Last week, on July 14th to be precise, the Law Library of Congress in Washington turned 180 years old.

It is the world’s largest law library, with a collection spanning many centuries as well as all jurisdictions of the planet.

And a glance at its website home page will give you some idea of the breadth of electronic material it makes available: international legal news, foreign legal materials, guides, databases and Congressional materials.

Happy Birthday! . . . [more]

A discussion on the Canadian Association of Law Libraries list this morning strikes me as worth a share here. Dawn Urquhart drew subscribers’ attention to a National Post – Legal Post article published on the web yesterday, “Court decisions may be lost in translation.” The article appears in today’s National Post with the somewhat less fair title, “Quebec decisions isolated by lack of translation,” and the even less fair lede, “Lawyers outside Quebec can’t read useful judgments.”

The author cites Ted Tjaden’s excellent post here on Slaw from last year, wherein Ted noted the limited overlap in . . . [more]

This morning my Toronto colleague Martha Foote was awarded the Thomson Reuters Westlaw Award for Career Achievement, the big award at the Special Libraries Association Legal Division breakfast. The award is designed to recognize a member who has provided significant service to the Division.

Martha is a past chair of the SLA Legal Division and has also served on the executive board of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries. When not serving the profession on a volunteer basis, she currently serves as Board General Manager of LibraryCo, the central management for the Ontario county courthouse library system.

Congratulations, . . . [more]

I’ve finally got around to updating the Google Custom Search Engine that powers Slaw’s Canadian Law Blogs Search — found in the right sidebar very near the top. It now searches all 359 glorious Canadian law blogs listed in Stem Legal’s Lawblogs.ca. Many apologies to all the new (and not so new) bloggers who waited far too long to be included. I’ll try to develop a method for a more continual updating.

I’ve also removed the options that were initially available — date range, number of results — because Google no longer honours these requests for Custom Search Engines . . . [more]

I just set up my desk in the main part of my library to give a presentation. It has me thinking about where I work. There has been some discussion this spring about the law library as a service vs a place or space. For examples, see:

• For each library, a librarian. Preferably in it.
• “Climbing the Value Ladder: Rethinking the Law Library on the Road to 2020” Discussed by Jordan Furlong Keynote Speaker at PLL Summit
• The 3 Foot Radius of the Law Library

Today, I have a projector and portable screen attached to a virtual machine with a . . . [more]

The Canadian Judicial Council has launched a sleek new website. Over the years, the Council has put more and more information online. For some time, there have been links to previous inquiry committee decisions, annual reports and news releases. There is a publications section which is a treasure-trove of information including an interesting Reference Guide for Judges Appointed to Commissions of Inquiry. I’m not sure if the site is just more user-friendly and I discovered hidden information or the CJC has actually posted new material. Either way, one can now find a sample of complaints (anonymized) . . . [more]

Has everyone recovered from the CALL/ACBD 2012 conference yet? Toronto is gearing up now for another major law librarian conference — the International Association of Law Libraries. This will be the 31st annual conference which takes place in a different country each year (2011 was in Malaysia).

The theme of the conference is Canada: The Cultural Mosaic and International Law. Topics reflect Canada’s unique perspectives on international and domestic issues. Speakers at the sessions include top Canadian legal academics, scholars, legal practitioners and law librarians. A preliminary programme is available from the website – http://iall.org/iall2012/ .

The . . . [more]

In a previous Slaw post, we indicated that Quebec’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General Jean-Marc Fournier announced the filing of a draft regulation aimed at making the Gazette officielle du Québec available free of charge on the Internet. Well now it’s official.

This regulation is now in force and allows free access to parts 1 and 2 of the Gazette officielle du Québec published on Publications du Québec website.

The regulation also modifies the price of the paper based annual subscription as well as fees for notices, advertisements and documents published in Parts 1 and 2 of . . . [more]

Following the inspiring lead of Connie Crosby and Shaunna Mireau, I’m sharing a summer project list. I have quite a long summer project list, and it has had to face regular trimming. Summer rarely seems to offer the generous spare time foreseen during the hectic days of the late spring term.

My summer project list contains standard mundane tasks like reorganizing files – physical and electronic – as well as institutional projects difficult to achieve during the academic term, and taking a bird’s-eye view of library collections and services. I won’t bore anyone with those.

Some of the invigorating . . . [more]

I’ve seen other summer reading lists lately and thought it would be fun to put together my own list of books currently or recently on my nightstand. There’s quite a range here–management/leadership type titles, geek girl titles, and some challenging fiction. I’m not really one for light reading! And, there’s probably no way I can get through all of these in the summer, but I can certainly try. And of course in putting this list together I found even more new books, so I better get reading.

What is on your summer reading list?

Here is the list (with no . . . [more]

The most recent annual report of the Law Commission of England is now available.

The report includes highlights of the past year’s work. In particular, the Commission saw two pieces of legislation that derive from its work reach the statute book: the Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Act 2011 and the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012.

A number of other reports are awaiting implementation in the areas of trust, marriage breakdown, conspiracy, business partnerships, renting homes, etc.

Part 4 of the report is entitled “Measuring Success” and provides interesting stats about the . . . [more]

The Ecojustice Clinic at the University of Ottawa has established the online Ecojustice Environmental Hansard.

According to its website description, the site is “an easy-to-use collection of all House of Commons discussions and debates about Canada’s environment.”

The site suggests 4 different ways to access information:

1.Use the homepage to review featured topic summaries and debates from the previous sitting week.

2.Use the search box to query by topic, content or MPs involved in a debate or exchange in the House of Commons.

3.Browse debates by date or look for ones relating to specific categories.

4.Read topic summaries that