The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment have coordinated a new plan for reducing air pollution, according to this Communiqué, and also this Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat press release. The air pollution plan is based on the recommendations of a multi-party committee that included government, NGO, and industry experts. That report is not available, but may be soon. Check here, or sign up for their emails. The plan is “comprehensive” (though subject to provincial jurisdiction), will up air quality standards, and

[u]nder the new system, Canadians would have ready access to information about air quality

On 4 and 5 November 2010, The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is hosting meetings on Emerging Licensing Modalities, as part of its initiative on Facilitating Access to Culture in the Digital Age. These are global meetings with speakers and participants from around the world, with representatives of a variety of stakeholders. Many speakers are experts in their fields and countries. Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig will be the keynote speaker. The Themes for the meetings are:

Licensing Content Online: New Trends
Competition and Licensing of Music
Software: Tailoring Licenses to Markets
Research and Education: Emerging Licensing Platforms . . . [more]

While you won’t see it mentioned either on Canlii or the Federation of Law Societies web page, but Canlii has a new board of directors, and a much leaner governance structure.

The new Board members are

Sonia Poulin, Director of the Alberta Law Society Libraries
Darrel Pink, Executive Director, Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society
Diana Miles Director, Professional Development & Competence, Law Society of Upper Canada
Johanne Blenkin, Executive Director at Courthouse Libraries BC
Dr. Martin Felsky
Professor Michael Geist
Charmian Harvey, Directrice générale chez Totalmédia

Here is the text of the official statement: . . . [more]

Will this spread to other jurisdictions? Will people now pay more attention when we talk to them about the importance of proper legal citation? Just a thought :)

Lawyer Fined $100 for Getting a Case Citation Wrong . . . [more]

Despite the favourable piece in today’s Information Today Dayton is waking up to learn of the power of Michael Bloomberg’s cheque-book. The IT piece says that LexisNexis has learned from WestlawNext’s debacle of a launch—which “involved telling everyone at the same time about a new product while only providing it to one market and leaving other markets to the guesswork; not telling anyone the price; and generally irritating librarians by promoting the new but often unavailable service directly to patrons”.

Instead, LexisNexis is doing it differently. LexisNexis is targeting the solo and microfirms with the new Lexis Advance. These lawyers

Last week Nicole Garton Jones, a BC-based lawyer and fellow Slaw contributor, provided some thought-provoking commentary on the position of the Law Society of British Columbia on the topic of Virtual Law Firms, as discussed in the latest edition of the organization’s Bencher’s Bulletin. In the bulletin, and subsequent response to Ms. Garton-Jones’ post, the LSBC identifies several key concerns relating to cloud computing for BC-based law firms, namely:

Take a look at the ♀IFLS site. The Institute for Feminist Legal Studies at Osgoode Hall Law School has been running a blog since the beginning of summer. All, or nearly all, posts are by the Director of the institute, Professor Sonia Lawrence, and they range across a wide spectrum of kinds — as should be the case in a good, general topic blog.

For example, the latest post is about a book by Professor John Kang called “The Man Question”, there’s a post about the state of feminism, a post about the recent court decision striking . . . [more]

The last couple of years I have been living vicariously through Twitter, doing my best to follow the discussions at the Internet Librarian International (ILI) conference that takes place in the UK each October. When people who are attending start emailing me things they have learned (as happened this year), I really know I am missing something!

Some highlights from ILI2010

Dr. Hazel Hall, Director of the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University, spoke about “relevance of social tools for information professionals” in her talk Getting Real About Social Media. Owen Stephens has a nice blog . . . [more]

I’ve been waiting for someone to point out how badly we Canadians are preserving our digital heritage. The Toronto Star finally got there this week, with the article, Canada’s bleeding digital heritage.

The article is right on the money – not only is the Library and Archives Canada not showing leadership on the government presence in social media, they can’t even assure us that they are maintaining a suitable archive of federal government websites.

The last time LAC harvested government web content was in 2008, and I recently learned they don’t plan to do it again any time soon. . . . [more]

Yes folks, we librarians celebrate for a whole month each year. The idea for a month dedicated to library and information services in Canada was developed by library partners from across the country to help raise public awareness of the valuable role that libraries play in the lives of Canadians. The Canadian Library Association, along with it provincial and territorial partners, sets a theme, provides a toolbox, and libraries all across the country have parties and events to showcase the cool things that we do for our clients.

This year, I am celebrating library month with a “Proud . . . [more]