A discussion on the Canadian Association of Law Libraries list this morning strikes me as worth a share here. Dawn Urquhart drew subscribers’ attention to a National Post – Legal Post article published on the web yesterday, “Court decisions may be lost in translation.” The article appears in today’s National Post with the somewhat less fair title, “Quebec decisions isolated by lack of translation,” and the even less fair lede, “Lawyers outside Quebec can’t read useful judgments.”

The author cites Ted Tjaden’s excellent post here on Slaw from last year, wherein Ted noted the limited overlap in . . . [more]

This morning my Toronto colleague Martha Foote was awarded the Thomson Reuters Westlaw Award for Career Achievement, the big award at the Special Libraries Association Legal Division breakfast. The award is designed to recognize a member who has provided significant service to the Division.

Martha is a past chair of the SLA Legal Division and has also served on the executive board of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries. When not serving the profession on a volunteer basis, she currently serves as Board General Manager of LibraryCo, the central management for the Ontario county courthouse library system.

Congratulations, . . . [more]

I’ve finally got around to updating the Google Custom Search Engine that powers Slaw’s Canadian Law Blogs Search — found in the right sidebar very near the top. It now searches all 359 glorious Canadian law blogs listed in Stem Legal’s Lawblogs.ca. Many apologies to all the new (and not so new) bloggers who waited far too long to be included. I’ll try to develop a method for a more continual updating.

I’ve also removed the options that were initially available — date range, number of results — because Google no longer honours these requests for Custom Search Engines . . . [more]

As was SCOTUS last week, the Supreme Court of Canada is a focus of some attention this week, with an historic appeal yesterday that might nullify an election and tomorrow’s release of a pentad of copyright-related decisions which will say a lot about fair dealing. None of this is of the server-crashing magnitude and political impact of the SCOTUS Affordable Care Act decision, but it does highlight what works well with the SCC and its judges:

This is one of those weeks where I beam in admiration for our highest court, and its judges. I am in awe of the . . . [more]

The UK government has a new website in beta aimed at improving citizen access to official services and information. Gov.uk hopes to be “simpler, clearer, faster,” as its tagline says.

By the look of things, the site succeeds. The design is plain and appealing. (I’d dump the set of scrolling options. It could be that they’re aiming to give viewers something engaging to do; but I think that a simple list of half a dozen FAQs would work better.)

As is often the case on the internet, there’s no top level entry for “Law.” (There is one for Crime and . . . [more]

I just set up my desk in the main part of my library to give a presentation. It has me thinking about where I work. There has been some discussion this spring about the law library as a service vs a place or space. For examples, see:

• For each library, a librarian. Preferably in it.
• “Climbing the Value Ladder: Rethinking the Law Library on the Road to 2020” Discussed by Jordan Furlong Keynote Speaker at PLL Summit
• The 3 Foot Radius of the Law Library

Today, I have a projector and portable screen attached to a virtual machine with a . . . [more]

The Canadian Judicial Council has launched a sleek new website. Over the years, the Council has put more and more information online. For some time, there have been links to previous inquiry committee decisions, annual reports and news releases. There is a publications section which is a treasure-trove of information including an interesting Reference Guide for Judges Appointed to Commissions of Inquiry. I’m not sure if the site is just more user-friendly and I discovered hidden information or the CJC has actually posted new material. Either way, one can now find a sample of complaints (anonymized) . . . [more]

Has everyone recovered from the CALL/ACBD 2012 conference yet? Toronto is gearing up now for another major law librarian conference — the International Association of Law Libraries. This will be the 31st annual conference which takes place in a different country each year (2011 was in Malaysia).

The theme of the conference is Canada: The Cultural Mosaic and International Law. Topics reflect Canada’s unique perspectives on international and domestic issues. Speakers at the sessions include top Canadian legal academics, scholars, legal practitioners and law librarians. A preliminary programme is available from the website – http://iall.org/iall2012/ .

The . . . [more]

We came across this recently in the 1959 Canadian Law List: The Law Library of the Future!

Let’s compare the concerns of 1959 with 2012: Economy (the new tech costs less), Space saving (we all have better uses for space), Convenience (a.k.a. ease of access, dare I say on your desktop?), No binding costs or problems (a thing of the past), No bookshelves (see space). Does this sound familiar?

I do note that this new technology wasn’t cheap. Using the Bank of Canada inflation calculator: The SCRs that cost $118 in 1959 would cost $941.69 in 2012; this represents . . . [more]

In a previous Slaw post, we indicated that Quebec’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General Jean-Marc Fournier announced the filing of a draft regulation aimed at making the Gazette officielle du Québec available free of charge on the Internet. Well now it’s official.

This regulation is now in force and allows free access to parts 1 and 2 of the Gazette officielle du Québec published on Publications du Québec website.

The regulation also modifies the price of the paper based annual subscription as well as fees for notices, advertisements and documents published in Parts 1 and 2 of . . . [more]

Following the inspiring lead of Connie Crosby and Shaunna Mireau, I’m sharing a summer project list. I have quite a long summer project list, and it has had to face regular trimming. Summer rarely seems to offer the generous spare time foreseen during the hectic days of the late spring term.

My summer project list contains standard mundane tasks like reorganizing files – physical and electronic – as well as institutional projects difficult to achieve during the academic term, and taking a bird’s-eye view of library collections and services. I won’t bore anyone with those.

Some of the invigorating . . . [more]

July has brought some relief to my workload. A few major projects have moved to the done list and there are only 5 items on my July projects list. Connie’s Summer Reading List is a great idea, but I can’t copy it, so I have decided to create a Summer Writing List.

My writing list has been rattling the cage for some time now. It consists of material that is frequently requested by lawyers in my office and will be crafted for use by my law firm. Can you guess what it is?

A hint: there are not enough annotated . . . [more]