2012 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing Goes to JuriBistro UNIK

The 2012 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing was announced earlier this week at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries in Toronto.

This year’s Award goes to JuriBistro UNIK, the global search engine on the website of CAIJ, the network of courthouse libraries in Quebec.

With this single interface, one can simultaneously search Quebec Bar Association continuing education materials, the CAIJ catalogue, the full text of Quebec and federal caselaw and legislation, the full text of secondary literature from publisher Wilson & Lafleur, and the TOPO knowledgebase of answers by CAIJ researchers to more than 3000 questions from lawyers.

The Award honours a publisher (whether for-profit or not-for profit, corporate or non-corporate) that has demonstrated excellence by publishing a work, series, website or e-product that makes a significant contribution to legal research and scholarship.

Slaw.ca won the award in 2009.

Members of the Award Selection Committee were:

• Justice Eric (Rick) Libman, Ontario Court of Justice
• John Davis, Professor Emeritus, Osgoode Hall Law School
• Michael Decore, Manager of Information Resources and Access, Alberta Law Libraries
• George Tsiakos, Library Manager, Bull, Houser, Tupper, Vancouver

The 2012 Committee was chaired by CALL Past President, Rosalie Fox, who runs the library and information management branch at the Supreme Court of Canada.

The award, established by CALL in 1999, was renamed to honour Hugh Lawford (1933-2009), Professor of Law at Queens’ University and the founder of Quicklaw.