Daniel Poulin just told me that Canlii will, this week, pass a momentous event – the millionth case will be added to Canlii.

We tend to take Canlii for granted – but it really has been a remarkably successful project, which should be supported by all Canadian lawyers, and cheered by Slaw readers. Public access is vital.

Now – a small challenge for those readers. What will the millionth case be?

A Newfoundland and Labrador trial decision? Or something from the Québec Commission de reconnaissance des associations d’artistes et des associations de producteurs? Which has the wonderful acronym, qccraaap. . . . [more]

The favourite musical in my household has to be The Music Man. It might be because of the catchy lyrics, it may be because of the mental image of Robert Preston (from the 1967 film adaptation) prancing around in a band uniform, it could be because my husband played the trombone and my children self-identify as band geeks. It is possibly sustained by my colleague Dino occasionally addressing me as “Marian, Madame Librarian” with his Robert Preston impression. It could even be my fond memory that the University of Alberta Library Catalogue was named “Marian” in the early 90s. . . . [more]

The Department of Justice’s Terminology Standardization Directorate has published the latest in the National Program for the Integration of Both Official Languages in the Administration of Justice (POLAJ) glossaries. The “Family Law Glossary (Common Law) Fascicle 3” [PDF] replaces the two earlier glossaries (Fascicles 1 & 2) respecting family law. (Gotta love that word “fascicle.”).

The idea is to assist those working in an area to make effective use of the fact that at many levels Canada has a bijural and bilingual legal system. Terms used in one system may not easily (or at all) correspond to terms . . . [more]

Many readers will already know that Toronto is hosting the annual conference and general meeting of CALL/ACBD in May. This gathering is a high point in the association’s calendar, and this year is even more special, as we are marking the start of our 50^th anniversary.

The program is relevant to a wide audience – no matter your level of experience or expertise, you should find something to pique your interest. The exhibit hall will offer opportunities to learn about new developments in legal information, and the social program will give you a chance to meet new colleagues, catch . . . [more]

A Broad and Ambitious Justice Review

BC Premier Christy Clark along with her newly-titled Minister of Justice and Attorney General Shirley Bond announced a broad-ranging review of the BC justice system last week. In conrast to many previous reviews in other jurisdictions, this review is not lacking in ambition or scope. The review includes a Green Paper on Modernizing British Columbia’s Justice System and an internal audit review of the province’s justice system. It also includes a review of BC’s criminal charge assessment process, a Legal Aid Services review and a new plan to post justice system data on . . . [more]

An item noted by Susannah Tredewell on the VALL website, CANSIM data has been made available free of charge by StatsCan under the Statistics Canada Open Licence Agreement.

CANSIM is Statistics Canada’s key socioeconomic database, receives periodic updates daily to its various tables, and “provides fast and easy access to a large range of the latest statistics available in Canada.”

They’ve also added a screencast video tutorial, which would have been a nice addition to the 4 videos StatsCan currently has on its Youtube channel. It seems rather odd, I must say, when an organization’s youtube channel . . . [more]

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) is accepting nominations for this year’s Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing.

It honours a publisher (whether for-profit or not-for profit, corporate or non-corporate) that has demonstrated excellence by publishing a work, series, website or e-product that makes a significant contribution to legal research and scholarship.

Slaw.ca won the award in 2009 (yay team!).

Members as well as non-members of CALL can make nominations. Criteria are explained on the Award website (see link in first sentence).

Members of the Award Selection Committee set up to choose the lucky winner are: . . . [more]

A little while ago I blogged about legal bibliographies and highlighted some of the work that John Eaton at the University of Manitoba has done in this area. It is very nice to see that John’s work has been recognised as he is the 2012 recipient of the Association of College and Research Libraries Marta Lange/CQ Press Award. This award recognises librarians who have made a significant contribution to bibliography and information service in law or political science. The press release from the American Library Association announcing the award can be found here.

Congratulations John! . . . [more]

Library Boy told us last year about some tentative steps that courts were making to embrace – or to sniff around tentatively – the whole subject of social media. Today’s announcement from the UK Supreme Court that it will start official tweets of judgments – this in anticipation of the Assange extradition decision – represents the first wholesale adoption by a final court of appeal.

It overshadows Chief Justice McLachlin’s announcement within a speech at Carleton University on the Media and the Courts, that the Canadian judiciary should start to think seriously about social media.

See the Globe, the . . . [more]

CanLII President Colin Lachance has just now released his plan for that organization’s next three years. “Strategic Priorities 2012 to 2014” is available in a variety of formats: HTML, PDF, and large print PDF. Versions in French are also available, of course.

The report elaborates on four strategic priorities for CanLII:

1. Secure permanent role as foremost source of free law in canada.
2. Continually enrich content to meet the needs of public and professional users.
3. Deliver easy to use professional grade tools and a compelling site experience.
4. Continuously promote and defend free access to law

As readers will . . . [more]

I have a tendency to want to keep my gravy out of my peas — control issues, I know. This makes me work to keep my social media in silos as much as possible, fearing, I suppose, the further loss of privacy if Facebook gossips to Twitter about me and vice versa. The devil — or the deity, if you prefer — is in the intersections, the linkages, the relationships.

This desire for some crafted anonymity or at least a tad of privacy is a forlorn hope, I realize, if I’m online and tweeting, blogging, “plus”-ing and the like, whether . . . [more]

A couple of weeks ago the academic library blog and twittersphere was ablaze reacting to a tweet that “[a]ll of Harvard library staff have just effectively been fired”. As more news came out of a January 19 Harvard town hall meeting it appears that the reorganization at Harvard will not be that extreme – but these will be very challenging times for the Harvard library. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a nice short piece on this situation here. The text of the presentation that sparked the reaction is here. More news is expected next month. . . . [more]