolbox. As is pointed out in the column, many of the sites take essentially a mash-up approach to information derived from the venerable THOMAS and GPO Access. It has been some time since I carried out any . . . [more]

…”What the world looks like today, and where it is headed” How can you not love the chutzpah of a lead heading like that? The fact is, not everyone has loved the material that follows in the report University Publishing in a Digital Age [PDF], put out by Ithaka, a U.S. not-for-profit that works closely with JSTOR and Portico to “accelerate the productive uses of information technologies for the benefit of higher education worldwide.” (See the Inside Higher Ed report and comments for a variety of responses to the report.)

How will the world of scholarly publishing be? Unsurprisingly, . . . [more]

The University of Alberta Libraries have created a Facebook application that lets Facebook users look at the library catalogue, use RefWorks and perform other library functions without leaving the snug confines of Facebook.

Are we heading back to the future, where Facebook is the new AOL or Compuserve and the world is seen from within its borders? Clearly there is a general struggle in virtual land to create the space within which it all happens — whether it’s iGoogle or Netvibes or some other proto-webOS — as if the actual “world” of the internet is simply too big and people . . . [more]

Via Boing Boing, a link to Law is Code, which discusses a demonstration that legalese has more in common with software than literature. . . . [more]

We’ve talked briefly about paper for the paperless office, and now it’s printers that are in the news. “Particle Emission Characteristics of Office Printers,” by Congrong He, Lidia Morawska, and Len Taplin in Environmental Science & Technology [abstract], has kicked up a dust storm because of its finding that 40% of printers studied emitted particles when printing, 27% being “high emitters.” The particles are small and can find their way into your alveoli, apparently, from where they may enter the bloodstream.

Digital Koans has a good overview and citations to a number of online articles and reports. . . . [more]

Good news and bad news. The good news is that you can now leave comments on Slaw once again. The bad news is that we have not yet been able to restore most of the comments that have already been made. We are continuing to work on it. Please bear with us. . . . [more]

Today — the first Monday in August — is a holiday in most of Canada (Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Yukon are the exceptions) — which is a good thing, because we’re still working hard here at solving the problem that’s blocking access to our large (over 3000) and valuable (because you wrote them) comments. I hope to have good news by the end of the day, and will pass on the status of comments then, whether good or bad. . . . [more]