A number of Australian library associations including the Australian Law Library Association released a study earlier this month that highlights the big 5-to-1 bang for the buck from resources invested in government, law firm and organizational libraries.

In fact, every one dollar investment in special libraries such as law firm libraries brings 5.43 dollars in return to their organization, according to the study commissioned by the associations.

From the press release:

“ALIA [Australian Library and Information Association] Executive Director Sue McKerracher said, ‘Working in the library and information sector, we all recognise the value of special libraries. What

The Government of Quebec has announced that effective April 2014, the proper citation format for Quebec laws and regulations derived from the consolidated collection will be RLRQ. The previous abbreviation was LRQ (statutes) and RRQ (regulations).

The new policy can be viewed by clicking on this link.

See: la Gazette officielle du Québec, partie 2, (2 avril 2014, no 14, pg 1303): Politique sur le recueil des lois et des règlements du Québec.

This revised Policy replaces the Politique sur le Recueil des lois et des règlements du Québec, published on January 3rd, 2013.

SOQUIJ users will . . . [more]

The call for papers for Law Via the Internet (LVI) went out recently. The conference is to be held September 29-October 1, 2014 in Nairobi, Kenya. The theme – The impact of open access to legal information : bridging the gap between accessibility and usefulness – presents attendees with huge scope for discussion, and as a parliamentary librarian, I’m interested to see how many of the suggested themes go beyond the courts and into areas of citizen participation in law-making. The idea that there is a gap between accessibility and useful is also a compelling idea, and I look forward . . . [more]

The newest offering from CanLII, CanLII Connects launched on Friday. The site is meant as a place to gather case commentary on Canadian court decisions. From the site:

CanLII Connects was created to make it faster and easier for legal professionals and the public to access high-quality legal commentary on Canadian court decisions.

We bring together lawyers, scholars and others with professional competency in legal analysis to share their insights and form collective opinions.*

The site is being launched with 27,000 pieces of content and is expected to grow significantly. To submit content, add comments, or vote up commentary . . . [more]

The Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. has published a new comparative report on Biometric Data Retention for Passport Applicants and Holders.

The report compares the regulation of biometric data obtained in connection with passport applications and the preservation of such data in fifteen selected countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United States.

The Library occasionally publishes reports that compare the laws on a given theme in a number of countries.

Earlier comparative law reports from the Law Library of Congress have covered topics . . . [more]

In one of our later advanced legal research and writing class of the term, we turned our attention from traditional primary and secondary material to alternative or less-expected legal research resources. I posted earlier on the portion of the class in which we learned strategies to mine Twitter for legal research. The other broad angle we looked at addressed strategies and tools to assist in finding helpful secondary resources in legal blogs and other open web information sources.

Legal research in blogs

I think it’s fair to suggest legal blogs are so widespread and well-known that they may be . . . [more]

In the US, Lexis has a “Think Like a Lawyer” campaign aimed at law students with the social media element #BeUnprecedented. There are some interesting terms with student use of academic passwords that are not found in Canada.

For 1Ls and 2Ls, your law school Lexis Advance® ID continues to provide access to our legal research tools all summer long. Use it to look good inside a firm, or prep for the classes to come.

The LexisNexis Canada online products terms of use at section 2.5.5 limits academic use to “that directly related to academic coursework required by the academic . . . [more]

Registration is now open for the 2014 edition of the New Law Librarians’ Institute. This is an intensive, week-long program aimed at developing skills in the key competencies of law librarianship developed and presented by the Canadian Association of Law Libraries.

The program will feature expert instruction from leading law librarians and law professors, small class size, a mix of lectures and practical sessions, hands on sessions, and valuable take-home materials. This year the Institute will be held at the Brian Dickson Law Library, University of Ottawa with accommodation in the university’s residences.

Despite the name, this program . . . [more]

From Legal Sourcery:

CBA Legal Research Section

CBA Saskatchewan is considering expanding its sections and providing a Legal Research forum for lawyers that are interested in maintaining and honing their research skills. This section will be geared towards those who conduct legal research, including lawyers with firms, the courts, government, corporations and law reform and other legal institutions, contract research lawyers, and law librarians in the private and public sectors. If you are interested in being part of the section, please contact the Branch. Based on the level of interest, the Branch will consider introducing this section during the 2014-2015

By this point in the term, our advanced legal research and writing class has covered all the favourite usual suspects: research plans, research records and journals, secondary research using legal and library databases, federal legislative research, provincial legislative research, primary research using the big three, UK research, US research, and so on. We’re saving EU legal research for next week.

But this week we took a small detour and looked at the use of social media as a resource for legal research. For instance, we examined the strategic use of Twitter as a legal research source, mainly for secondary information . . . [more]

Welcome Legal Sourcery from the Law Society of Saskatchewan Library to the law blog scene. They are posting several times a week on ” legal research tricks, interesting legal research news and what’s happening at the Library.”

Today they explain the blog name:

Putting our heads together and thinking creatively, we took a vote and decided to call this blog Legal Sourcery. Legal Sourcery is the expertise and capability we bring to legal research. It represents the multitude of legal resources we provide and the skills we use to wade through these resources.

So far they have pointed out interesting . . . [more]

Google now lets you search a news archive that consists exclusively, it seems, of newspaper archives, digital or scanned, provided they aren’t held behind a paywall. This may have been available before now, but I’ve only become aware of it today. And I have to say that for anyone seeking to inquire into the last hundred years or so, this is a treasure trove. Google doesn’t say how many newspapers are in the database, but I count something like 120 beginning with “A” alone (among which is a plentiful supply of Canadian publications). For each publication, you’re told how many . . . [more]