How do you tell when there is a really old elephant in the room – maybe so old that people tend to forget it is there? Here is one way: if someone writes you an open letter notifying you. In the case of open source ILSs, maybe the ILS Customer Bill of Rights was a missed wake-up call. Maybe these were also missed:

• http://www.vufind.org,
• http://open-ils.org,
• http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/11133,
• http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/endeca,
• http://about.scriblio.net,
• http://www.extensiblecatalog.info/?page_id=2, and
• library thing and aquabrowser.

That too, sometimes, maybe, but not today.

Today’s subject is obliquely about something that will enrapture the heart of every litigator with deep-pocket clients: e-mail management and the fees associated with litigation that has extensive e-mail discovery.

Today’s message is also an opportunity to let others do my thinking for me.

I’m going to quote from a recent study by a US vendor [MessageOne, Inc.] which is generally applicable to Canada, too, titled “Critical Email Management Problems“. The study is available on-line here, although you might have to join ZDNet (it’s free – it’s worth . . . [more]

We learn from Technaute that Praized, a Quebec web2.0 startup, just got an 1M$ investment from the canadian branch of Garage Technology Venture, the venture capital company behind Pandora. Knowing that Pandora is now unaccessible to canadians, lets hope the same will not happen to Praized… It should not be the case due to the type of application they are developping. Here is a quote from their website:

Praized Media is a startup company working on a web-based application that will enable you to find and discover local places and merchants with help from people you can

We missed last week’s news that Thomson is Acquiring Deloitte Tax LLP Property Tax Services, picking up another 420 employees in Scottsdale. The Scottsdale folks staff a national provider of property tax compliance outsourcing and consulting services. The official announcement declares that “This transaction will further enable us to fulfill Thomson Tax & Accounting’s overall growth strategy to serve our corporate tax clients with a full-range of technology, information and service solutions” .

Meanwhile back in Eagan, the consulting business goes from strength to strength, notwithstanding our scepticism about strategy. The Baker Robbins deal we discussed has two . . . [more]

Further to my earlier rant and call to arms for Canadian law libraries to digitize historical Canadian federal and provincial legislation: Colleague and SLAW reader Neal Ferguson points out that the Revised Statutes of Canada, R.S.C. 1970, are actually available in very large files on the Internet Archive, available here. . . . [more]

The 2000-2006 issues of the World Law Bulletin, a publication of the Law Library of Congress in the U.S., have been posted on the Internet.

On the site of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy!

“The WORLD LAW BULLETIN is a monthly publication of the Directorate of Legal Research at the Law Library of Congress. The Bulletin, which is distributed to members of Congress and staff but not the public, provides updates on foreign law developments”.

“In May 2006, the Law Library began publishing the Global Legal Monitor, which partially replicates the contents of the

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner is concerned that street level photography, as currently deployed in the United States, may not meet the basic requirements of Canadian privacy laws.

The Privacy Commissioner has written to Google and Immersive Media to seek further information and assurances that Canadians’ privacy rights will be safeguarded if their technology is deployed in Canada.

Privacy Commission, Sept. 11 2007

Although Google Street View hasn’t come to Canada yet, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart has written expressing concern to Google and to Immersive Media Corp, a Calgary company whose large database of photos gathered with high resolution . . . [more]

At times lawyers need to learn a little medicine, and the NCBI Resource Locator might help. First of all, NCBI stands for the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information, which is part of the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine, and the institution that manages PubMed, the likely the destination for a legal researcher.

PubMed has a fantastic search page, offering you all manner of ways of focusing your search into the medical literature. As well, there are tutorials to help you figure out how to do what you want.

Which brings us to the . . . [more]

Yesterday a new book on the Law of Blogging was released. It’s available for $9.95 directly from the author as a PDF download only.

The Contents sketch out a broad range of topics: . . . [more]

Building on last year’s gorgeous post, I attach, courtesy of the estimable Jon Smithen, the most wonderful library buildings you’ll encounter anywhere. . . . [more]

The NY Times Book Review has a story on the weeding of chapel libraries in US prisons.

The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources… The lists are broad, but reveal eccentricities and omissions. There are nine titles by C. S. Lewis, for example, and none from the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth and Cardinal Avery Dulles, and the influential pastor Robert H. Schuller.

What they should really be doing is something like the AALL guidelines, to . . . [more]

Microsoft launched a service for automatic translation called Windows Live Translator. The site lets you translate a text limited to 500 words or a web page from English to German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Russian.

Microsoft uses Systran to produce most of the translations, but also offers an option to translate computer-related texts using a machine translation system developed in-house. Microsoft’s translation technology has been used to translate technical materials, including MSDN Library.
Google Operating System

We’ve talked a bit about French-English translation here on Slaw, for obvious reasons, so I thought you’d be . . . [more]