In my view, the definition of grey literature should include one too often overlooked source of research about the law, namely the reports of law reform institutes.

The Diana M. Priestly Law Library at the University of Victoria in British Columbia has a page of links to law reform commissions in various countries. The University of Calgary Law Library provides a slightly different list.

Among the finding tools are:

• The British Columbia Law Institute has created a searchable law reform database that indexes over 7000 law reform materials from common law jurisdictions around the world
• The WorldLII Law

For this part of the discussion, I want to outline my approach to finding GL, which I hope will make a little more concrete what I mean when I talk about the semi-archival quality of GL.

Some of this goes back to the creation of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, which came out of a CBA effort, the final report of which is a fine example of GL.

Recommendation 52 advocates setting up the Forum, in part to “[collect] in a systematic way information relating the system for administering civil justice” (p.78), which basically turns out to me a . . . [more]

Michael Lines and Kathryn Arbuckle have both pointed out the difficulty of collecting print copies of much grey lit, and yet library users are reluctant to pore over screeds on screens. Might it not be sensible to explore print on demand as at least a partial solution. (I’m referring to the abililty of libraries or other information centres to quickly print and bind digital material, not the many “vanity” presses that now offer authors inexpensive print runs of their works — those these, too, may have their place: think about a well-done law school casebook printed off site.)

All the . . . [more]

The postings on grey literature are great so far. I’m not sure it has specifically been covered in the postings and comments that I have read, but the control of grey literature in academic institutions is included in the concept of institutional repositories. This is really related to the changing nature of the academic publishing paradigm away from printed journals to e-journals. The aim is to capture everything produced by a university or research institution before publication, to preserve the knowledge, as well as to make the knowledge available to other researchers and scholars.

In law, this has taken . . . [more]

The various postings on grey literature have been highly interesting and informative. I don’t know whether it comes within the definition (such as it is) but I find regular reading of news magazines an extremely useful current awareness sources, as well as a treasure trove of all sorts of information about interesting developments in the law. Presiding over a major academic law library (and its acquisitions budget) gives me an advantage here in terms of the range of titles we can sunscribe to (and to me in that I get them routed to me first for subway reading) however I’d . . . [more]

Reviewing Kathryn’s post in advance, I see that she’s identified a group of issues that the prospect of collecting GL in a major academic law library raises. In coordination with her comments, I’d like to ask 3 questions:

Do Canadian law libraries currently collect legal GL, and to what extent?

I would think it depends on the library:

Academic law libraries: gov. docs. (and not only Canadian), reports of various types of legal societies such as this one , or this one , internet or Microform access to other collections that include GL, and internet guides to, for instance, international . . . [more]

The following is by guest blogger Professor Kathryn ArbuckleProfessor Kathryn Arbuckle is Law Librarian at the John A. Weir Memorial Law Library, University of Alberta. She teaches legal research, and has lectured in legal information sources at the Schools of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta and Dalhousie University. Kathryn was previously employed as a librarian and FOIPP administrator with the Nova Scotia Civil Service and as a researcher with the Nova Scotia Royal Commission on Health Care. She has been the treasurer of the Canadian Library Association, and is active in a number of professional . . . [more]

Ce concept de “Grey Lit”, tel que défini par Michael Lines ce matin, m’était totalement inconnu avant que les responsables du présent blogue eurent la bonne idée d’en faire un thème particulier. De plus, je fus ravi de constater en lisant ce même billet, dans une liste d’illustrations offertes par Michael, que ma dernière intervention sur la récente convention internationale sur les contrats électroniques constituait justement du “Grey Lit”.

Michael, comme Monsieur Jourdain disait à son Maître de philosophie dans le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, je pourrais donc vous dire:

« Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que

Although it’s not quite grey literature, the announcement by the UK’s OPSI (Office of Public Sector Information) that it has has started providing RSS feeds for Acts and Statutory Instruments for UK, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales is a case of nice timing for this week’s theme on SLAW. It is some consolation for not having official UK statutes online yet! The link from the feed takes you to the full text of the act, the S.I., draft S.I. or Explanatory Notes – a good new resource for those tracking current UK legislation. . . . [more]

Despite Simon’s description of me‘Redoubtable’ has a fairly mixed range, from prominent and esteemed, through formidable, to “appalling, dire, dreadful”, I can’t claim to be much of an expert in GL, so my approach to being the “lead” of this Theme Week will be less as an august guide (though I suppose I am an August guide), and more as a tourist, perhaps even a “redoubtable” one. In any case, I’ll make my comments and hopefully the rest of you can fill in the important bits I miss.

Because GL in the legal world is considerably less known and collected . . . [more]

It’s my pleasure to announce that Slaw will have its second theme week starting Monday, August 7 — yes, the Monday that’s holiday Monday for most of the country. The theme is grey legal literature and our theme leader is the redoubtable Michael Lines, Slawyer and Law Librarian and Information Coordinator / Bibliothécaire et coordonnateur de l’information at the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice / Forum canadien sur la justice civile in Edmonton.

Grey lit is a very broad concept, which, until Michael focuses us more precisely, might be said to comprise online literature that’s neither available through one . . . [more]