The guidelines have the following objectives:

• to enable a common understanding and context of what modern web sites offer and how they are powered (Part I)
• to identify and review issues that are specific to court web sites, as opposed to web sites in general (Part II)
• to develop a principled approach to court web site development (Part III)
• to make specific recommendations on the modernization of court web sites based on modern web site context, court web site issues and selected principles (Part IV)

Part V of the guidelines facilitates adoption of the recommendations in Part IV by providing . . . [more]

WIPO celebrates World Intellectual Property Day on 26 April 2011. It’s a great day and “excuse” to educate those around you about intellectual property issues including copyright and licensing matters within libraries and organizations. This year’s theme is “Designing the Future”. A poster, postcard and bookmark may be downloaded from the WIPO site and used to help educate and raise copyright and intellectual property awareness. Of course, you are encourage to create your own educational materials which WIPO will showcase on its site. . . . [more]

SUBJECT: Distribution of Hard Copies of Senate
Publications – Phase II

On may 26, 2010, following a proposal adopted by the standing committee on internal economy, budgets and administration, the distribution of hard copies of the senate order paper, journals and debates was eliminated within the parliamentary precinct.

This venture reinforced environmental stewardship by reducing paper printing and followed up on the Senate Administration’s strategic review of expenditures.

On December 9, 2010, the Internal Economy Committee adopted Phase II of the paper reduction exercise which will further assist in this venture.

Effective immediately, the printing and distribution of all Senate

This post concludes with the last two draft recommendations of the CCCT IntellAction Working Group on Court Web Site Guidelines:

• Site Features – Keep It Simple
• Publication of information – Make It Simple

The previous draft recommendations can be found here:

• Court Web Site: Use a Web Content Management System
• Court Intranets: Use the same Web Content Management System
• Recommended content of court web sites
• Search, Navigation & Taxonomies – Keep It Simple

Grateful for any comments and suggestions that you may have – merci! . . . [more]

Last Saturday, I shared on Slaw the first two recommendations of the CCCT IntellAction Working Group on Court Web Site Guidelines. In this post, I’m sharing our draft recommendations 3 and 4.

(note: in the next few days, I will share our two remaining recommendations, 5 and 6)

As usual – your comments and suggestions are welcome! Please let us know if you think we are in the right direction… . . . [more]

Brock Rutter, a member of the New York and Vermont bars and former research assistant at the Berkman Center and now enrolled in the master’s program at McGill Law School, wrote to me about his proposed thesis topic, wondering whether he might run it by Slaw’s readers for any advice they might have. I thought it would make sense to present his work and proposal in Q & A format:

Q. You say you’re working on “a bibliometric analysis of citations between provincial courts of appeals.” Can you explain what it means in plainer terms?

A. I will pick a

This posts continues to expose on Slaw the draft Court Web Site Guidelines produced by the CCCT IntellAction Working Group on court web sites. In this post, we present recommendations 1 and 2 contained in Part IV of the guidelines, together with related context information. The context information is taken from Part I of the guidelines.

In short, the CCCT IntellAction Working Group on Court Web Sites recommends to courts using the same Web Content Management System (WCMS) to power their public, internet web sites and to power their internal, intranet web site.

A Web Content Management System is . . . [more]

Google has announced a change in its algorithms that will clear out some of the link-farm spam generated by over-zealous SEO operators:

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

Some description and commentary here: Reuters GMSV. Google also recently announced personal blocklists, which can also cut down on the . . . [more]

The administrative control of court web sites can be a sensitive issue, because it often cuts across the independence of the Judiciary and resources of the Executive. In consideration of this issue, we felt that our guidelines had to address the issue. The following text is our draft on topic. . . . [more]

Earlier in the month (the other) Simon alerted us to IBM’s development of a natural language savvy (and trivia stuffed) machine that ran rings around the human competitors in Jeopardy.

But no sooner had the victory occurred when lawyers started thinking … what if.

What if they hadn’t cleared copyright on the encyclopedias they stuffed Watson with?

But the best analysis is contained in a provocative and imaginative piece by IBM GC Robert Weber in the National Law Journal, summarized in the ABA Journal.

“Imagine a new kind of legal research system that can gather much of

Readers of SLAW will undoubtedly be readers of the Financial Post’s Legal Post.

Word comes today that lawyer/journalist/blogger Jim Middlemiss will retire from his blog posts at Legal Post and his Behind the Bar Columns but will instead continue to write a column for Canadian Lawyer magazine, “stick his toes in the corporate waters” and “maybe one day get that Twitter account figured out, assuming I have something relevant to say in 140 characters” (his words).

Drew Hasselback will continue as Legal Post editor.

Congratulations to both Jim and Drew. I find the Legal Post an excellent source for . . . [more]

The Office of the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court of British Columbia recently released a policy statement [PDF] regarding public and media access. A few sections of the policy are directed at using computers and other digital devices to transmit information during proceedings:

e. Computers
Members of the public and the media are permitted to use portable computers in Provincial Court provided that they do not disturb the proceedings or interfere with the operation of the court’s own electronic equipment, and that the computers are used solely for the purpose of note-taking.

f. Cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDA’s)