Roy Mersky may not have been the first person to ride a horse through a major law library but he was likely the smartest, shortest and most published ((His bibliography is awesome in its length)). . . . [more]

Well this is news to me! If you check out Michel-Adrien’s post below, this news item was delivered via a new CanLII blog. And guess what? There’s an RSS feed too!

Now we can follow along at home. :) . . . [more]

The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII), the source of free online Canadian legal information created by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, announced earlier this week that it has surpassed the 500,000 case mark in its database:

“When it was launched in the fall of 2000, CanLII contained less than 30,000 cases. Over the years, the content development went through various stages: first, recent cases from all appeal and superior courts, then from all courts, and so on. Recently, focus has been placed on the addition of important historical case law as well as administrative tribunals. All those

Last week I was invited, wearing my hat of law librarian, to participate in a round table discussion on art, the Internet and intellectual property with the group ArtMob. ArtMob is a group of artists, scholars and other stakeholders interested in the intersection between Canadian culture and copyright and intellectual property law, and how it comes into play with the Web. . . . [more]

askON (http://www.askon.ca) is an online chat service available presumably to anyone with an internet connection and a question for a librarian. There are ten public libraries in Ontario involved, as well as those of three universities (Lakehead, Ryerson, York) and four colleges. I’ve checked and the York Law Library at Osgoode Hall Law School is not involved in the project.

When you’ve finished your online chat, a transcript can be sent to your email address. . . . [more]

Today at 3 pm CST/4 pm EST there is a trial run of a new law library phone-in show hosted by Brian Striman and Richard Leiter. Guest will be legal publishing industry expert Ken Svengalis. Call in or chat–details below from one of the AALL email lists. It’s a hot topic so I expect it to be a lively discussion! . . . [more]

Occasionally a single appointment can signal everything. Today, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan announced the long-awaited replacement for Harry S. Martin, who has been director of the Harvard law Library ((Which is the most extraordinary law library I’ve ever used, with due apologies to Ruth at the Bodleian and David at the Great Library)) for 27 years. Martin’s contribution deserves a post in its own right for his service as Henry N. Ess III Librarian and Professor of Law at the Law School and his seminars on Art and the Law.

But let’s focus on the new . . . [more]

The archive of Nazi concentration camp logs and other German war documents are now available to the public. Administered by the Red Cross since the 1950s, this archive containing information about Holocaust victims was accessible only by Red Cross staff. Historical researchers, survivors and relatives had to wait for replies from Red Cross staff to find out about missing persons or to obtain records supporting compensation payments. The decision to make the 50 million pages in the archive open to the public was made in November after the 11 countries that oversee the archive ratified an accord.

Reported in The . . . [more]

The Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge maintains a list of law reform commissions around the world that have some downloadable material (in English) available. As they note, the British Columbia Law Institute maintains a law reform database that provides information on a much wider selection of reform documents whether or not they are available online. But, and this is a little surprising, there’s no simple list of the various websites available on the BCLI site.

The Cambridge site is missing the newly re-instituted Law Commission of Ontario site (I’ve emailed them), which now contains their Report on . . . [more]

As posted earlier today on the VLLB, the BC Courthouse Library Society is seeking feedback from BC Lawyers to help plan their online future.

Part of their overall web strategy and service planning, the BCCLS is looking for input from practicing British Columbia lawyers via this short 3-minute web survey.

Participants will also be entered to win one of two 8G iPod Touch devices.

If you or someone you know fits the demographic, please help us spread the word! Help from Slaw readers who are also BC law bloggers would also be greatly appreciated. . . . [more]

The Tuscaloosa News yesterday had a pot-pouri of useful information under the heading Lawyers Open Their File Cabinets for a Web Resource, focussing on JDSupra, a database for contributed legal documents and PreCYdent.

The San Diego Business Journal describes this under the headline PreCYdent Legal Research Web Site Takes on LexisNexis, Westlaw. The product was built in San Diego and Milan, and offers a free and quite robust interface to U.S. Supreme Court and Court of Appeals cases.

It describes its content as:

US Supreme Court: complete with official US citation and pagination since 1759

Federal Reporter . . . [more]

Thanks to Jon Smithen for a link to a BBC piece discussing the availability of The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913, which is a fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.

The site is fascinating, although I would advise North American readers of Slaw to look at the site in the evening, since there is so much traffic from British researchers that the site is crashing.

A conference on the use of these resources is planned for later . . . [more]