The Times Higher Education Supplement pointed me to the Britannica Blog (yes, that Britannica). The particular issue is Michael Gorman’sHe was president of ALA (2005-2006) and has held lots of significant posts in the library world. See his bio on the blog. two-part attack on the sloppy research that Google et al. lead to and on the tools themselves, it would seem — indeed the whole technological milieu.

Doubtless a lot of what he has to say is deliberate “link baiting,” but the discussion in the comments takes him seriously most of the time, and the level of the debate . . . [more]

Thomson Gale has added its West’s Encyclopedia of American Law to Answers.com, in their Law Encyclopedia Topics section. From what I can tell this is a sponsored addition.

This is quite handy for looking up discussion on legal topics with a U.S. perspective, especially if your library does not have U.S. materials in a certain area. Access is free and arranged alphabetically, or may come up in an Answers.com search. This is just one of several tools in the Answers.com arsenal of resources, the most famous of which is Wikipedia.

To see what reference sources are being added . . . [more]

There’s a short article on Law.com’s Legal Technology page, “Covering the Bases of Electronic Discovery” by Michael A. Gold, that might prove to be a useful introduction to the U.S. situation and, therefore, to the complexities of e-discovery generally.

The last word from Gold:

As in-house lawyers become more savvy about e-discovery under the new rules, outside lawyers will not be able to fake the level of expertise their corporate clients will come to routinely expect. Even a longstanding relationship with the client will not remain stable very long if outside counsel cannot convince a general counsel that

“What’s New on the Legal Web” (June 18, 2007) highlights some new sites that are handy when doing legal research. Some good ones:

Constitution Finder
From the University of Richmond School of Law, this database contains worldwide constitutions, charters, amendments and other related documents.

Litilaw
Contains hundreds of articles written by lawyers for CLE programs or for publication in legal journals.

Actual Innocence Awareness Database
Created by the Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas School of Law, it tracks developments related to wrongful convictions. . . . [more]

Terrific, informative article from globeandmail.com,:

Media stardom is pricey: Part of the attraction of blogs is that they seemed to live outside the law. That turns out to be not quite true
by Mathew Ingram (June 16, 2007)

This article has some interesting points that help to really highlight how blogging in Canada differs from blogging in the U.S.:

Earlier this week, Steelback Brewery president Frank D’Angelo filed a $2-million libel suit against Ottawa-based blogger Neate Sager for making what he says are disparaging comments about him.

In another recent case, Montreal art-gallery owner Chris (Zeke) Hand has found

I came across this article on the BBC site a couple of weeks ago (but am blogging about it now because my head is only now above water). I found the story interesting on a few points, including both the size and the rapidity of growth of the mobile market in India, as well as the volume of unsolicited calls/texts to those subscribers:

India has the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, with more than 170 million subscribers.

Every month around seven million new subscribers are added to the list.

The telecom regulator estimates that about 10 billion

The May 2007 issue of the Global Legal Monitor is available on the site of the Law Library of Congress.

It is a publication of the Law Library of Congress that provides regular updates on legal developments from around the world. The current issue covers topics ranging from abortion to women.

Cross-posted to Library Boy. . . . [more]

A few weeks ago I mentioned that some of the SLA Legal Division 2007 presentations were available on its web site. A few more are up, and I think some are worth highlighting. I found the presentations from the emerging technologies breakfast interesting, particularly Nathan Rosen’s presentation, which highlights and links to many legal wikis which either I wasn’t aware of or are on sites I hadn’t used in a long time. Thomas Fleming’s Legal Research for the Google Generation contains some points that may be useful for those of us designing training for incoming students. A good . . . [more]

There’s a small database (n=142) of selected articles published by law librarians in legal journals on an AALL site. Note that the database is generated and housed by Baseportal, a free way of making your data available and useful to others. . . . [more]

THOSE PERSONS WHO Are Not To Be Tried While They Hold a Magistracy or the Imperium. A dictator, consul, praetor, master of the horse, censor, aedile, plebeian tribune, quaestor, triumvir capitalis, triumvir for granting and assigning lands, or military tribune in any of the first four legions shall not be summoned to court as long as he holds a magistracy or the imperium … It is not the intent of this law that anyone of those who retires from such magistracy or command shall not be summoned to court.

Interesting to see that the Romans, too, had issues with the . . . [more]

A very interesting event on the microcontent front, technology publisher O’Reilly will start selling their books by the chapter in PDF format. From the press release:

Sebastopol, CA–In today’s Web 2.0 driven publishing marketplace, it takes new and creative strategies to get authors and their work noticed by web savvy readers. But even when it is noticed, today’s readers increasingly want content in new and convenient ways that suit their digital lifestyles. Along with traditional print formats, they want content they can read on computers, PDAs, and cell phones. For this reason O’Reilly Media–the pioneering publishing company that coined the

Tired of getting your news in the same old way. For a break, try the Fontself Newsmaker. You get to choose from 11 traditional news sources — BBC, Le Monde, El Pais etc. — and from five hand-drawn fonts in which to read the news. You can also read a feed of your choice in the Newsmaker, as you can see below in the excerpt from the prior post on Slaw.

. . . [more]