I have my fingers and toes crossed that an Apple Store in Michigan can hook me up with a shiny new iPad tomorrow. I am flying through Detroit on my way to the CALL/MichALL 2010 Conference in Windsor. An iPad is an early birthday present since an e-reader has been on my must have list for a while. Now that I can acquire an e-reader on steroids, I can’t wait any longer. Canadians have to wait for the iPad release, and since I can’t reserve over the phone, or online without a US mailing address, I just have to make . . . [more]

Updated versions of Peg Duncan’s amazing Canadian focused e-discovery reading list and case law digests have just been posted, respectively, on the e-discovery page on practicePRO’s website and on the Ontario Bar Association’s site. Both are extremely helpful resources for lawyers that need to deal with electronic discovery related issues.

Cross posted on Avoid a Claim . . . [more]

I recently attended the KMWorld web event “Developing a Knowledge Sharing Culture in the 21st Century.” The speaker, Ashley Gorringe from Google Enterprise, provided some insights into Google’s vision of cloud computing and how it can create a culture that allows all aspects of an organization to move insync. Here are some highlights from the discussion:

Characteristics of work tools that are designed for today’s knowledge worker:

• Utilize the power of networks. Must be social.
• Not tied to a desktop computer.
• Can access information and projects very quickly.
• Must work on mobile devices.
• Access information anytime and from anywhere.

We note with sadness the passing of Margaret Banks the Doyenne of Canada’s law librarians. She died on Thursday at the age of 81. Slaw readers of a certain age will remember her meticulous work “Using a law library: a guide for students and lawyers in the common law provinces of Canada” which went through six editions between 1974 and 1994. . . . [more]

A number of groups have taken to Twitter for weekly scheduled chats. The conversation from everyone (whether you have them in your Twitter contacts list or not) is pulled together with a designated tag. Of course, this only works if you have a public Twitter account; with closed accounts only those who follow you will see your part of the conversation.

One of the latest entries into the Twitter chat arena is KMers, organized by Robert Swanwick, affectionately known to everyone as Swan. KMers covers topics in the area of Knowledge Management.

Previous chat events have included:

• The Changing

Despite the debate about whether tweets are a valid form of writing and what Google and the Library of Congress are doing with tweet archives, privacy etc., I want to write about archiving twitter streams. Perhaps if I put my thoughts out there (on the web) I believe I will be able to find those thoughts later when I need them. In 140 character thought bytes.

Steve has written about the value of tweeting at a conference and Simon F. has written about archiving tweets, but things have changed a bit (byte) as they tend to do.

The Legal . . . [more]

Many of you already know the Index to Canadian Legal Literature (ICLL), LegalTrac, or the Index to Legal Periodicals on Quicklaw.

Here is another online source of Canadian legal journals.

The Scott Index to Canadian Legal Periodical Literature is now available on the website of CAIJ (Centre d’accès à l’information juridique), the network of 38 libraries serving members of the Barreau du Québec and the province’s judiciary.

The Index, a print-only product, was created in the early 60s by Marianne Scott. Scott was law librarian at McGill from 1955 to 1973, lecturer in the Faculty of Law from 1964 to . . . [more]

Connie Crosby and I will be co-presenting with two American law library colleagues (Jane Edwards and Marlene Coir) in a few weeks at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries in Windsor, this year a joint conference with the Michigan Association of Law Libraries.

Our topic is “Legal Research Free and Fast!” and we will be making available a jointly-authored paper that provides an overview and analysis of “free” versus “fee” online research tools.

My personal challenge for the presentation – and I assume perhaps a challenge shared by my co-panelists – is what free Internet-based, law-related . . . [more]

I decided I needed to educate myself a little when I saw Paul Lomio’s post (April 26, 2010) on Legal Research Plus: “What If Law Journal Citations Included Digital Object Identifiers? A Snapshot of Major Law Journals“. The post referenced an article by Benjamin J. Keele, abstracted (March 18, 2010) on SSRN: “What If Law Journal Citations Included Digital Object Identifiers? A Snapshot of Major Law Journals“.

The abstract began in a way which made me skeptical:

Prevailing citation practice in law journals is to use uniform resource locators (URLs) when citing electronic sources. Digital object

Huge nod to Sarah Glassmeyer of Valparaiso for producing the elegant graphic below which charts the rise of the three mega legal publishers.

I find it odd that the commentators on this graphic haven’t pointed out the magic date late in the 1990s when the United States ceased to have its own legal publishing industry, all of the three majors having fallen to foreign ownership.

I might quibble about the inclusion of Brad Hildebrandt and David Baker’s businesses when acquired by Thomson. And what does Elite have to do with legal publishing. They are all businesses providing technology products and . . . [more]

In a story from Reuters, A Professor Ishikawa has created a scanner that can process hundreds of pages a minute. Using off-the shelf equipment, it takes 500 photos a second and calculates the curves of the pages, with the net effect that a book can be scanned as someone flips through it. Video here. As the story says,

While the technology has the potential to take paper books into the digital age, it remains to be how publishers will react to people scanning their books while just flipping through them.

On that note, it is worth mentioning that India . . . [more]

Happy Earth Day. Today is a good day to think about consumption.

The concept of the paperless office has been mentioned on Slaw in the past: How to Take Your Law Firm Paperless which links to a Lawyers Weekly article quoting our own Omar Ha-Redeye and Revisiting the Paperless Office to name just a few. There is also a great roundup on the Cyberlaw Central blog on “paperless” topics from the 2010 ABA Techshow.

A paperless office may not be universally achievable immediately in an organization but using less paper certainly is. Here are some easy things you can do: . . . [more]