by Tiffany Wong

On September 17, 2012, I presented at the APLIC-ABPAC and Parliamentary Researchers Conference held at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario on the subject of using social media for legal research. I quickly discovered while facilitating discussion through a sample research question that I was not quite able to convince a room full of skeptical parliamentary librarians into using Wikipedia for their research needs, namely research requests on any myriad of topics from current Members of Parliament (MPPs). Understandably, like many lawyers, parliamentary researchers are concerned that the information found on social media is:

• Unreliable
• Changes often
• Out-of-date

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) have co-published a white paper called The New Librarian that looks at the new skills that today’s information professionals need to have or acquire to do well and survive. It is full of examples of how law librarians in different contexts are facing up to the challenges of constant change.

In her introduction, Kate Hagan, Executive Director of AALL, writes:

This joint white paper acknowledges the strategic alliance that has developed between the law librarian and technologist in driving efficient and effective legal information management. The

A must see for law librarians came across my Twitter stream yesterday. ILTA and AALL have partnered to produce a white paper called The New Librarian. The content is great with articles by some folks well known in the legal information community. One of the really cool things is that the paper was created with Uberflip.

Check it out. . . . [more]

According to Michael Geist today on his blog, the Ontario Public School Board Association is advising school boards in Ontario to prepare to stop using Access Copyright for copyright licensing next year. They are following a legal opinion obtained by the Counsel of Ministers of Education, Copyright, that advises any material copied in Canadian K-12 schools either already has the correct permissions or would fall under fair dealing.

This follows from five Supreme Court of Canada decisions on copyright that came down this summer which gave guidance on determining fair dealing (see Martin Kratz’ coverage in his Ensuring the Balance . . . [more]

Virtual delight echoed in tweets, posts, and emails in my corner of the web late Wednesday, upon the release of Judge Baer’s opinion in Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust 11 CV 6351 (S.D.N.Y.). Very shortly after its release, Prof. James Grimmelmann posted the opinion on Scribd.

Briefly, for those unfamiliar, the plaintiffs and defendants had each sought summary judgment in respect of the plaintiffs’ copyright infringement claim. HathiTrust and related university defendants saw near-entire success in their summary judgment motions, failing only on a standing question not consequential to the result. The outcome: Fair use protects the defendants’ participation . . . [more]

The U.S.-based blog Free Government Information was launched a few years ago by a group of academic librarians who wanted to raise public awareness of the importance of better access to all forms of government information.

They occasionally have guest bloggers and this month’s guest will be a real treat for history buffs, archive geeks, hard core freedom of information fans and investigative reporter types: Malcolm Byrne from the National Security Archive, a non-governmental organization based at George Washington University that specializes in declassified documents.

His first post is about the Archive’s work on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis . . . [more]

Important Message from the Senate and the House of Commons of Canada
Published on: Fri, 09/28/2012
Last Modified: Fri, 09/28/2012 – 2:25pm

The Senate of Canada and the House of Commons have informed us that as of September 17, 2012, their publications will be available in electronic format only. Therefore, Publishing and Depository Services will no longer sell and distribute Parliamentary publications in paper format as of that date.

We are working closely with the Senate of Canada and the House of Commons to make these publications available in PDF format in our electronic publication collection available on our Web . . . [more]

This is just a brief note to say that I’ve updated the Canadian Case Commentary site, which now contains Supreme Court judgments released by the end of June, 2012, i.e. up to Clements v. Clements. (This comes as close to the present as seems sensible, given that the latest commentary recorded was published merely a week ago.)

I invite those of you who haven’t had a chance to learn of this project to visit the site. You’ll find navigation easy: there’s a killer search function and a hyperlinked table of cases.

Fifteen judgments were added to the database, for . . . [more]

Last night was the kick-off of the 2012 annual International Association of Libraries meeting at the Law Society of Upper Canada in Toronto. About 120 prominent law librarians from around the world–primarily from academic, legislative and court house libraries–have arrived in Toronto and are enjoying the first day of programming.

The theme of this year’s program is “Canada: The Cultural Mosaic and International Law.” So far we have been welcomed by Ms. Deborah Deller, Clerk of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Dean Lorne Sossin of Osgoode Hall Law School, and The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada (via . . . [more]

Last week, fellow Slawyer Kim Nayyer wrote about the launch of the new Congress.gov in Washington. It will eventually incorporate the well-known THOMAS federal legislative information website.

Earlier this week, In Custodia Legis, the blog of the Law Library of Congress, ran an interview with Meg Peters, an Information Architect in its Office of Strategic Initiatives. She is part of the team that designed the new site.

Since October 2010, In Custodia Legis has been running an interview series featuring members of the library staff. There are over 80 interviews in the series so far. The Law . . . [more]

I was perusing my library collection this morning while shelving books. This activity made me think of great new titles that are slated for upcoming release, my 2013 library collection budget, and which hard copy title that I wouldn’t, and couldn’t live without.

Would it be a reference work, a general text, a text specific to an area of law, an annotated set of the Rules of Court?

Consider that your desert island has high speed internet service and someone with good negotiating skills to acquire a broad spectrum of reasonably priced electronic subscriptions. The electronic subscriptions include Canadian secondary . . . [more]

Earlier today I followed from afar the US Library of Congress launch of the new Congress.gov, which is still in beta. As we watch the new site develop, we can also begin our good-byes to THOMAS, which, it was confirmed today, will be replaced. Andrew Weber of the Law Library of Congress posted the news – about the new Congress.gov and the eventual demise of THOMAS – at that institution’s blog, In Custodia Legis:

Today also marks the first public announcement of the eventual end of THOMAS. It isn’t going away today or tomorrow, but sometime in the