I often consult WestlaweCarswell for electronic access to the Index to Canadian Legal Literature. I use the search template designed for that purpose. Usually I rely on general keyword searches. But today, since my research related to a specific piece of legislation, I thought I would use the “Legislation” field. Unfortunately, my various search term combinations did not easily yield the results I sought.

Here is a hypothetical example to illustrate my point:

If I entered Criminal Code 123 into the “Legislation” field, I got one hit, which actually related to s. 123 of another act and a different section

Three or four times in the last week I have had discussions with various people on the issue of the versions of copies of court cases that are provided to the court in a book of authorities – are you required to provide a photocopy of the case from an official (or unofficial) print version of the case or is it acceptable to provide a printout of an online version from one of the commercial databases or from CanLII?

A decade or more ago – when online versions of judgments did not always format well or may not have . . . [more]

The Adbusters suit to get the major TV outlets to run its ads entered a new phase yesterday. The British Columbia Supreme Court began hearing argument on two motions, one to add the CBC as a party and the other by CanWest to have the case dismissed, presumably as showing no cause of action (the details are scarce, as usual when a lawsuit is involved). Adbusters has tried and failed to get the major networks to run its ads for Buy Nothing Day or those attacking the fast food and forestry industries. It seems–as I said, the details are scarce–that . . . [more]

On Dec. 26 the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) received a legislative requirement (see here, choose HR 2764, and browse for National Institues of Health, then see sec. 218) to make all of its publicly-funded research results available online for free. A summary of the event with comments and links to reactions was published by Peter Suber in his SPARC Open Access Newsletter on Jan. 2, and, here is a preprint of an article on the news, which is to appear in an upcoming Information Today. . . . [more]

The Malaysian government has told a Christian publication, Herald, that it may not use the word Allah to refer to the Christian God. The story is carried by the BBC and, later, the New York Times, though I first heard about it on the sterling Language Log.

I’ve not been able to get my hands on the wording of the prohibition. It’s been put variously by the news sources, which typically say that the rule is that non-Muslims may not use the word Allah; but this, as Language Log pointed out, doesn’t seem right: the Herald would likely . . . [more]

The American Asssociation of Law Libraries sent an email to members today asking the following question: What “extinct” book, research tool, database, etc., do you miss from an earlier time (include the year) and why?

They will publish the results in their Spectrum magazine and I will report back here on their results. Since I assume most of their responses will be based on American law-related resources, I thought I would throw the question out here specifically for any Canadian responses. What “extinct” book, research tool, database, etc., do you miss from an earlier time (include the year) and why? . . . [more]

The site Resourceshelf mentioned yesterday that the Columbia University website has posted videos of the presentations from an October 2007 international conference on Human Rights Archives and Documentation: Meeting the Needs of Research, Teaching, Advocacy, and Justice.

Scholars, human rights activists, legal advocates, librarians, and archivists from all over the world attended the conference to explore issues around how documentation of human rights situations is created, archived, preserved, accessed, and utilized.

The conference marked the formal opening of the Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research at Columbia University Libraries. The Center is the official repository for the archives . . . [more]

The U.K. organization Privacy International, together with the U.S.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, have published their 2007 privacy rankings for European and some other countries. In their judgement Canada has in the last year slipped from the best category (“significant protections and safeguards”) to the middle category (“some safeguards but weakened protection”). They provide a detailed analysis that forms the basis for this judgement.

Clearly intended to shock, the report now puts the United States into the worst possible category, that of an “endemic surveillance society.”

This report is the result of serious analysis and deserves careful attention. My only . . . [more]

Looking for an English translation of the Portuguese lyrics of a song (Oiça lá ó senhor vinho) by my current favourite singer, Mariza, I decided to take Google up on its offer to “translate this page.” Now the translation of plain text is hard enough, but the translation of song lyrics is really tough, and Google got maybe a C-minus on its effort. But I noticed that mousing over a sentence caused a popup that showed me the original language and invited me to offer a better translation. This is cool.

You see it below in a . . . [more]

The announcement below was sent out today. Louise Hamel, Manager at the Judges’ Library, tells me there is new content which has also been translated into French. The real news, though, is the official new design of the site. Congratulations to the Judges’ Library!

I am pleased to announce that the Guide to Ontario Courts www.ontariocourts.on.ca has been re-launched.

This revitalized website was reorganized and updated in response to user feedback on content and design, and in consultation with the Office of each court. We have developed what we hope will be a more user friendly = website with each

I have been fortunate in the last two years to have been asked to speak about social networks in law (and other professional) firms at conferences and workshops. I thought I would take this opportunity to summarize some of the key points I make about social networks.

First, social networks and social media (or knowledge media) are not the same thing. People often called tools such as LinkedIn and FaceBook social networks. These are tools for making our social networks explicit. And indeed, we can use these tools / platforms to keep in touch with parts of our social network . . . [more]

I thought it would be interesting to make use of CanLII’s new ability to sort search results by “most-cited,” imperfect though it is, in order to examine Supreme Court of Canada cases.

There are 4160 SCC judgments in CanLII’s database — a complete set from the beginning of 1985 up to the present, and an incomplete set earlier than that. Essentially, the pool from which to draw is that of all cases in the last 22 years. I took the most-cited 1000 cases as my sample and first simply listed them in rank order, along with some information about each. . . . [more]