This has been Open Access Week across North America and even further afield. There have been many events. In Canada, CARL/ABRC has a list of OA Week events, but not everything is noted there. UVic’s own events, for instance. The ACRL Blog has collected a few highlights.

Of course, it is libraries that are often organizing these events, as librarians are best positioned to witness the daily spectacle of publicly funded research given away for peanuts or less into private hands. These in turn do very well by it, whether it is delivered in print . . . [more]

The staff at HeinOnline have a new, free HeinOnline iPad app to access their database.

Logging into the app is easy and users are invited to have their login and password information remembered.

Once logged in, one gets a table of contents of the various libraries in their database, depending on the scope of one’s subscription (e.g., Law Library Journal, US Reports, English Reports, Legal Classics, and so on).

Browsing by law journal title and volume is easy to do. At that stage, there is an option of viewing the table of contents for the particular volume. The screenshot below . . . [more]

I just stumbled upon the fact that the decision to discontinue publication of the print version of the federal Table of Public Statutes was reversed.

An issue, up to date to Sept 30, 2011 is now available from:

Queen’s Printer

or from

Federal Publications Inc.

This is good news! . . . [more]

Way back in March, LexisNexis Canada announced an app for Quicklaw on the iPhone. Ted Tjaden covered this new development with a review. The app was updated recently, and I thought it might be worthwhile checking out the new features, including an enhanced search interface and results list.

My personal test of the app found it a bit buggy: app shuts down if you go back to the app from the “view in browser link”, view in browser asks for a client id rather than transferring. This may have been due to settings on my device, or my internet connectivity. . . . [more]

Recently, I had occasion to look at the speeches and presentations made by members of ultimate courts of appeal – the Supreme Court and its equivalents. And Canada ranks somewhat disgracefully last in terms of making the speeches publicly available.

Eugene Meehan has monitored the court too for speeches and presentations, but his pickings are similarly slim in recent years. . . . [more]

I have in the past complained about the abysmal lack of online access to Canadian court dockets at the same time as trying to compile a list of known links to Canadian court dockets to my Case Law research page on my legal research and writing website.

In addition to the new LexisNexis Canada dockets service I mentioned last week, a colleague has pointed out the free Canadian Federal Courts dockets service at IPPractice.ca, a website maintained by Alan Macek of Dimock Stratton LLP, a great site that does not yet appear to have been mentioned on SLAW . . . [more]

Library and Archives Canada announced today that, to celebrate the 170th anniversary of the Canada Gazette (on October 2), the back issues of that publication have been made available and searchable online. There are four entry points to the database:

• Keyword Search
• Advanced Keyword Search
• Search the Consolidated Regulations of Canada
• Find an Issue

Issues published since 1998 have been available online for some time.

[hat tip: @richards1000] . . . [more]

The 7th edition of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation is over a year old already. In a normal world, the newness and newsworthiness of this book (commonly known as the McGill Guide) would have worn off. Still, whenever someone asks for assistance with citing materials, I find myself in need of ‘more’ information. What are you citing, cases, articles? For whom, an academic paper, an internal document, the courts?

A book review published in the 2011 Saskatchewan Law Review at Volume 74, page 275 tells me that I am not alone with struggling for the correct answer to . . . [more]

I see that LexisNexis Canada has announced a new court docket service in Canada for dockets at the Federal Court, Federal Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada:

From one intuitive online interface, LexisNexis CaseConnection Dockets enables fast access to key case information for ongoing and new proceedings filed with the Federal Court, Federal Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada. This information helps law firm, government and corporate professionals stay on top of emerging legal issues and cases quickly, cost-effectively and securely.

The press release was not clear on cost of the service, although registration here was . . . [more]

In what is very welcome news, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has released a practice direction, effective 1 October 2011, authorizing the use of reliable online versions of court decisions for filing in books of authorities and providing for special citation rules:

Practice Direction Regarding Filing of Judicial Decisions from Electronic Databases, and Regarding Citation of All Judicial Decisions

Practice Direction

Judicial Decisions from Electronic Databases

Effective October 1, 2011, copies of judicial decisions obtained from approved electronic databases are acceptable for filing provided the report of the judicial decision contains paragraph numeration consistent with the numbering of

Larry Bodine, former law firm marketing consultant known for his LawMarketing Blog, has been named the new editor-in-chief of Lawyers.com and Martindale.com. (If you are in Canada the Lawyers.com link may flip you to the Canadian site http://www.canadian-lawyers.ca/ unfortunately).

According to an article from the Law Technology News on September 16, Bodine has indicated he is going to overhaul the Lawyers.com site:

…the site could stand improvement, Bodine said. Currently its content is aggregated from other sites. “The switch that I want to make is generating our own material. You’re going to see a complete change

If you’ve done a CanLII search in the last few days, you’ll have noticed that they’ve introduced contextual snippets into the search results. The searched for term is highlighted and shown with some surrounding text, apparently in a number, if not all, of the instances in which the term appears in the relevant document. The graphic below illustrates: . . . [more]