Comparing Sources
Last week Steve Matthews highlighted the newley redesigned Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research. Congratulations to Catherine Best for providing a great content to the legal community and providing it in a lovely package. I have been a gushing fan of this site for years.
Every year at the Head Start program in Edmonton, we highlight the Suggested Textbooks portion of the site. With the recent redesign, I hope that we will also discuss the portion of the site called Making Good Choices: Canadian Electronic Research Sources.
I appreciate the time an effort that Catherine has put into sharing the evaluation criteria for research tools, discussing the search interfaces, comparing the case law and legislation content, and the citators. I also appreciate the search syntax comparisons:
Search syntax for Quicklaw, Westlaw and CanLII
Search syntax for Hein Online, Irwin eBrary and Folio View Infobases
Search syntax for court websites
Search syntax for BAILII and AUSTLII
The syntax charts are a nice expansion on The Joy of Wildcards posted by Susannah Tredwell in 2011.
I look forward to sharing the Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research with my new students.
Shaunna, thanks for your kind words about the site. I am happy that it is useful for your student training.
And I am really pleased that the re-design has highlighted parts of the site that have been around for a long time but are now more accessible, like the Making Good Choices material and the syntax charts.
To all Slaw readers – please feel free to let me know by email or through the various social media options on the site if I am missing your favourite texts in the Suggested Textbooks list, or if you notice parts of the site that need correction or updating. Legal research is such a moving target!