As Past-President of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries, I have the pleasure of Chairing the 2022 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing Committee. This award honours Hugh Lawford (1933-2009), Professor of Law at Queens’ University and founder of Quicklaw. It is awarded to a publisher (whether for-profit or not-for profit, corporate or non-corporate) that has demonstrated excellence by publishing a work, series, website, or electronic product that makes a significant contribution to legal research and scholarship.

After reviewing a number of excellent nominations, the Selection Committee is pleased to announce the short-list of nominees for this . . . [more]

The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) that is responsible for the Canadiana collection of digitized documentary heritage has replaced the subject heading “Indians of North America” with “Indigenous peoples.”

This will effect a little under 2,000 records.

“The content, metadata, and resource descriptions in the Canadiana collections contain language that reflects the biases, norms, and perspectives of the time in which they were created. With the guidance of CRKN’s Preservation and Access Committee (PAC), CRKN staff are replacing inappropriate language in the metadata and resource descriptions introduced during legacy cataloguing practices. The first phase of this critical three-phase project is

In Custodia Legis, the blog of the Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. published a fun little roundup this week about various laws relating to Santa Claus:

“Local, federal and foreign governments are doing their regulatory best to speed his mail and ease his journey across borders with foreign livestock, regardless of his nationality or the emissions his vehicle produces.”

You may have also caught the article Santa Claus in court: From bingo prizes to custody hearings by Nathan Baker earlier this week in The Lawyer’s Daily. Santa apparently managed to get himself into a spot of . . . [more]

Primary Research Group is a New York-based publisher of research reports and surveys about universities, libraries, law firms, hospitals, museums, and other institutions and law libraries in particular could learn a lot from their publications.

The group’s reports tend to gather information from a wide variety of library types, both in the United States and Canada, and on topics such as staffing levels, the use of artificial intelligence, database licensing trends, spending on e-content, views of library services by law faculty members, and much more.

Their most recent publication is the Survey of Law Library Plans for the Print Materials . . . [more]

I am always on the lookout for innovative ways that libraries have found to create great stories about complex legal or historical issues that have many moving parts.

This one is quite remarkable: the Leddy Library at the University of Windsor has created a site that tells the story of the Missing Children of Indian Residential Schools using maps.

This intereactive visual representation of the residential school locations across Canada uses data from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report to document the experience:

“The recent discoveries of more than 1,700 unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools in

The Victoria Law Reform Commission is conducting a public consultation on more inclusive juries.

The state of Victoria is in south-eastern Australia and its capital is Melbourne.

The Commission wants to find out what reforms are needed to improve access for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind or have low vision who wish to serve as jurors in the state of Victoria.

It issued a consultation paper in December 2020 and will be gathering input until the end of February.

From the terms of reference:

“The Juries Act 2000 (Vic) provides a list of people who are

Observers of the justice system and the legal profession, as well as writers of myriad reports by the Canadian Bar Association and others seeking to improve access to justice, all come to the same conclusion: to be successful, the system must be human-centred – arranged around and for the people it serves.

This should be a given – to be successful any enterprise has to think about what the people using its services need. Successful enterprises remove as many obstacles for users as possible, in order to provide a friction-free experience.

One of the frequent complaints from those who need . . . [more]

How does one describe the legal dimensions of what happened last week as a violent rightwing mob incited by the American President assaulted the US Capitol in Washington, D.C.?

What words or phrases can one even begin to apply to such a wide range of criminal acts committed that day? An acquaintance of mine quipped last week: “What can the rioters be charged with? Do you have a copy of the US Code?”

There are many resources from American scholars, legal analysts and independent sources such as the Congressional Research Service to help readers start to unpack the many concepts . . . [more]

About a million years ago…wait, that was just 2020.

Back in 2011-2012 I was invited to collaborate with colleagues on Legal Information Specialists: A Guide to Launching and Building Your Career with colleagues from the Canadian Association of Law Libraries. At the time, Annette Demers asked contributors to gather some quotes from our colleagues about the value they considered in having a Legal Information Specialist team member. As uncomfortable as it was, I asked colleagues to write something. My colleague James T. Casey, QC who was then Managing Partner of Field Law wrote this which appears on page . . . [more]

Apportionment of Fault In Tort (1981) – David Cheifetz

An unrestricted PDF of Cheifetz, Apportionment of Fault in Tort is now available. The text has been out of print for about 2 decades.

The “price”, for Canadian purchasers, will be a donation of CDN $20 to either the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children or the Vancouver Children’s Hospital. Purchasers from other countries should chose a suitable children’s hospital or equivalent in their jurisdictions.

If you want the PDF: Send a request to me at dcheifetz21@gmail.com with a copy of the donation confirmation and the email address to which you want . . . [more]

Law reform commission reports can be great sources for legal research. Many of the reports provide historical background and you can often find comparative information about how different jurisdictions have responded to an issue. Case in point: The Law Reform Commission of Ireland last week released a report on the Accessibility of Legislation in the Digital Age that makes a wide range of recommendations as to how legislation can be made available online in a more consolidated and comprehensive way. Chapter 3 of the report, “Comparative Approaches to Making Legislation Accessible”, considers, from an historical perspective, legislative developments that have . . . [more]

May is typically the beginning of the season for conferences that law librarians attend, kicking off with the CALL/ACBD conference. This year, we are attending virtually, and you are invited to our events!

You may consider yourself a law librarian, knowledge manager, legal researcher, legal information provider, legal technology developer, legal information specialist or user, or not – it doesn’t matter to us – you are welcome to join in. You may be a member of CALL or a member of a law library sister association, or not – regardless of whether you paid your modest CALL/ACBD membership fee for . . . [more]