The Washington Post reports in the Sept. 7/07 article Judge Invalidates Patriot Act Provisions that a judge has declared portions of the U.S. Patriot Act to be unconstitutional: . . . [more]

The Ontario Court of Appeal’s first webcast is taking place right now (12:50pm EDT). You can see the argument in the case of Frohlick, Melanie et al. v. Pinkerton Canada Ltd. et al. by clicking here, and agreeing to abide by certain terms. At the moment there doesn’t appear to be any provision for archiving and streaming videos of hearings. . . . [more]

House of Butter had a posting on Wednesday conveying news from the University of Notre Dame Australia blog here that access to the Quicklaw database was no longer to be available to clients outside of Canada. Access to the materials was to continue to be available through LexisNexisAU and Lexis.com.

I assume the reference is to old Quicklaw.

I have been curious to know, at a relatively technical level if possible, how all of the various LexisNexises will be designed to interact with one another (if at all) and with Lexis.com (probably not). When the new Quicklaw was unveiled, it . . . [more]

Here’s a link passed on by Rich in our library to an article at TechCrunch describing a new eBook service from Amazon and Google. It is meant to be delivered on a new piece of hardware called ‘kindle.’ As one reader notes, a bad choice for any book-related product, but perhaps it is meant to be a book killer.

As an interesting aside, see the second comment on the article which must be astroturf. Further into the comments there are some worthwhile thoughts, especially #8. . . . [more]

That is the question asked in an article published last week in the Legal Times.

It provides an overview of the increasing use of the legal blogosphere by tenured law professors to pursue legal scholarship:

“If you are looking for the future of legal scholarship, chances are that you may find it not in a treatise or the traditional law review but in a different form, profoundly influenced by the blogosphere (…) Who are the bloggers? The uninitiated might think they would be young professors, those who have grown up with the Internet and are comfortable with self-publication in

The Online Education Database came up with a method to determine who the top library bloggers are.

The methodology took into account various measures such as Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati Authority, and number of Bloglines subscribers.

These contests are always a bit “iffy” (see post questioning some of the criteria) but what the heck? Let’s pat ourselves on the back.

5 blogs featuring law librarians (including 2 Canucks who are Slawyers!) made the top 25 list:

• Law Librarian Blog (5th)
• Slaw contributor Vancouver Law Librarian Blog (17th)
• Slaw contributor Connie Crosby of Toronto (20th)
• The Handheld Librarian

Today’s WhatPC magazine has an interesting discussion of the high prices charged and poor service delivered by the major legal information companies, specifically naming Thomson (with its Westlaw and Sweet & Maxwell services) and LexisNexis (including the Butterworths and Tolley brands).

A few choice quotes:

“Although the sector boasts a lot about listening to customers, this is largely not so,” says one independent business information consultant. “Customer consultation is often just going through the motions because it’s expected or it looks good.”

“One key supplier introduced a new platform without adequately reflecting the needs of UK users and has been

I’m still recovering from the realization that summer is over and classes have started again, so I was pleased to see two humorous and somewhat contradictory postings on the Alcuin Society blogpage ” “But You Don’t Look Like a Librarian!” and “Are you Geeky Enough to be a Librarian. The first is by Guy Robertson who writes some interesting and funny articles for the Canadian Library Association journal Feliciter and the BCLA Reporter . . . [more]

I am getting old (and careless). I thought I knew most if not all of the law journals that were available online. In a recent post, I jokingly raised the need for Canada Law Book (CLB) to put its journals online. I have since found out that in fact a number of their journals are or will be online online. To wit:

Canadian Business Law Journal – on HeinOnline (Vols. 1-40: 1975-2004) and soon to also likely be available through CLB.

Criminal Law Quarterly – on CLB’s Criminal Spectrum product

Other CLB journal titles will also be digitized, likely soon, . . . [more]

Walt Crawford, an engaging and controversial voice in the library world, has just released an article characterizing blogs and other forms of grey literature as “the most compelling and worthwhile literature in the library field today.” Are blog entries and other kinds of ‘informal literature’ making inroads into academic evaluation, due to their currency and relevance? There are calls for such a change at the Carnegie Foundation, and more particularly at the NCSUE. In Canada the problem has been recognised, and recently a major step forward was taken. . . . [more]

This Press Release from last week (Feb. 8) announces the $25 million investment, and outlines two projects.

• The Digital Content Infrastructure for the Human and Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa will supply university researchers with access to a range of international materials.
• Synergies: The Canadian Information Network for Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Montreal aims to provide access to Canadian materials, including books, peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, theses, and other kinds of Grey Literature.

The projects are jointly initiated by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and Industry Canada. Here’s hoping . . . [more]

The second sevice described here, WebCites, looks interesting, especially considering SSHRC’s Knowledge Mobilization focus.

From the GreyLit list:

Scopus Enriches Literature Research With PatentCites and WebCites Features PRNewswire, 27 September 2006

Scopus®, the world’s largest abstract and citation database of research information and quality Web sources, today announced the launch of two new features. PatentCites, released to customers on September 22nd, allows users to track how primary research is practically applied in patents. WebCites, which is to be launched shortly, is the first step towards enabling Scopus users to track the influence of peer reviewed research on web literature. Researchers