What goes around comes around. It seems that two years ago almost to the date, I mentioned here on SLAW the discussions of an informal group of Toronto research lawyers surrounding the role of research lawyers in law firms.

At our meeting last week, the same discussion arose again, albeit in a slightly different context. Our discussion this time around focused on the frustration some research lawyers still feel in their role not being fully understood by others in their law firm or by clients. This frustration manifests itself in a number of ways:

1) There is a mistaken belief . . . [more]

Maybe so, but another fish sometimes learns. 

Sometimes one doesn’t end up where one intended, but once one is there, it’s worth visiting.

Visit http://www.righthandpointing.com

(credit/property: http://www.righthandpointing.com/theologyreels.jpg)

or its sub-site

http://www.righthandpointing.com/latin/ for a useful collection of Latin proverbs with commentary.

Non sine causa sed sine fine laudatus? 

Maybe. But if so, who cares?

—————-

Notes:

1. The device in the picture (borrowed from the righthandpoint.com site) – a reel-to-reel tape recorder – is, for those too young to remember, an archaic precursor of the MP3 player and the IPod.

2. The English translations of the quotations is:

The fish . . . [more]

Keen readers of the Daily Mirror ((No not that Daily Mirror – the one from Colombo ))will have smiled at the following story:

Nail-biting lunch

By S. S. Selvanayagam

A senior lawyer claimed that he underwent a traumatic experience at the Colombo Law Library canteen while he was having his lunch.

He ordered a plate of rice with vegetables and sat down at a table close to the main counter of the canteen. A little later one of the waiters brought him a plate of rice with vegetables.

As he was partaking of the food, to his astonishment and

Oxford University Press has a line of small books — each somewhere around 150 pages in length — known collectively as “Very Short Introductions” and, well, introducing you to 173 subjects, such as Engels, Atheism, Feminism, American Political Parties and Elections. (The list is so eclectic that it can’t really generate a representative sample.)

These are serious books — hardly Wittgenstein for Dolts — typically written by noted academics or other experts. They are also books that have little to do with Slaw’s usual beat, I admit. At a stretch I could point out . . . [more]

Curehunter, the “visual medical dictionary,” is worth your taking a look at for at least a couple of reasons: it’s likely that some people in your firm have a practice that touches upon medical affairs one way or another; and as information presentation fans — we are, aren’t we? — we should, once again, pay homage to the interesting technological efforts of a sister profession.

The visual dictionary (don’t think pictures of diseases; unlike this visual dictionary, Curehunter is more a graphic display of words dictionary) presents you with three columns and a search box. Enter . . . [more]

Statistics Canada reported today that that rate of incarceration in Canada increased for the first time in more than a decade in 2005/2006.

The rate moved from 107 to 110 prisoners per 100,000 population.

“Canada’s incarceration rate tends to be higher than most western European countries, yet far lower than that of the United States. For instance, Sweden posted an incarceration rate of 82 and France a rate of 85 per 100,000 population in 2005/2006. By comparison, the incarceration rate in England and Wales was 148, and in the United States the adult rate stood at 738 (the United States

Universities dispose of more than 1.8 million books and journals a year, according to official figures… Statistics obtained by The Times Higher [Education Supplement] show that 36 institutions got rid of more books and printed volumes than they acquired.

Seems it has to do with the need to create space for e-learning environments, or so the claim goes. In aggregate, however, libraries acquired more print materials than they “decomissioned,” some 2.8 million volumes in 2005-2006. . . . [more]

This is not hard research or hard law, but it touches on each and it is interesting. It is Democracy 250. In short, a site intended to commemorate 250 years of Parliamentary Democracy in Nova Scotia.

One of the more interesting parts of the site is the Historical Timeline and Learning Resources which include digital copies of original acts, treaties etc drawn from archival collections. Such as the 1758 Act, Relating to the Duties of Import on Rum and other Distilled Liquors. In the timeline one can pick a year and see the documents associated with it.

….in . . . [more]

“The Care and Feeding of a Law Librarian” briefly discusses what firms can do to keep law librarians happy. Some highlights:

• Provide opportunities for law librarians to continually work with and assist colleagues.
• Recognize and acknowledge their unique and valuable skills.
• Give constructive criticism and feedback.
• Offer opportunities for them to contribute to the overall work of the firm/parent organization.
• Encourage professional development and mentoring.

Here’s an announcement that 1.8 million pages of US case law are soon to be available online for free under a CC licence, and will be explicitly marked as public domain. The database will be a

free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754.

This via Library Stuff, Open Access News, and BoingBoing . . . [more]

Hello folks

We just got an email press release from Hein today announcing its partnership with Serials Solutions.

The press release is here:
http://www.serialssolutions.com/press/press10-18-07.pdf

I wonder what Hein means when it says:
“William S. Hein & Co., Inc. announces the availability of the first direct and authorized federated search connection”…

I could be wrong here, but I think they are trying to suggest to us that perhaps our digging into Hein collections by any other federated search would be “unauthorized”.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the mere suggestion irritates me. How else are library users supposed . . . [more]

I saw an in-person demo today by RBRO Solutions on the new Interwoven Universal Search. Nice product.

Pros:

– it can crawl and search pretty much any type of data or document management system (i.e., it is not limited to Interwoven for DMS searching)

– the “universal” element means you can choose to search, for example, on “motion to compel” on your internal document management system, on Lexis or Westlaw, the World Wide Web and your internal library catalog, all in one search (the product comes “out of the box” with a fairly large number of “connectors” to allow . . . [more]