…catches me on the hop today. So, something simple, something done automagically for me.

We deal in meaning, all of us Slawyers. So it’s sometimes just the thing to banish it from our lives, which is what The Eater of Meaning does. You feed it your website URL, tell it how much it may consume and wearing what sort of bib (so to speak), and out comes the kind of website that is perfectly suited to a Friday afternoon.

I fed it Slaw a while back and in the first go told it to eat whole words. The second time . . . [more]

This is hardly about law but I’m sure we can make a connection; however, it does have something to do with research and libraries:
George W. Bush’s Presidential Library: A Room of His Own – (2007) 382:8520 The Economist 58. Apparently Southern Methodist University has been selected as the site for George W. Bush’s Presidential Library; with some misgivings.

The process as detailed in Wikipedia: George W. Bush Presidential Library selection.

…. so many places I could take this… but I’m going to restrain myself. However, I wonder who can come up with the best crack in the . . . [more]

Michael Geist reports that MIT Libraries has cancelled a subscription to a product that required them to download and apply a DRM program. One professor pointed out that the publisher was adamant about protecting ‘its’ IP, but in fact the content of the database, like many in the legal world, consists of research produced at universities and handed over for free. . . . [more]

I had missed last week’s BBC Magazine which starts a Blog column based upon hand-drawn diagrams like this:

It’s described (somewhat pedestrianly) as

a neat analysis of modern life, all incorporated into that underused medium of index cards, the type of which one would have found in the pre-computer school library.

The original site is well worth finding.

Here is another image:

Whimsy for a Friday, even if it’s not the Fillip . . . [more]

Stanford University has started an interdisciplinary research program, Clean Slate Design for the Internet, that asks the beguilingly simple questions: “With what we know today, if we were to start again with a clean slate, how would we design a global communications infrastructure?”, and “How should the Internet look in 15 years?”

The whitpaper for the project [PDF] makes this statement in its introductory overview:

We believe that the current Internet has significant deficiencies that need to be solved before it can become a unified global communication infrastructure. Further, we believe the Internet’s shortcomings will not be resolved by

Stanford Law School yesterday announced a settlement in the litigation over unpublished materials by the Joyce Family that we discussed last year.

The case resulted in a settlement not in the sort of authoritative court ruling that many had hoped for.

The work that had been cut from the book on Lucia Joyce will be published here – but it’s not live yet.

But at least one of the world’s most aggressive copyright plaintiffs has been pushed back somewhat.

. . . [more]

Yesterday, with no fanfare whatever (mea culpa), Slaw had the good fortune to acquire a new member. John Swan joined us as an occasional contributor. John is counsel at Aird & Berlis LLP in Toronto, supporting lawyers in that firm with respect to legal research and opinions. A teacher and an author, John will add much lustre to Slaw and certainly knows how to provoke us into a discussion: his mild, short first comment on CanLII has rapidly turned into the hottest thread here in quite a while.

Welcome John. . . . [more]

This is a week that I normally commune with geeks, bloggers and amateurs de toute technologique at the ABA’s TechShow in Chicago.

This year, it’s being chaired by Toronto’s own Dan Pinnington, who has become the fourth CanadianFollowing Chester, Tamminga and Bilinsky to chair the premium legal technology show.

I started going in 1986, which was before the Flood in technology terms, visiting the extraordinary Infomart in Dallas, which looked like a capsule from the future.

But this year, I’m following the adventure through the blogosphereDennis is sitting it out too.

If you’re a thirsty blogger (pleonastic I . . . [more]

This is a story that almost has it all: fast food, research tools, and the whiff of legal challenge. Meat and drink, so to speak, to the world of Slaw.

Word has it that McDonald’s has taken a scunner to the OED‘s inclusion of McJob, at least defined as it now isThe story is everywhere: a Canada.com link will suffice.:

McJob, n.
colloq. and depreciative (orig. U.S.).

    An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.

Apparently Mickey D’s has been around this block once before, when in . . . [more]

We’ve been having a discussion about CanLII’s new search forms, and lo and behold, BAILII announces a novel set of their own for caselaw, legislation, other materials, and a browse list. (Hat tip: beSpacific). Can’t say I remember how it used to be, so I can’t comment on the changes. I do think, though, that they might have made the interfaces a whole lot more pleasing to the eye, and therefore the mind.

May I suggest that comments on this be made in the discussion about CanLII’s new interface? I’d hate to have split up . . . [more]

Every year, Library Journal profiles 50 innovative North American librarians and other information professionals. This year, many of the “Movers & Shakers” selected are profiled for their creative uses of Web 2.0 technologies to develop and deliver amazing research services and products; they’re branded the “2.0 Gurus”. Here are some of them:

Amanda Etches-Johnson, Reference and User Experience Librarian, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario
-Started a library blog in 2003 and instant messaging reference in 2005

Casey Bisson, Information Architect, Lamson Library, Plymouth State University
-Using a plugin within a WordPress framework, he created a library catalogue called Scriblio (formerly WPopac) . . . [more]

The Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog commented earlier this week on a piece by the New York Times legal correspondent Adam Liptak who argues that the influence of law reviews is on a sharp decline [one has to register online to read the original Times piece]:

“Meanwhile, the law-review articles have become less readable and less relevant, as the best legal writers and legal minds have reserved their analyses for blogs or for supporting briefs they file in cases that interest them. Summarizing a recent discussion at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law about the dwindling influence