I’ve been waiting for someone to point out how badly we Canadians are preserving our digital heritage. The Toronto Star finally got there this week, with the article, Canada’s bleeding digital heritage.

The article is right on the money – not only is the Library and Archives Canada not showing leadership on the government presence in social media, they can’t even assure us that they are maintaining a suitable archive of federal government websites.

The last time LAC harvested government web content was in 2008, and I recently learned they don’t plan to do it again any time soon. . . . [more]

Yes folks, we librarians celebrate for a whole month each year. The idea for a month dedicated to library and information services in Canada was developed by library partners from across the country to help raise public awareness of the valuable role that libraries play in the lives of Canadians. The Canadian Library Association, along with it provincial and territorial partners, sets a theme, provides a toolbox, and libraries all across the country have parties and events to showcase the cool things that we do for our clients.

This year, I am celebrating library month with a “Proud . . . [more]

The International Competition Network (ICN) is a group concerned to encourage competition-friendly policy changes in member nations. Canada’s Competition Bureau is a member.

Founded in 2001, the ICN

…provides competition authorities with a specialized yet informal venue for maintaining regular contacts and addressing practical competition concerns. This allows for a dynamic dialogue that serves to build consensus and convergence towards sound competition policy principles across the global antitrust community.

Unlike the G8 and some other more shadowy international groups, the ICN has a secretariat, and thus presumable also collects and maintains files of its own creation. The website . . . [more]

The fall 2010 session of the Supreme Court of Canada began earlier this week.

Not everyone knows that electronic facta filed by the parties in cases before the Supreme Court of Canada are available on the Court’s website. This has been so for cases filed since February 2009.

For example, if you want to find out about the arguments of the parties in upcoming hearings of the fall season, you only need to click on the style of cause (party name) link for a particular case.

For example, today, the Court heard an appeal in the case of Information . . . [more]

The Ontario Bar Association (OBA) is creating an online video library to help educate the public about the justice system in the province. The videos cover the basics of the civil litigation process.

The library is created by the charitable arm of the OBA, The Advancement of Legal Education and Research Trust (ALERT). The civil litigation videos feature James Morton, a Toronto lawyer with Steinberg Hope Morton & Israel LLP and adjunct faculty at Osgoode, who blogs at Mortons Musings.

The press release from the OBA can be seen here. The entire libary can be viewed on . . . [more]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) based in Strasbourg has published a series of Factsheets that deal with various themes such as the situation of the Roma, the rights of homosexuals, prison conditions and environmental rights. They include both decided cases and pending applications before the Court.

The full list of Factsheets:

• Case-law concerning the European Union
• Child protection
• Data protection (English version in progress)
• Detention and Mental Health
• Detention conditions and treatment of prisoners
• Dublin cases (which European state is responsible for asylum applications)
• The environment
• Expulsions and extraditions
• Forced labour and trafficking
• Homosexual rights
• Homosexuality: criminal aspects

Intellectual property researchers should have a look at WIPO Lex, a new reference resource from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) that provides up-to-date information on national IP laws and treaties of the members of WIPO, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. It currently features the complete IP legal texts for over 60 countries with substantial coverage for a further 100 legal systems.

IP history buffs can also explore Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900) sponsored by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (Great Britain). It is a “collection of key primary documents from five countries—the United States, . . . [more]

A colleague has made me aware of TransLex.org, a free website providing access to and information about transnational legal research.

The site can be searched by keyword with filters for such things as type of text (Court Decision, Arbitral Awards, Doctrine, Clause, Legislation or Principles) or language (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portugese and Latin).

The site can also be searched or browsed by one of 4 categories (the descriptions below are taken directly from the site):

1) Principles: The TransLex-Principles contain more than 120 principles and rules of transnational law, the New Lex Mercatoria, supported by . . . [more]

As part of a new Academic Success and Wellness program at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, Ronda Bessner, the Assistant Dean of the Juris Doctor (JD) Program, led a session this past Monday called From Keele Street to Bay Street: Learning About the Writing & Research Skills Necessary to Succeed in the Legal Profession.

I had the pleasure of being one of several persons on a panel of practitioners who dealt with legal research and writing in their work in one way or another, along with Chief Law Librarian Louis Mirando and a 3rd year Osgoode Hall student . . . [more]

I know a few law librarians.

I make no secret of it.

Some of them have been essential in making Slaw a success — and only in part because they “got” IT light years ahead of the legal profession generally. Some have been engines driving the creation of powerful institutions of legal learning. Some have even been known to play vital roles in firms that practice law.

Why, then, do law firms hide their law librarians as if they were . . . dipsomaniac uncles and aunts?

I don’t say that firms sequester them in dank, windowless quarters. Or that . . . [more]

What follows in this post are some initial thoughts on what I think is a fairly important topic for law librarians and legal researchers: (a topic I might consider researching in detail if I ever were to pursue a doctorate in information studies): what, if anything, can be done to lessen the anxiety that legal researchers suffer during the research process?

That legal researchers suffer anxiety goes without saying. The researcher may be uncertain where to begin, they may be suffering from too much information, or they may lack confidence in concluding they have reached the “correct” answer (I myself . . . [more]

One (of many) benefits of being a member of the Toronto Association of Law Libraries (TALL) is getting access to their salary survey (published every 2 years or so, most recently in 2010, 2008, 2006, 2005 and 2003) (with a “shout out” here of thanks to colleague and blogger Brenda Wong who, with her committee, was in charge of helping to compile the most recent survey).

This year’s 2010 survey had two items I wanted to comment on:

1) Dual-degree law librarians: Of the 135 responses on the question of educational level, 15 people (11.1%) responded as having both . . . [more]