[This is the first of a two-part column on open access and public access to Canadian legal scholarship within the free law movement. This week (October 21-27, 2013) is International Open Access Week. This annual global event, now entering its sixth year, is organized by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to promote the goals of Open Access to the public generally but especially within the academic and research communities, to demonstrate its benefits and to inspire wider participation in making Open Access a new norm in scholarly publishing. The . . . [more]

… am an Information Addict. Information overload, also known as infobesity or infoxication, is a constant in my life. How about yours? Both conferences I attended this summer had sessions on time management, organization, workflow, productivity; topics that are directly related to how well we cope with the amount of information in our lives and the work that we produce using it. So I know I’m not alone on this island.

My quandary exists in that I want to get the most out of both my professional and personal life. Each feeds the other, and yet it is extremely important . . . [more]

The promise of technologies related to the semantic web is coming closer to realization. These innovations have interesting potential as ways to provide better navigation of legal information and to work as infrastructure to encourage innovation in both software development and content generation. This could be achieved by providing the means to separate the development of applications, the production of secondary content, and the development and maintenance of databases of primary legal information. This is important for legal researchers as it has the potential to remove the barriers among publishers’ platforms and facilitate better utilization of content from multiple sources. . . . [more]

Readers of SLAW know that, as a rule, librarians are passionate about their collections, and despite negative stereotypes, they embrace the electronic resources and developments with alacrity, often way ahead of the pack. (For example, in 1998, the librarian community were among the earliest adopters of, and overwhelmingly enthusiasts for, the new Google search engine, with is simple clean lines and lack of advertising – such a contrast to the AltaVista, Ask Jeeves  and Excite interfaces in use at the time.)

Where practical and useful for the organisation, librarians equally maintain the book resources for which they have responsibility. . . . [more]

The Internet has eroded traditional sources of authority. Where once the Encyclopedia Britannica was a final word on many subjects, Wikipedia now reigns supreme. A decade or two ago, the annual Information Please almanac with its sweet index could settle all arguments, now a Google search will do. A highly articulated structure of editors and review panels once guarded the mountain top of cognitive authority. But no more. The retrieval of information no longer troubles us, sorting out the glut of data is the trick. Yet one source holds sway in the world of legal information: The Uniform System of . . . [more]

Lawyers and researchers looking into legal issues in international business transactions face a changing research landscape. Traditional tools for cross-border research are falling by the wayside. Lexis stopped updating the Martindale-Hubbell International Law Digests (summaries of foreign law authored by local law firms) after the 2011 edition. Lexis last updated its (now archived) International Multi-Jurisdictional Surveys in 2009. Westlaw no longer includes access to Practising Law Institute (PLI) course materials. Many researchers find print looseleafs difficult to use. Luckily, new research tools are filling the gap. Researchers looking into issues in transnational transactions have some really great, viable online options . . . [more]

Whether you are starting your career, are mid-career or are winding down, you should take time to recharge. Ever since 1975, one of my favorite ways to refresh lagging enthusiasm for the rigors and routines of work has been to go to the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). In the early days I was energized by meeting new people and learning new skills. As the years rolled by, my excitement was in honing skills and in catching up with the many friends I made over the course of my career. Now that I am retired, . . . [more]

It is challenging for law firm libraries to measure the performance of their libraries. Traditional library metrics are less helpful for law firm libraries compared to public or academic libraries; for example, circulation statistics are often used as an indicator of library usage and what parts of the library collection are in highest demand. In law firm libraries, many of the materials are used primarily in the library or are signed out to a single lawyer for months (in some cases for years) at a time. The circulation statistics for a given book will therefore suggest that it was never . . . [more]

Recently I had the great opportunity to attend two seemingly opposite conferences addressing the duality my professional life has taken on. Going directly from one to the other, I became aware immediately that lessons learned from one could be applied to the other: the similarities and differences very illuminating to problems both sets of professionals are experiencing.

One of the great things about my position as the Executive Director of the Toronto Lawyers Association is that I’ve been introduced to a whole new galaxy of professionals … the people that make up the Canadian Society of Association Executives. They are . . . [more]

During the closing session of the Canadian Bar Association’s Envisioning Equal Justice Summit: Building Justice for Everyone, held in Vancouver in April, we were asked to come up with one idea from each table to help access to justice and to move justice reform forward. Through the lens of legal information and based on the sessions I attended Saturday, the thing I would like to discuss further is developing expertise in analyzing and explicating existing datasets and creating the structures to collect new data about the legal system to assist in evaluating the effectiveness of programs and demonstrating . . . [more]

[I begin this column with an aside. Because I will be discussing The Canadian Abridgment, the nonpareil of Canadian legal information, I want to give any non-Canadian readers some context. For American colleagues, The Canadian Abridgment (published by Carswell and now in its third edition) is similar to West’s digest system (General Digest, Decennial Digest), with Canadian counterparts of Shepard’s Citations and the Current Law Index included for good measure. The Abridgment’s Australian counterpart is the Australian Digest. The foregoing digest services are all published by that jurisdiction’s local Thomson Reuters law publisher. The closest . . . [more]

Massive open online courses or MOOCs seem to be popping up everywhere. I first noticed the term in the advance flyer for Law via the Internet 2013. Then I began seeing it more often so I decided to explore this new phenomenon both for myself and to share through this blog. I wanted to learn if such courses could be useful for law librarians, law professors, law students and practicing lawyers

The three major names in the world of MOOCs are:

• edX, a non-profit consortium of universities offering 60 courses, five of which are law-related.
• Coursera,