No matter how good a library is, space and economic constraints mean that it simply cannot carry everything a researcher might need. As a result, libraries rely on other libraries to help fill in the gaps in their collection. (This practice has its flaws, most notably being what happens when the other libraries stop carrying the materials you need, but that’s another column.) I run the library of a Vancouver law firm so my “go to” libraries (as you might expect) are the B.C. Courthouse Libraries and the University of British Columbia’s Law Library. However, I also use the . . . [more]

Check out the renovated website for the Parliament of Canada. The design is clean, simple, and easy to use. And, of course, the redesign extends to the important LEGISinfo site as well. There you’ll find current bills front and centre (able to be ordered by latest activity date or bill number, and filtered by a set of facets to the right), each displaying a handy progress chart indicating how far along in the legislative process each bill is:

Now all they need to do is recapture the URL parliament.ca from the domain squatter who’s got it now. . . . [more]

Are you ready to meet the future? Special Libraries Association members have been exploring this question on the Future Ready 365 blog, discussing potential and what it takes to make us as individuals, an association, and the profession as a whole ready for the future. SLA President Cindy Romaine explains that being “future ready” for members, the Association and the profession is supported by four pillars:

• Collaboration to accelerate the availability of useful information
• An adaptable skill set that anticipates and responds to the evolving marketplace
• Alignment with the language and values of the community you serve
• Building a

Collaborative blogs, and inviting guest bloggers, is one of the most effective ways to maintain continuity for professional blogs. But who owns the intellectual property of the posts, especially if the site goes commercial with the intent to gain profit?

Jonathan Tasini started writing for the Huffington Post when the site was just 7 months old, writing 216 pieces, and stopped blogging on February 10, 2011, just 3 days after a purchase of the site by AOL was announced.

He’s launched a class-action lawsuit against AOL Inc., TheHuffintonPost.Com, Inc., Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer for damages and injunctive relief. The . . . [more]

It’s been a month since the Google Books settlement was rejected, as reported to Slaw here, and a number of themes have emerged in the online discussuion.

Some of the most cogent comments come from Robert Danton, Harvard’s University Librarian, an opponent of the settlement: Six Reasons Google Books Failed (New York Review of Books).

Perhaps the most balanced and detailed guide to the decision itself comes from the Association of Research Libraries:

• A Guide For the Perplexed Part IV: The Rejection of the Google Books Settlement

The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History has been publishing a new blog, Canadian Legal History, for just over a month now. (Shame on us for not finding out faster. Shame on them for not telling us.) With the exception of the first welcoming post by University of Toronto law professor, Jim Phillips, all the posts thus far are by Mary Stokes, the R. Roy McMurtry Fellow in Canadian Legal History at Osgoode Hall Law School. Posts are running at about one or two a week.

Currently on Blogspot, the blog will be moving to the Osgoode Society’s new . . . [more]

An information bulletin by Michael Watts, Roger Gillott and Sarah Harrison of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP from October 22, 2010, Proposed legislation aims to create greater public accountability, has garnished quite a bit of controversy this week.

The article discusses the Broader Public Sector Accountability Act, 2010 (BPSAA), which received Royal Assent on December 8, 2010. The Act creates new rules for transparency and accountability for publicly funded broader public sector organizations, including hospitals and LHINs.

The new rules come into force on January 1, 2012, and amend the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy . . . [more]

We’ve blogged before about the useful work done by Public Legal Information and Advice sites like CLEO, and its sister organizations in British Columbi and across the country.

I’ve found it surprising that the Website of the Public Legal Education Association of Canada is “Under Construction” though details of its work can be found in Red Deer, Alberta.

In Ontario, CLEO is looking for volunteers to help it redesign its website.

We need your input

In the coming weeks, we will be asking you, our community of users and stakeholders, for your feedback in a variety of

In DC today, the Law Library of Congress unveiled its Strategic Plan for the next five years. While the entire Plan is interesting, Slaw readers may be particularly interested in the Library’s Social Media strategy:

Strategy 6.

Commit to adopt industry standards and best practices while monitoring emerging trends and cutting-edge practices.
objectives:
1) Update law library data contained on the public website by adding xMl and RDf as available formats for all data and e Pub for published reports by September 30, 2015.
2) Conduct an ongoing review of all law library data contained on the public website

CanLII has announced the appointment of Colin Lachance as the new president of the organization.

From the news release:

Mr. Lachance obtained his Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Alberta, and was admitted in to the Law Society of Alberta in 1998. He is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada.

Prior to joining CanLII, Mr. Lachance enjoyed a successful career at the virtual intersection of technology, law and public policy. Most recently he was the Director of Federal Government Affairs with a major Canadian telecommunications company. Mr. Lachance has also held the positions of Director

In a recently released report, “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” [PDF], the White House proposes the creation of a voluntary system in which citizens, government agencies, and businesses could register, permitting the secure provision of multiple services and commercial transactions. From the executive summary:

In the current online environment, individuals are asked to maintain dozens of different usernames and passwords, one for each website with which they interact The complexity of this approach is a burden to individuals, and it encourages behavior—like the reuse of passwords—that makes online fraud and identity theft easier At the same

Larry Lessig is famous for, among many other things, his dictum that “Code is law,” meaning that code in both legal and computer senses is a means of social control. Turns out, unsurprisingly, that people at his former home of Stanford University are working to see if they can actually make laws into computer code.

The wonderfully named Hammurabi Project from Stanford’s Center for Computers and Law is converting a few patches of U.S. legislation into machine readable C# in an attempt to express the logic and relationships of those provisions in a way that might allow facts . . . [more]