Marilyn Johnson is a fan of libraries. And librarians. She came to this appreciation while researching The Dead Beat (a book about obituary writers). To her, it seemed that librarians had the most interesting obituaries! So when the time came for a second book, librarians seemed a natural focus. The result is This Book is Overdue : How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us.

“I wrote the book originally to teach myself how to get more technologically savvy, and I wrote it for my parents, who I know felt like the computer age had zoomed of and left them in . . . [more]

It’s easy to forget that the first and often the last interaction most of us have each day with our legal technology involves logging into – or out of – our trusty desktop machine. And that makes a lot of sense, because it’s typically the nexus of practically all that we do each day, from e-mail to web research to practice management and beyond. And yet the legal technology press is abuzz about how to ‘get into the cloud’ or ‘the perils of entering the cloud’ or the latest SaaS application that enables practice management for the price of a . . . [more]

Victory is in the air this week in biotech. Not all news was good — early stage venture capital and U.S. biotech company Tengion have had better weeks — but mostly… victory.

The Gairdner Awards announced its 51st set of winners, highlighting the usual range of amazing advances in molecular biology and honouring local biotech maven Dr. Cal Stiller for “outstanding leadership in medicine and medical science.”

BIOTECanada also announced awards. for companies went to OncoGenex , iCo Therapeutics and CO2 Solution. The presentation will be at the BIO conference in May.

Many companies were victorious in the marketplace . . . [more]

The full 111 page decision of Judge Oscar Magi of the Milan Ordinary Tribunal imposing liability on Google was released today and is available here.

Slaw readers may recall that on February 24 Judge Magi imposed six-month sentences (suspended) on three Google executives for allowing the posting on Google Video of a mobile-phone video showing a handicapped youth being harassed by his Turin classmates in September 2006. The company took two months to remove the video, which was posted in Google Italia’s “Most Fun Videos” section and received 5,500 hits before being removed.

“La Rete non è una prateria . . . [more]

I didn’t realize that on January 27th the Government of Canada had ordered a review under the Investment Canada Act to determine if the investment by Amazon.com in a fulfillment centre for Amazon.ca would be of benefit to Canada. Today the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages announced this has been approved, based on the following commitments made by Amazon:

• new jobs for Canadians and improved service for Canadian consumers;
• increased visibility for Canadian books on the Amazon.ca Web page;
• an investment of over $20 million, including $1.5 million in cultural events and awards in Canada and the promotion

A recent judgment of the England and Wales High Court, Kaschke v Gray & Anor [2010] EWHC 690 (QB), dealt with a potential libel that occurred in a post on a blog, Labourhome.org, that opens its facilities to “Labour grassroots” to “discuss the issues important to them.” As OutLaw.com, which has the story, says

Hilton claimed in his defence against the libel charge that, though he ran the site, he did not edit or vet the articles and should qualify for the same safe harbour that was granted to search engines or ISPs.

That safe harbour is granted under . . . [more]

Every year at this time librarians from across North America (and the odd one from other parts of the world) gather together in Crystal City, Arlington, VA for the Computers in Libraries conference. This year almost 1,500 delegates are attending. All aspects of technology in libraries is covered, from the computers that make the catalogue and library records hum all the way to the social media presence of libraries. Focus tends to be on service, so there is a great human element in the discussion, not just bits and bytes.

It is one of my favourite conferences, where I truly . . . [more]

In this talk from O’Reilly Media’s Where 2.0 2010 conference, Walter Scott of DigitalGlobe discusses imagery techniques available today using images from satellites and airplanes. He discusses accuracy and the related manipulation of data sets. Data and imagery previously only available to governments is now becoming more widely available. Now depth maps of the ocean can also be made. Graphic processing units from the gaming industry can be leveraged to provide advanced geospatial-type imagery. Before and after images can now also be more effectively used to accurately track changes in what is happening on the ground. Data available from DigitalGlobal’s . . . [more]

About 600 legal aid certificates are typically given out a year for civil cases in Ontario, a practice that appears to have ended.

The Toronto Star reports that starting April 1 coverage was eliminated for a number of claims including, “lawsuits seeking damages for abuse, claims for reinstatement of disability insurance, malicious prosecution, assault or wrongful detention, mortgage actions and personal injury claims…”

Kristian Justesen, a spokesperson for Legal Aid Ontario, has indicated that contingency fee arrangements in the province allow lawyers to take on these cases as an alternative to legal aid, and that funding was often . . . [more]

As of April Fool’s day, the U.K. Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) has changed its copyright license to something that harmonizes well with a Creative Commons license. After a report on how the public reacted to the traditional Crown copyright notice, OPSI began to develop a license modelled on those used by Creative Commons.

The new license already operates on the impressive data.gov.uk site, the launch of which we reported on Slaw back in January. The following paragraph occurs near the end of the new, plain language license:

Creative Commons

These terms have been aligned to be interoperable

I suspect that I have dated myself by referencing the British pop hit from Bananarama; however the lyrics are relevant in appreciating those components of a successful eDiscovery project. It seems that at almost every eDiscovery meeting a client initially starts off by requesting confirmation as to “what tool are you using?”

I suggest that there is too much emphasis on what “tool” we are using, while forgetting two other key elements in any successful technology application or deployment; process and people. Having conducted investigations and eDiscovery projects for over 12 years, where I have leveraged technology in finding the . . . [more]

♫ Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light…♫

Lyrics by Francis Scott Key (who was a lawyer), music by John Stafford Smith.

Lawyers today are concerned about metadata and not transmitting same to another lawyer or their own client when they electronically send a document.

Most of us use “Track Changes” in Microsoft Word when working on a document to note the changes/additions/deletions done by others. Once that process is over, the typical next step is to agree to the changes in the document to produce a non-red-lined version ( or ‘clean copy’) as it . . . [more]