I was happy to receive and thumb through the new 4th edition of Daphne Dukelow’s The Dictionary of Canadian Law (Carswell, 2011).

It has been close to 6 years since the previous editon was issued. In that time, Dukelow notes in her preface that one “sea change” in legal language has been a movement to plainer English in legislation and judicial reasons. According to her, the new edition focuses more on pure legal terminology and less on industries and activities regulated by law. Dukelow also notes that Betsy Nuse helped with this new edition (and on a historical note: in . . . [more]

A week ago we learned that Ontario’s Attorney General is willing to consider putting video cameras in Ontario’s courtrooms, and is:

… prepared to speak with the judiciary about their interest in having the discussion at this point in time, where we would go, and canvass the views of other participants in the justice system.

This statement — hardly a rousing endorsement of video access — came as a result of his interview with Canadian Press reporter Allison Jones, who, through a freedom of information request, had obtained a copy of an evaluation done nearly three years previously of the . . . [more]

India, as an emerging knowledge worker superpower, is a country to look to for close ties to cross commonwealth legal issues, like intellectual property rights. I have been monitoring intellectual property news from around the web for some time, and I have enjoyed the well written posts from the Spicy IP blog.

I was very pleased, while checking out the LIIofIndia (announced here at Slaw), to see that a link to to the Spicy IP blog by navigating to Intellectual Property through the Subject pages at the Legal Information Institute of India. There is also a link to search Spicy . . . [more]

I normally try to avoid posting about items that have been discussed elsewhere but I believe this merits a Slaw post. I’m sure many of have seen what follows in other forums (it was brought to my attention by a colleague) but this causes you to think a bit differently and more of that is good on a Monday morning. Okay maybe it isn’t completely different but it takes something you know well and does it differently and makes you wonder about the future of publishing and just what an ebook is or more specifically what an ebook might be. . . . [more]

The Research Instruction and Patron Services (RIPS) division of the American Association of Law Libraries has just released its 19th Annual National Legal Research Teach-In Kit.

Every year, RIPS gathers together PowerPoint presentations, research assignments, lesson plans, syllabi, and instructional handouts on a variety of topics. It is a great resource if you need inspiration for developing your own legal research material. There is also a list of kits from previous years on the RIPS website.

Canadian law librarians have also been sharing instructional materials thanks to the efforts of the Courthouse and Law Society Libraries Special Interest Group . . . [more]

When evaluating print law-related books for purchase, librarians will consider a number of factors: the author’s expertise, the reliability of the publisher, whether the book is heavily foot-noted, and whether it contains good finding tools, such as a detailed table of contents, table of cases or legislation or an index.

Unfortunately, in the Canadian legal publishing market – which is relatively small – the quality of indexes in print law-related books is variable since most publishers put the onus on the author to create their own index (which makes sense, since the author is the subject expert and knows his . . . [more]

An updated version of the Canadian E-Discovery Case Law (Common Law) Digest has just been posted on the OBA website. This amazing digest is maintained by Peg Duncan and the members of the Sedona Canada Working Group Seven. If you are dealing with e-discovery issues this digest is a fantastic resource for finding relevant cases. You can find it here. . . . [more]

Via The Law Librarian Blog, Sarah Glassmeyer has started LISVendor.info, a wiki to collect and share information on the relations, financial and otherwise, between law librarians and legal publishers.

In light of recent developments, this may be a particularly timely resource. Since those events, Harper Collins has launched an attack on libraries in general with its 26-loan limit, and the response has been swift, including a boycott and a draft eBook Users’ Bill of Rights.

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries produced a report on eBooks in academic libraries in 2008 that identified a range . . . [more]

We’ve all searched Google’s index only to find some pesky or creepy site masquerading as the answer to our query. Often it’s one of those curating-aggregating-wikiplagiarizing pages that add nothing to what others have already done and that often mangle things in the process. Now Google is giving us a way to block these sites from future search results. If you’re using Chrome 9+, IE8+ or Firefox 3.5+, you’ll start seeing on Google.com (but not Google.ca?) a new option next to “cached” below a search result: “Block all xyz.com results“. A click on this will prevent that page . . . [more]

I see from this week’s Ontario Reports that there is an advertisement from LexisNexis Quicklaw for their new free app in the iTunes store for the iPhone (but it also works on the iPad).

LexisNexis should be applauded for being first to the market in Canada with a case law database app.

However, in testing it just now on my iPad I think in most cases I would simply launch a Quicklaw session on my iPad’s web browser.

The app is fairly simple. I find the iPhone “size” too small but there was a feature, as is common for iPhone . . . [more]

In a previous post, I have outlined a draft Request for Proposal structure (RFP) in relation to courts securing services to develop, deploy and manage a web site designed in accordance with the CCCT IntellAction Working Group Guidelines on Court Web Sites.

In this post, please find our draft evaluation criteria in relation to the RFPs. . . . [more]

It seems Canada is not experiencing the same level of conflict over the issue of citizens photographing police as our neighbours are. In the UK, the US, and Canada, the general rule seems to be that a person is allowed to take pictures of whatever is visible while standing in a public place. But, as always, the devil is in the details.

In the UK the Counter Terrorism Act of 2008 makes it an offense to photograph certain types of police (see s. 76) where the photos could be useful to a terrorist (with the onus of proof on the . . . [more]