The current spate of stories concerning nations trying to limit the use of Blackberries, when combined with the recently floated ‘net neutrality’ agreement between Verizon and Google, is emblematic of the continuing invasion of the world of telecommunication by the world of governmental and corporate power. Almost two decades ago, I was on a panel with Professor Marge Shultz of the Berkeley Law School faculty, who made a remark that I have never forgotten. Professor Shultz opined that,

Our ability to make advances in technology is outpacing our ability to understand how such progress fits in with law and politics

I tend to live in the future. I think about what it will be like when I’ve paid off all my debts, how I’m going to celebrate a significant event coming up next year, and what my next job will look like. So last December, when the legal outsourcing firm Integreon announced the first “Shared Information Service”, or outsourced law library services, I was very intrigued. At the time, I remember thinking, “how are they going to do this?” I can understand outsourcing research (be it legal, business development or competitive intelligence), but how do you outsource the physical . . . [more]

Not all Slaw’s readers will be aware that Osgoode Hall Law School is being renovated; in fact, it might be more accurate to say the School is being rebuilt. The existing building has been completely gutted, all interior walls and finishes have been removed and everything is being reconfigured, redesigned and replaced. We’re also getting a large addition. For all intents and purposes, it will be a new law school – and this includes the library.

Since starting at Osgoode two years ago, nothing has consumed more of my time than planning the new Osgoode Hall Law School Library. . . . [more]

Introduction: Citizen Lawmaking Online

Citizen lawmaking seems ideally suited to today’s Web. Government social media and online deliberation resources, coupled with widespread access to broadband in many nations, and much improved Internet access to laws, combine to furnish citizens with abundant means for participating in the creation of laws online. The category of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that enable online citizen involvement in lawmaking has many names, including eConsultation, eDemocracy, eParliament, eParticipation, eRulemaking, and Dr. Beth Simone Noveck’s “collaborative democracy”.

In the U.S., citizens in many jurisdictions already have the . . . [more]

(or, how I used the G20 to my advantage)

The G20 was probably the biggest news story in Canada for at least a couple of days in June, and certainly for a longer period in Toronto. The preparations by the organizers of the summit were echoed by those of us living and working in the downtown. As we drew closer to the arrival of the world’s leaders, it became increasingly clear that Business As Usual was not an option. The clear message from the organizers was to stay clear of the downtown core if you possibly could. Hatches were battened, . . . [more]

What to do with print now that so much is online, and discussions of what’s the point of print are taking place well beyond the posts on Slaw. Working in a Legal Deposit library means I have had to take a step back, look at the issues, and accept a much more conservative approach than I might have done otherwise.

Before I start on legal deposit, I know two good reasons why print is important, and they are both to do with personal experience. Firstly, when there is an electricity blackout you cannot access the internet. Mostly this is not . . . [more]

A January article in Boing Boing talked about loose-leaf publications, marveling about their existence in the same way that the average marine biologist once marveled about the continuing existence of the coelacanth. I’m so used to having loose-leafs in a law firm library that I hadn’t considered that they might be considered a novelty elsewhere, but it started me wondering: are loose-leafs going to become the legal library equivalent of the coelacanth? Legal loose-leaf publishing has been around at least since 1915. These early loose-leaf services allowed legal publishers to produce up-to-date consolidations of legislation without having to reprint . . . [more]

On May 12, 2010, I attended the San Francisco manifestation of Carl Malamud’s road show on legal information. Carl has criss-crossed the United States putting on programs about government information in general, and legal information in particular. The San Francisco/ Berkeley version of the program included luminaries from the world of information, law, librarians and information cowboys. If you want to see my bit, here is a link.

Questions like, “How can we organize a movement to determine exactly what types of information states already make available digitally?” sat side by side with questions like, “Can I get Twitter . . . [more]

Almost two decades have passed since the United Nations began digitizing its documents. The UN started the Official Document System (ODS) as a pilot project in 1992, and officially launched it in 1993. Since then, there has been an explosion of UN documents and publications available in electronic format from a variety of sources, for free and via subscription. I recently checked the current status of UN documentation online, and here’s what I found. And what I expected to find, and didn’t. And some worrisome developments.

Discovery Tools

UNBISnet, the UN Dag Hammarskjöld Library bibliographic information system, indexes e-versions . . . [more]

Info, info everywhere, nor any place to shelve. (With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.)

In a library, information overload can mean a physical overload as well as mental. Reporting series, annual statutes, conference papers all take up shelf room; how do you know what to keep and what can safely be turfed? One of my colleagues recently called and asked if I kept a particular item on my shelves. No, I didn’t, since it was officially available online. After all, shelves do eventually fill up, and if some other organization is willing . . . [more]

“How are things in the library?” A door opens – not the elevator door, but the door of opportunity. Are you ready?

The concept of the “elevator speech” has been popping up all over the place lately. At the Ontario Government Libraries Council AGM, keynote speaker Farida Karim challenged us to come up with a 30-second synopsis of what our libraries do. Umair Haque, blogging for The Harvard Business Review, has dumped the elevator speech in favour of the Dumbwaiter Speech. In other reading, I’ve seen librarians chastised because they are unable to explain what their library does in . . . [more]

At the awards luncheon at the recent CALL conference (Canadian Association of Law Libraries) in Windsor, ON, the Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing was presented to the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society Library & Information Services for their Nova Scotia Annotated Civil Procedure Rules service. CALL’s decision to present this award to this organization for this product is significant for two reasons: First, it justly recognizes an innovative and extremely useful new legal publication; second, and perhaps more important, it has been awarded by librarians to librarians for their publishing activity. As we move deeper into the digital . . . [more]