The Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation was created by the editors of the McGill Law Journal and published by Carswell Thomson. The Guide is unique in that it is truly national in scope. It covers both civil law and common law and is published in English and in French. It has been adopted as the official standard for citation by both French language and English language law reviews and by a number of courts. These are significant accomplishments.

However, unlike the inclusive nature of the content, the Guide takes a restrictive approach to access. Originally published in 1986 and . . . [more]

Seems Slaw isn’t the only website having tech troubles. This from CanLII just now:

We are currently experiencing difficulties with our case law search indexes. Some recent cases may be omitted from your search results. We will inform you as soon as the problem is fixed.

We apologize for the inconveniences.

In response to the changing needs of students and researchers, and the changing information environment, academic libraries are re-evaluating their roles, and planning their futures. As part of this general and ongoing adjustment, there is an opportunity for librarians to capitalize on their expertise in bibliography, to shore up their position at the heart of scholarly communications, and to improve their budgets by supporting in-house academic publishing.

Karla Hahn, Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication at ARL, has done a lot of ground breaking research in this area, and an accessible interview with her on the topic has . . . [more]

Google has pulled out of its proposed advertising deal with Yahoo! due to fears of government antitrust litigation. Details are available here on The Official Google Blog. . . . [more]

Further to an earlier SLAW posting on blogs by library technicians, I wanted to mention the Library technician dialog blog by colleagues Brenda Wong and Karen Sawatzky that I had previously overlooked. Recent posts cover such topics as lifelong learning, Twitter (on my “to do” list, long overdue, but I remain skeptical) and library operations and procedures. Thanks Brenda and Karen for your perspectives. . . . [more]

WikiBooks was mentioned here sometime ago on Slaw.

I recently stumbled across the site and see that there is some more development, including some law-related books.

For example, an “Introduction to Canadian Law” has been started here (but is still very bare) and there is a start on Canadian legal citation here.

There is more US content, and some topics tagged with a “green box” indicate comprehensive coverage/treatment. There were 3 such titles:

US Copyright Law

US Patent Law

US Trademark Law . . . [more]

The Amsterdam Law Forum, an online law journal from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, has just released its first volume, which focuses on the theme, “Inclusion and Exclusion in Western Immigration.”

The A.L.F. strives to offer an online platform for legal and policy commentary articles, with an academic character, yet accessible to a broader public , and furthermore serve as a forum for academic publications by young legal scholars…

The student-managed journal is not peer-reviewed at the moment, though they plan to become so in the future.

Not only is the ALF open access, but it’s also published using open source . . . [more]

The recent announcement by Carswell that its multi-volume print work “Words and Phrases Judicially Defined in Canadian Courts and Tribunals” is available online means that both Westlawecarswell and LexisNexis Quicklaw now offer access to edited extracts of of the meaning of words and phrases as discussed in judicial decisions.

“Plugged in” legal researchers should note however that this does not mean that the same information is now available on both services. Each database is a unique compilation of words and phrases, with different operating guidelines and scope, and different sources of content. Depending upon your need, both services may have . . . [more]

I stumbled across part of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition website, where I found a good swathe of the 6th edition of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation available online in PDF. The parts that are up are, of course, those that deal with “international materials.” Still, you’ll find nearly 75 pages, all in all. . . . [more]

A recent article in Library Journal caught my eye: “Living Library” Debuts in Santa Monica ((Library Journal, 10/20/2008)) As the article explains the living library movement invites library users to ‘book’ meetings with individuals with special interests, beliefs or experiences.

Though I can’t find proof of this in her written work, Connie Crosby once said that she pays attention to trends in public libraries that could apply to law library services. This memory glimer (hopefully I am attributing the credit correctly) says to me: how would the construct of a living library help my firm? What would that look . . . [more]

For my first post, I’ll keep it brief. We’re in the early stages of planning our second Intranet project, using SharePoint 2007. With a renewed focus on the importance of customization, effective search, intuitive navigation, and metrics, we’re clear on the new direction we want to take. What’s not clear at this point is governance – who should own it? Library/KM? IT? Administration? Everyone? Who “owns” the Intranet in your firm? . . . [more]

Teresa Miguel at Yale Law Library’s Foreign and International Blog posted her review and endorsement for the International Law Video Library yesterday. A very interesting project, and great use of video to capture content, knowledge and history.

Teresa’s post also included the following excellent examples from the collection:

• Thomas Buergenthal, Judge at the International Court of Justice, speaks about reservations to treaties.
• Phillippe Kirsch, President of the International Criminal Court, sat down for an interview in September 2005 in which he introduced himself, and went on to give the historical background of the creation of the International Criminal