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]

As we’ve recently seen here on Slaw, getting governments to cough up information can be a difficult proposition. But there’s some help for folks in Nova Scotia. The Right to Know Coalition is:

… a non-profit organization. Through advocacy and education, RTKNS encourages the use and development of freedom-of-information legislation to foster a better informed and more politically active electorate in Nova Scotia and to improve the quality of public and private decision making in the province.

RTKNS has been around for years but has somehow slipped under my radar and eluded Slaw’s attention. Our apologies for that.

The . . . [more]

The International Competition Network (ICN) is a group concerned to encourage competition-friendly policy changes in member nations. Canada’s Competition Bureau is a member.

Founded in 2001, the ICN

…provides competition authorities with a specialized yet informal venue for maintaining regular contacts and addressing practical competition concerns. This allows for a dynamic dialogue that serves to build consensus and convergence towards sound competition policy principles across the global antitrust community.

Unlike the G8 and some other more shadowy international groups, the ICN has a secretariat, and thus presumable also collects and maintains files of its own creation. The website . . . [more]

First Member of Atlantic Canada's Mi’kmaq Community to be Appointed Judge

The fall 2010 session of the Supreme Court of Canada began earlier this week.

Not everyone knows that electronic facta filed by the parties in cases before the Supreme Court of Canada are available on the Court’s website. This has been so for cases filed since February 2009.

For example, if you want to find out about the arguments of the parties in upcoming hearings of the fall season, you only need to click on the style of cause (party name) link for a particular case.

For example, today, the Court heard an appeal in the case of Information . . . [more]

The Ontario Bar Association (OBA) is creating an online video library to help educate the public about the justice system in the province. The videos cover the basics of the civil litigation process.

The library is created by the charitable arm of the OBA, The Advancement of Legal Education and Research Trust (ALERT). The civil litigation videos feature James Morton, a Toronto lawyer with Steinberg Hope Morton & Israel LLP and adjunct faculty at Osgoode, who blogs at Mortons Musings.

The press release from the OBA can be seen here. The entire libary can be viewed on . . . [more]

Further kudos to Melissa Kluger and her staff at Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style. I remain impressed with the ongoing quality and content of her magazine (note of disclosure: I know Melissa from when she was a law-school student and I believe my firm also advertises in the magazine).

It seems they have also now launched The Precedent A-List, a site for lawyer announcements and career postings.

As stated in their news release:

The site will be devoted to career announcements — such as who has made a move, made partner or gone in-house —

. . . [more]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) based in Strasbourg has published a series of Factsheets that deal with various themes such as the situation of the Roma, the rights of homosexuals, prison conditions and environmental rights. They include both decided cases and pending applications before the Court.

The full list of Factsheets:

• Case-law concerning the European Union
• Child protection
• Data protection (English version in progress)
• Detention and Mental Health
• Detention conditions and treatment of prisoners
• Dublin cases (which European state is responsible for asylum applications)
• The environment
• Expulsions and extraditions
• Forced labour and trafficking
• Homosexual rights
• Homosexuality: criminal aspects

. . . [more]

The esteemed Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, LEAF, has launched a website “to monitor developments in equality law.” Equality Rights Central is to be:

… a place to find cases, commentary, trends, news and facta about equality and discrimination issues, in law and policy.

This site is for advocates, academics and practitioners involved in equality rights, to monitor and advance the development of equality law in Canada.

Funded by LEAF and several provincial law foundations, ERC ( — Their acronym; not mine. Not particularly felicitous. — ) will offer updates on key issues as they move through the court . . . [more]

Our congratulations to Public.Resource.Org a non-profit organization focused on enabling online access to public government documents in the United States. Today it won a $2 million award from Google’s Project 10¹⁰⁰ competition – 10¹⁰⁰ is 1 googol – which called for “ideas to change the world”.

Google’s competition garnered 150,000 ideas from more than 170 countries. Google whittled that list down to a final 16 ideas for public vote. Public Resource came in second equal, after FIRST a non-profit organization that promotes science and math education around the world through team competition.

The Law.Gov initiative aims to make . . . [more]