Although I have the benefit of a number of internal online research guides where I work, I occasionally find myself resorting to my free legal research and writing site.

However, in so doing, I realized my site inadvertently emphasized Canadian law to the exclusion of most other foreign law. As such, I have updated the case law, legislation and government pages to include links to more British, American (and other common law) sites. I hope this will be more useful for researchers and I welcome suggestions for improving the site.

I have also added the 3 law-related movies . . . [more]

In the wake of last weekend’s mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, I thought it might be useful to see what kinds of gun control laws exist in that state.

According to a number of sources, in the state of Arizona, pretty much anyone can buy pretty much anything that shoots. No questions asked.

The Legal Community Against Violence is a California-based public interest law centre dedicated to preventing gun violence. Last July, it published Gun Laws Matter: A Comparison of State Firearms Laws and Statistics. All 50 states were ranked according to 25 different polices. Arizona came last: . . . [more]

My colleagues at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries / L’Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit (CALL/ACBD) are reminding us to get ready for that group’s annual conference meeting, this year held in Calgary from May 14-18, 2011.

The Conference website now has an ever increasing amount of content.

Early bird registration is March 16th.

The theme of the Conference is “Scaling New Heights” / “Ascension de nouveaux sommets”

Judy Harvie and her planning commitee are to be congratulated for their hard work in getting the conference ready and win the award for most puns possible on the theme of . . . [more]

You can use Twitter to learn about new top level court decisions in Canada.

ACJNet from the Legal Resource Centre Alberta has long been a mainstay for Canadian legal researchers. This resource has now been relaunched as three new portals for the public and those who work with the public:

• LawNet Canada
• LawNet Français
• LawNet Alberta

The press release from the Legal Resource Centre:

LAWNET IS NOW AVAILABLE!

Friday, January 7, 2011

The Legal Resource Centre is pleased to announce the launch of LawNet, three web portals that will help you find the legal-related information you need: LawNet Alberta, LawNet Canada, and LawNet Français.

What can LawNet do for you?

LawNet

. . . [more]

Wilson and LaFleur first to market

The first ipad application reached the Canadian legal research market just before the year end as Lexis Nexis joined Wilson and LaFleur in offering French language texts through an ipad. Using a free application developed specifically for Wilson and LaFleur publications, the two publishers have taken a small but significant step in making their content available to their customers by means of an ipad.

The titles offered by Wilson and LaFleur include:

1. Code civil du Quebec
2. Code criminal
3. Lois du Quebec
4. Droit des affaires
5. Code de procedure civile

The . . . [more]

Okay a seasonal quiz question – in which work of art do a law library and a complex question of estate litigation feature prominently?

Okay – a big hint. It’s opera. . . . [more]

This continues the comments on The Language of Law Reports. I couldn’t figure out how to put images in a comment.

The following croppings are from Chadwyck-Healey’s Early English Books Online, via ProQuest. First is the title page of the 1604 edition of volume 4 of Coke’s Reports:

Next is the top of page 91a, giving part of the record in Latin:

Next is the top of page 92b, the beginning of the report in French:

It’s still “en bank le Roy.” . . . [more]

Why don’t law librarians, legal IT folk and legal publishers all just get along? Do we need a Festivus airing of grievances?

This is the suggestion from Sarah Glassmeyer, Faculty Services and Outreach Librarian at the Valparaiso University School of Law in Valparaiso, Indiana, in her controversial guest blog post The Loris in the Library at the prominent VoxPopuLII blog at the Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School.

She says:

I wish I could say, “Librarians . . . computer scientists . . . legal publishers . . . let’s all hold hands now and sing kum-bay-yah!” However,

. . . [more]

Have a look at the Research Buzz post today on Google Special Syntax: The Around Operator. Evidently, Google has had a proximity operator available for the last couple of months.

The operator is a capitalized AROUND followed immediately by a number within parentheses, representing the number of words within which you’d like the second term to occur from the first search term. For example, [cameras AROUND(5) courtroom] will find, of course, “cameras in the courtroom”, but also “cameras debated for sniper courtroom” and, interestingly, “Judge closes courtroom in Nodine trial to cameras.” These latter are results that would have . . . [more]

The global Free Access to Law Movement has just acquired its 34th member. The Legal Information Institute of India (LIIofIndia) opened for public access at the end of November, though the formal launch isn’t until March of 2011.

LIIofIndia currently has 50 databases, including, as you’d imagine, case reports from the 28 state high courts, federal legislation, and case reports from federal courts. The databases are of varying depth, averaging, it would seem, five years or so.

The main (i.e. advanced) search form is here.

Some links need fixing. For instance, the “help” link on the main page . . . [more]

A SLAW hat-tip to Brenda Wong and her co-blogger Karen Sawatzky at Library Technician Dialog for making me aware of the following online slideshow called If you Want to Work in Libraries, Here are 10 Things You Need to Know by Ned Potter.

I think the author nicely captures some of the opportunities for working in the information field (e.g., working with people and technology) along with some of the challenges (e.g., constant change and tough competition).

Many of these topics arose in my regular guest lecture to the FIS 2133 Legal Literature and Librarianship class earlier this week at . . . [more]