Today’s Globe and Mail article “Ottawa, don’t pull the plug on superb website” is about the shutting down of the Canadian Health Network, an online source of reliable Canadian health information. The strength of this article is its comparison of the Canadian Health Network with the new Healthy Canadians website. Interesting. . . . [more]

Amlaw Media announced today, that Toronto’s own Great Librarian David Whelan will inaugurate a Podcast on Legal Information and Technology.

In an interview with the inimitable Monica Bay, David will talk about”RSS: Simply Powerful.” The interview covers how “really simple syndication” tools can help legal professionals easily track information they need to practice law effectively, by using RSS to monitor favorite news sources, blogs, and Web sites.

Give it a listen here . . . [more]

On Friday CanLII announced a new search results sorting option:

December 7, 2007
News Release No 2007-06Dear users,

I am happy to announce a set of new features that CanLII is now offering to you in order to help you deal even more efficiently with search results.

In your search results, you are now able to sort cases based on the number of times a case has been cited. You can do so by clicking on the “The most cited” link in the “Sort” menu of your search results page. By choosing “Sort by The most cited” the search

It was always my understanding that QuickLaw’s Canadian case law coverage was equal, if not superior, to LexisNexis’. If you too were operating under that assumption, then the following may surprise you… 

I had found a reference to a case using the Nadin-Davis Sentencing Digest. Unfortunately, no citation was provided; it did, however, list the name of the case, the date (1986), the judge and the level of court. The digest entry also mentioned that the case had been appealed. So I set about to search for the case. 

I turned first to QuickLaw. I searched by case name and . . . [more]

I received a message from a library discussion list this morning informing readers of an open house and call-in event at Minister Prentice’s constituency office tomorrow, Saturday December 8. The message notes that rumours are that the forthcoming copyright bill will resemble the US DMCA in some controversial respects. More information about the open house and call-in is available here. . . . [more]

Steve Matthews, the brain behind Stem Legal and LegalPubs.ca, has revivified his original list of Canadian blawgs by giving it a home of its own as the Canadian Law Blogs List. This is brilliant.

The only thing that’s needed now, Steve, is the RSS links for each, and the ability to mix a feed of our choosing right there on the site, and….

When you have time, that is. . . . [more]

Wouldn’t it be cool to have Facebook as your Intranet? One company thinks so. Andrew McAfee from Harvard Business School and Bill Ives are both blogging about how Serena Software has made the leap to adopting Facebook as its Intranet. . . . [more]

There’s now an industrial design database on the Canadian Intellectual Property Office website. The database goes back to 1861, seemingly, and contains all the designs registered, and so protected, under the Industrial Design Act. Industrial design protection is something like a copyright, but flowing out of the shape of an object rather than, say, a writing or a work of art; the definition section says it better:

“design” or “industrial design” means features of shape, configuration, pattern or ornament and any combination of those features that, in a finished article, appeal to and are judged solely by the eye;

There are reports today that Wikipedia is about to start paying contributors for certain content. This represents a break from their roots as an all-volunteer project. The program, funded by a single donation right now, aims to improve the quality of the illustrations on the site – that’s currently the only thing they have plans to pay people for.

I’ve always found Wikipedia a good place to go for images, and have never felt a lack of good illustrations to be a shortcoming, but I’m for anything that could improve the site.

In other Wikipedia news, more schools have jumped . . . [more]

UK law librarians are now following our lead, encouraging the UK legal publishers to produce a new titles RSS feed.

Publishing consultant Nick Holmes has been calling for this service for some time, and recently put the pressure on publishers by scraping their websites to create sample feeds, posting them on the infolaw site. He also wrote an open letter to UK legal publishers on November 2nd asking for RSS feeds.

Blogger lo-fi librarian reports that a Facebook group has also been set up to help build concensus amongst law librarians in their request for RSS feeds from . . . [more]

Today is the International Day of Disabled Persons, a day to think about how well your firms do with hiring and accommodation and to worry about whether Slaw is up to snuff.

In what is surely no accident, StatsCan released a Participation and Activity Limitation Survey today on The Daily. The lead sentence reports: “An estimated 4.4 million Canadians—one out of every seven in the population—reported having a disability in 2006, an increase of over three-quarters of a million people in five years…” The increasing age of the population was, of course, a factor in this 21% rise over . . . [more]

Today’s press release:

Dear users,

The Law Foundation of Ontario has funded a large project to extend the historical coverage of CanLII’s case law databases. This project’s first results are already available to our users. All Supreme Court of Canada decisions originating from Ontario back to 1876 are now published on CanLII in searchable HTML and PDF-image format.

The project’s next phase will bring you all Court of Appeal for Ontario decisions that were appealed at the Supreme Court of Canada. In a third phase, CanLII will publish all reported Ontario Superior Court of Justice cases back to 1994.