The University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre has put its archive of Colonial Despatches (The colonial despatches of Vancouver Island and British Columbia 1846-1871) online:

This project aims to digitize and publish online a complete archive of the correspondence covering the period from 1846 leading to the founding of Vancouver Island in 1849, the founding of British Columbia in 1858, the annexation of Vancouver Island by British Columbia in 1866, and up to the incorporation of B.C. into the Canadian Federation in 1871.

The online archive consists of three parts, a collection of photographed original documents, a collection . . . [more]

Add this one to our long list of scams: some Canadians have received letters (both by email and Canada Post) supposedly from the Canada Revenue Agency indicating they are owed money, but that the government does not have sufficient information on file for them to forward the outstanding amount. A form is included with the letter. Fill in the form, return it and voila, your personal information is handed over to a stranger for the purpose of stealing your identity. Although the letter and T2 form look like photocopies, they look quite legitimate. The RCMP and CRA are warning . . . [more]

Links to a lengthy interview with Richard Susskind (parts 1 and 2) who continues to provoke with his explanations of how the English market for legal services is dramatically different from that in the United States, and how the Legal Services Act presages the future on this side of the Atlantic too.

One of the unplanned advantages of federal systems appears to be the way in which they militate against reforms of professional monopolies.

Good plugs for The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the nature of legal services , Richard’s book which will be imminently published by OUP.

The most . . . [more]

Bucking the trends of the global free access to law movement, our friends in Eagan have unveiled an ambitious interface to Chinese law.

We’re back to East of Eagan: . . . [more]

Ever since Thomson took over the Lawyers’ Co-operative Publishing Company in Rochester and acquired West Publishing in Eagan and St. Paul, there’s been apprehension about what the new owners might do to high-paying editorial jobs in both towns. If Indian outsourcing is affecting legal information, could it also affect the production and processing of legal information?

At the same time that Toronto’s Globe and Mail was printing an upbeat story about silver linings in economic clouds, the local papers in Rochester and Eagan were reporting about seventy editorial and production jobs that are heading east to India and the Philippines. . . . [more]

Those interested in European law or in freedom of expression might want to take a look at documents from “The European Protection of Freedom of Expression: Some Recent Restrictive Trends”, a recent seminar at the European Court of Human Rights, which was directed at the question: “Are recent developments in the Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights case-law undermining adequate guarantees for freedom of expression?”

Here’s a partial list of papers available in PDF, to give you a sense of what’s there:

Freedom of Expression and Article 10 ECHR – Summaries of 20 recent

I doubt that this is much of a surprise to the law library community. US New and World Report has discovered that special librarianship is a great career choice for those who enjoy watching politics. I can’t imagine doing this job without some interest in and knowledge of the machinery of government and the workings of the political process!

Other jobs mentioned in the article: lobbyist, tour guide, reporter, translator/interpreter, journalist. Folks, I think we picked the right one (although journalism wouldn’t be bad…)

If you weren’t following your current career, what would you do?

(Hat tip to the Law . . . [more]

Google introduced a really clever website over the last few days. Although they’re always getting flak for all the personal info they gather from you, there really are some pretty interesting things they can do with all that information. Like make the Centre for Disease Control obsolete.

OK, maybe that’s a bit too hyperbolic, but their new program has managed to closely approximate the CDC’s tracking of flu bugs, simply through aggregating all the web searches people do on the topic. Apparently the number of people who google “Neo Citran” or other similar terms gives you a great idea . . . [more]

Although both of the Canadian tools below have been available for some time now, I have only recently started to experiment with them.

Both products – which are free but which each require subscriptions/passwords – will “auto-populate” your research memos with hypertext links to the cases cited in your memo.

The Quicklaw product is Auto Link which will add hypertext links to the Quicklaw version of cases cited in your memo (it allows you to do this in bulk, that is, with more than one memo at a time). Related to this product on the same page is downloadable software . . . [more]

I have a thing for government documents. “GovDocs” was my best class in library school.

I have a particular thing for UN documents because the UN deals with just about anything and everything.

Here are a few recent ones:

• Our World 2.0: the United Nations University (yes, they have their own university) launched a webzine this past summer about solutions for the planet’s climate, oil and food security messes
• Toolkit to Combat Human Trafficking: the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has developed a “toolkit” that provides guidance to policymakers, law enforcers, judges, prosecutors, and victim service providers

Any thoughts on whether you think any sort of trend has emerged re how libraries are paying for licensed content/databases/periodicals? In other words, are libraries paying on a per use basis, or as annual, quarterly, etc., subscription fees, or otherwise?

Please post your comments here or at: www.licensingdigitalcontent.blogspot.com. . . . [more]

Lawyers often pride themselves as being the gatekeepers to legal information. But with the proliferation of free legal citations and commentary online, some are turning to Google.

Devin Johnston, a law student at UofM and contributor at Law is Cool, has an excellent piece today, GoogleLII: Using Google to Research Case Law.

He outlines some basic techniques like advance searches, and the quality of information found on the net.

Devin does say that Googling is not appropriate for traditional legal practice. But Prof. Moin Yahya of the University of Alberta also noted earlier this year that the failure . . . [more]