Two weeks ago in my post on indexes in law-related e-books I made mention of the 3 new e-book offerings from LexisNexis Canada that are included for free for purchasers of the hard copy.

I have now tested those e-books on my iPad and thought I would pass on my comments.

The three titles are:

– The Practitioner’s Criminal Code, 2011 Edition
– Ontario Superior Court Practice, 2011 Edition
– LegisPratique – Code de procédure civile annoté, édition 2010

The books are in EPUB format and were easy to download and transfer on to my PDA by . . . [more]

I am very excited about the new offering from the Canadian Association of Law Libraries: the New Law Librarians’ Institute. This is a substantive learning opportunity that I wish I had as a new law librarian.

According to the flyer sent out by the Association:

the New Law Librarians’ Institute is an intensive, week-long, in-person course fostering key competencies in law librarianship, including knowledge and understanding of

• law-making institutions (legislatures, courts, administrative tribunals) and how law is created
• characteristics of, and differences between primary and secondary sources of law
• the principal substantive law publications (legislation, case reports, commentaries) in

I thought it might be useful to have a list of the public bills which died on the Order Paper when Parliament dissolved this weekend. I’ve attached them as .rtf files because of their size- it seemed overkill to paste them right into this post.

Government bills 2011

Senate orphans

I haven’t included the private bills because frankly most of them died (not a surprise, of course). See the Status of Bills document on the Parliamentary website for more details on the 400+ private bills introduced this session.

Which legislative deaths do you regret? I’m sure that the Copyright . . . [more]

Those who don’t always have easy access to the big commercial databases might like to be reminded of the useful free service provided by the Washington & Lee Law School’s Current Law Journal Content, where the tables of contents of nearly 1600 journals are indexed. A few years ago Slaw used this service to offer a page setting out the TOCs of Canadian journals, but it somehow got lost in the first redesign of the blog.

I’ve re-instituted it now. You can always find the link on the new “useful things” item in the main Slaw menu. On the . . . [more]

To supplement an earlier posting on World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Intellectual Property Day, I note that the Canadian Intellectual Property Office is also promoting April 26, 2011 as Canadian Intellectual Property Day! . . . [more]

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]