Fair use (s. 107) is an intentionally drafted ambiguous provision in the U.S. Copyright Act for the purpose of defending users of copyright works from a variety of otherwise infringing acts. Although often compared to the Canadian fair dealing, the two defenses are quite different. Two interesting documents on the analysis of fair use and its interpretation were recently released.

General Counsel from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released a memorandum on 19 January 2012 on: USPTO Position on Fair Use of Copies of NPL Made in Patent Examination. The memorandum looks at three issues: . . . [more]

I was writing a comment in response to Melanie Bueckert who pointed out that Manitoba is reviewing their law society library services, much like Nova Scotia when I realized the comment was longer than my usual Slaw post. I hope that Slaw readers will indulge me with their attention to issues facing law society libraries, especially in less populated jurisdictions.

Let me preface this post/comment by sharing that I have never worked in a law society library. As a law firm librarian, I rely on law society libraries, locally and in other jurisdictions, their services and collections, to supplement . . . [more]

I have updated my Legal Research and Writing website with a new page on resources for teaching legal research and writing.

Included on the page are links to:

• online training video tutorials,

• legal research and writing journals, newsletters and selected articles,

• legal research and writing associations and blogs, and

• general teaching resources for teaching legal research and writing.

I suspect my page may not be complete, so if I have missed something, I welcome comments and suggestions for other resources. . . . [more]

I was shocked to read this headline in yesterday’s issue of INFORUM The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society semi-monthly e-newsletter: “Society to reduce Library & Information Services department”. The NSBS Library review project has been ongoing since April 2010.

There has been mention of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society Library and Information Services on Slaw, most notably, when this worthy group of librarians and library technicians received the Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing.

The NSBS offers documents surrounging the review on their website:

• Library & Information Services Monitoring Report (April 19, 2011)
• Memo to Council, Organisational

Canada’s newest student-run law review just released its first issue.

The University of Western Ontario Journal of Legal Studies is published entirely online, and is the first student journal coming out of UWO for over 25 years. The contents of the first issue are as follows:

Editors’ Note Lisa Di Valentino and Benjamin D. Tinholt

Niqab vs. Quebec: Negotiating Minority Rights within Quebec Identity Nafay Choudhury

Protecting Your Personality Rights in Canada: A Matter of Property or Privacy? Amy M. Conroy

The Rules of Professional Conduct: A Conflicting Guide for Counsel in Child Custody and Access Proceedings Jennifer L. Hiatt

The start of the winter term means a happy return to the University of Toronto Faculty of Information where I am again part of the team that teaches the perennially oversubscribed Legal Literature and Librarianship class. This year I am co-teaching with two of my colleagues Susan Barker and John Bolan and we will once again feature a guest lecture from Ted Tjaden who taught this course from 1998-2004. (Ted has blogged about his impressions of the class here , here and here).

It might strike some of my non-librarian colleagues odd or quaint that such a course continues . . . [more]

I have updated the Reference Tools page of my legal research and writing website with a new section on Law Reform Commission Reports, a topic that – in retrospect – was likely insufficiently treated in my book.

I believe it may currently be the most complete, online collection of links and other resources for researching law reform commission reports. Included, of course, are links to the BC Law Institute Law Reform Database as well as links to individual law reform commission reports websites.

For the older, online Ontario Law Reform Commission Reports, I linked to the listings from . . . [more]

Leading London barrister Jonathan Sumption (now Lord Sumption) was sworn in last week as a member of the United Kingdom’s highest court, the first barrister in 50 years to be appointed to the jurisdiction’s top court without having served as a full time judge.

My SLAW post on 14 November last reported on a speech Sumption made about that time on the dangers of the widening scope of judicial review.

He returned to that topic in his recent interview with The Times, warning judges to keep out of politics.

Sumption also spoke of his views on judicial appointments. He opposes . . . [more]

JSTOR—Journal Storage, I think—keeps a good portion of English language scholarship, a thousand journals and more, in digital form to serve up to subscribers. Some have felt that corralling scholarship so assiduously behind a paywall is wrong, wrong as antithetical to the fundamental principle of disinterested scholarly inquiry, and wrong as creating a barrier to knowledge that the relatively poorer members of society can’t afford to cross. See, for example, this talk by Larry Lessig at CERN, and the politically motivated “hacking” of JSTOR by Aaron Swartz talked about here on Slaw.

But JSTOR, a non-profit venture aimed at . . . [more]

The 2011 Website Award of the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) went to the Kenya Law Reports.

The winner was announced in December at an IALL meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The Award seeks to recognise and promote free legal information websites that are authoritative, comprehensive, up-to-date, useful, and user-friendly.

Other nominees in 2011 included:

• Europeana
• Global Legal Information Network
• HuriSearch
• International Comparative Legal Guide Series
• Legifrance
• openDOAR
• RIS – Bundeskanzleramt Rechtsinformationssystem
• THOMAS
• War Crimes Research Office, Jurisprudence Collections
• WebLaw

A list of winners from previous years can be found on the IALL website. . . . [more]

Does your law library have a strategic plan? Is the plan available, aligned, and has it been shared? Is process measured against the plan? Is your plan in a document, embedded in your budget report, unwritten?

I have some work to do this January to assemble the strategy of my firm library into a working document that can be referenced by my team and by other members of the firm. While we have a strategy and we are executing it, it is less available than it should be.

Confidence in our library team is high, we had excellent response to . . . [more]

David Mao this week became the 23rd Law Librarian of Congress. The Law Library of Congress was established in Washington in 1832 by the United States Congress and is the world’s largest law library.

Before joining the library, Mao worked for the Congressional Research Service. He also held positions at Georgetown University and the law firm Covington & Burling.

The Law Library of Congress blog In Custodia Legis published an interview Mr. Mao earlier this week:

The Law Library issued its Strategic Plan for 2011–16, and, in the short term, I aim to continue the progress toward achieving the