Tonight the Canada Council awards this year’s Killam Prizes – which come with a cheque for $100,000.

The Social Sciences winner is Ottawa’s Constance Backhouse. . . . [more]

The Globe and Mail features an article in yesterday’s paper about the Supreme Court Advocacy Institute, an organization that puts together mock sessions to help lawyers who are about to appear in front of the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Institute organized mock court hearings for 20 percent of all the cases heard last year by Canada’s highest court, according to the newspaper. Some of Canada’s top litigators volunteer their time to act as judges:

“Like musicologists discussing a classical composition, the ‘judges’ then take apart a lawyer’s arguments and suggest where they may fall flat, distract the judges

At the WWDC keynote address by Apple earlier today, an updated version of the iPhone was released. Steve Jobs is informally calling it “iPhone 2.0”, and a video of customers who beta tested the mobile phone is included in the usual slick keynote video.

This time around, U.S.-based firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP beta tested the phone for two months. One of the features of the updated iPhone is the new integration with Microsoft Exchange so that firms and other PC-centric organizations can have push email, scheduling and contacts from Microsoft Outlook.

Will the iPhone overtake the upcoming Blackberry . . . [more]

Digital Research Tools (DiRT)

This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively. Whether you need software to help you manage citations, author a multimedia work, or analyze texts, Digital Research Tools will help you find what you’re looking for. We provide a directory of tools organized by research activity, as well as reviews of select tools in which we not only describe the tool’s features, but also explore how it might be employed most effectively by researchers.

I like the way the table . . . [more]

“Draft it yourself,” that is, using the wiki set up for that purpose by McGill University’s Centre for Intellectual Property Policy (cipp).

It’s interesting to see the points made by the cipp folks to try to get the wiki to work for such a serious and exacting project:

• Like any wiki, justify your comments, add links, etc.
• Let’s be serious. If we want this to be an alternative piece of legislation, we have to be balanced. (David Lametti, for example, would personally like to see copyright’s term reduced radically and the re-imposition of a registration requirement, but he appreciates that

One of the highlights of this year’s CALL conference was the presentation by Darlene Fichter on Web 2.0 which kicked off our conference program Monday morning. I was privileged to introduce Darlene, who is Coordinator of the Data Library Services at the University of Saskatchewan and Advisor on Emerging Technologies, as well as consultant and project manager on various website, portal, library and intranet projects. Her talk was delightful. These slides which she posted to Slideshare for us only partially capture her lively presentation.

I love those gophers! During her presentation Darlene identified that . . . [more]

Jason Eiseman, Computer Automation Librarian at Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt, an Oregon law firm, has produced a three part tutorial for law librarians on using RSS. The tuts run as Flash movies with sound. The introduction runs 6 minutes, using an aggregator 13 minutes and advanced RSS 16 minutes. Since RSS is still very much a minority taste among legal workers, these tuts might prove quite useful. . . . [more]

A few Slawyers are currently in Saskatoon at the annual conference of CALL/ACBD. On Sunday we held business meetings of the various committees and special interest groups, as well as held a Vendor Liaison Committee Open Forum to discuss publisher/vendor issues, followed by demonstrations by a number of the vendors.

A few trends to report back:

• During the Vendor Liaison Committee Open Forum the publishers asked about reducing the number of paper catalogues they produce both to be more environmentally friendly and no doubt to also reduce costs as catalogues are expensive to produce and print. One suggestion was

Toronto is gearing up for the social media conference Mesh starting tomorrow. This is the first time I have seen a mobile application created for a conference: Sweet Caesar has created an application for both Blackberry and iPhone that:

* gives full conference schedule
* shows speaker pictures and bios
* provides Floor plans and surrounding area map
* allows participants to give feedback for speakers and events

This is ideal for participants relying on hand-held devices rather than laptops or macbooks. Early reaction has been extremely positive.

. . . [more]

CALL/ACBD’s annual conference is quickly approaching. This year we are meeting in beautiful Saskatoon. There is still time to register if you have not yet done so! Also, the pre-conference workshop on Saturday, May 24th is the Law Library Leadership Institute looks outstanding.

If you go, please say hello. . . . [more]

For some time there’s been a movement at Osgoode Hall Law School to change the degree awarded graduates from the LL.B. to the J.D. Recently the President of the Alumni Association reported that of the 500 or so alumni who responded to a survey on the matter, “approximately 90%” were in favour of the change, and that a vote by the current students found 75% of them in favour. (Note: Osgoode creates 300 alumni each year.) The issue now goes to the law school’s academic policy committee for consideration.

<rant>For what it’s worth, I’m agin’ it. The University of Toronto . . . [more]

The Faculty of Law at the University of British Columbia has concluded an agreement with their counterpart at the University of Hong Kong to offer a joint program that will give their graduates the opportunity to practice in both jurisdictions. From the press release:

The Faculties of Law at UBC and HKU will each accept up to five students per year, starting in 2009. All students enrolled in the program will be able to earn the law degrees required — subject to admission and completion of the professional course requirements — for law practice in an additional jurisdiction, that