It’s that time of year again. The red carpet is being rolled out, outfits are being coordinated, after parties are being planned……

You guessed it, it’s the Stellas! What are the Stellas? The Stellas are named in honour of Stella Liebeck who infamously sued a fast food chain after she spilled coffee on her lap and burned herself because the coffee was too hot; she was subsequently awarded 2.9 million in damages. From that lawsuit the Stella awards grew; in their own words: “(e)ver since, the name “Stella Award” has been applied to any wild, outrageous, or ridiculous lawsuits — . . . [more]

The American uniform citation handbook, the Harvard Bluebook, is now online. You will need an account to access it, either a paid account of your own or an account of your subscribing institution.

We’ve talked at Slaw about the need for a free online Canadian uniform citation guide — indeed, even offered the services of our members to the McGill Guide folks, who declined our help. How hard would it be for us to produce a basic online guide that could then be improved over time?

[via Jim Milles on law.librarians] . . . [more]

One of the more frequently asked questions I would receive when I was at the Faculty of Law at U of Toronto was: “Is there an online version of the McGill Guide (the Canadian guide for legal citation)? (The answer of course was “no”).

Two posts just now by LawyerKM and Jim Milles indicate the American equivalent – The Bluebook – is now online for a very reasonable annual subscription fee.

I hope Carswell is considering doing the same for the Canadian McGill Guide (print version details available on Carswell’s site here). One of the better, free online guides . . . [more]

We just added a couple of links to our homepage to help with research. You can download a plugin that lets you search our catalogue from your toolbar. You can also search for any other catalogue or database, or make your own. Its all here.

It might help you come to grips with complex research tasks, which are described helpfully in a couple of recent ACRL blog posts, here, and here.

Finally, if none of that helps, try what this guy tried. . . . [more]

There was a small victory for literacy this week when the Ontario government announced it will be providing additional funding for school libraries across the province (link and link). The funds are apparently enough to hire 160 new library staff. An interview on CBC’s Metro Morning today with a school librarian can be listened to here.

I’m not sure how great an effect 160 people can have in a province with millions of students, but any steps to increase kids’ familiarity with libraries is a step forward. After making it through an undergraduate degree with friends who . . . [more]

Apart from a glancing mention by Ted Tjaden in his recent post, Ozmosys – An E-mail, Website and RSS aggregator, we haven’t talked about Lexology on Slaw. That may well be because everyone already knows about it. But just in case there are one or two of our readers who are unfamiliar with it, I’m going to give you a brief description.

Lexology is a free (upon registration) re-distribution mechanism for law firm publications on particular topics. Some hundreds of firms are shown as being involved. This in itself would be handy, but what makes it an even more . . . [more]

Tuesday night I gave a presentation to Toronto Wiki Tuesdays about the use of wikis in law firms. On Monday, to get some additional ideas, I posted a message to Slaw asking for any new examples of wiki use in law firms since I wanted to present more than just wikis I had a hand in myself. The next day a very interesting discussion ensued on Slaw about whether wiki use is suitable for firms. This was a fantastic discussion, starting to really get at the heart of whether a firm should be using wikis and what really works. So . . . [more]

For all the buzz about the new India, it’s quite charming to see that the old India hasn’t quite gone away.

Today’s Times of India has an extraordinary story about a wannabe library peon. . . . [more]

The world’s largest legal vertical search engine launched yesterday according to a press release. The Public Library of Law (pLoL) has partnered with legal research provider Fastcase, Inc. It may be more of a directory than a search engine, even though Fastcase CEO Ed Walters claims it makes”first-time legal research as easy as using Google.”

What is available on PLoL?

* Cases from the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals
* Cases from all 50 states back to 1997
* Federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states
* Regulations, court rules, constitutions.

“Unlike other free resources,

I have prided myself from time to time on introducing Slaw readers to fairly arcane resources, but this may take the cake of abstruseness. The Visigoths, famous for sacking Rome, spread throughout Western Europe in the second half of the first millennium, reaching as far as what is now Spain and Portugal in what is known as the Kingdom of Toulouse. I confess I’d always thought of Goths as folks who wouldn’t bother much with law. Turns out I was wrong.

You can examine the Visigothic Code (in an English translation) on the Library of Iberian Resources Online, . . . [more]

As reported last night in The Chronicle of Higher Education,

Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted a policy this evening that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online.

The policy is described by the University Librarian Robert Darnton here. . . . [more]

2008 Canadian Association of Law Libraries Conference

The Academic SIG Chairs are very pleased to report that all three proposals designed by the SIG for the 2008 Conference have been approved!

We had prepared two proposals for sessions for the 2008 Annual Conference, and one proposal for a preconference workshop.

The first session is:

“Military Law in Canada, What it Is and How to Find It.” We are pleased to announce that Brigadier General Ken Watkin, Canada’s Judge Advocate General, and Andrea Belanger, Library Manager, Office of the Judge Advocate General, will be presenting this session.

The second is: . . . [more]