The algorithm for generating CanLII keywords sure spits out some gems. Take this real CanLII keyword string, for example:

• underwear — negligence — wearing blue acid washed jeans — defence — lawyer

How could one not link through to figure out what kind of negligence case could involve a pair of blue acid wash jeans? The fact that the word “underwear” comes before “negligence” makes this list of keywords even better. Could it be that negligence is now part of the “law of underwear”?

Here are some other goodies:

• lifejacket — flip flops — cordless — daughter — bed
• alibi

I am a regular user of the services and collection of the Alberta Government Library. The library organization has changed significantly over the years from embedded department libraries to a centralized model under the service branch of the government. The “significant change” trend is continuing in 2010.

There was a library group email list announcement recently that confirmed earlier rumours that three of seven branches (or sites as they are referred to) are closing as of October 1, 2010. Given that this consolidation will have a direct (likely negative) impact on my ability to gather information for my clients, . . . [more]

Rian — the word means “path” in Irish — is the new National Portal for Ireland. The portal aggregates the contents of the digital repositories of seven Irish universities. A search for [law] turns up 312 results, ranging in dates and topics, for example, from a 2007 article “Alternative Sanctions and Social Norms in International Law: The Case of Abu Ghraib” to an article from 1872 “On the practicability of codifying English law, with a specimen code of the law of evidence.”

You can, of course, order search results by date, relevance, item type, and so on. . . . [more]

On May 25th CLA Executive Council put forward two resolutions, to postpone elections (considered an unconstitutional but necessary move) and to operate on a zero-based balanced budget going forward. I have heard that, to balance the budget, it will mean closing down some or all divisions and special interest groups. These resolutions were voted on at the AGM on Saturday, June 5th.

Like most law librarians in this country, I am unfortunately not a member of the Canadian Library Association (CLA). Some of my colleagues, however, have been members of its CASLIS division for specialized libraries (as opposed . . . [more]

That Google. They have a lot of stuff, including some US Patent and Trademark office material.

The following USPTO patent products are available for free download.

Grant images
Grant full text
Grant bibliographic data
Published applications
Assignments
Maintenance fee events
USPTO Red Book
Classification information

Google must have been delivering patents for some time through its Patents beta site since their database contains “over 7 million patents”. I don’t recall hearing about this and would have remained ignorant but for Alex Horns post about the bulk data news from Tech Daily Dose.

As the Google folks say about . . . [more]

HeinOnline is now offering an add-on subscription for archival Canadian and Australian legislation with the following scope:

Acts of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1901-2008

Acts of the Parliament of Canada, 1792-2007

We are in the process of subscribing so I have not been able to test the feature of being able to search across the full text of all Acts or to narrow the search to a specific year or just the Tables or Tables of Contents. Presumably it is also browsable.

With this content, and with the likely future content of other Canadian legislative material being . . . [more]

With the new BC Supreme Court Family and Civil Rules scheduled to come into force on July 1st, many firms are now scrambling to ensure they have the most up-to-date versions available. On May 5th an Order in Council came into effect which introduced a series of new amendments to the new rules. A number of local colleagues have said that getting a consolidated version of the rules that included the May 5th OIC has been difficult.

Speaking with our legislative friends at Quickscribe, they do have a fully consolidated version. Given the demand out here in the . . . [more]

How can we reduce our workloads, and do the more interesting knowledge work? In his April 15th presentation “The Nature of Knowledge Work” Keith D. Swenson, VP of R & D for Fujistu America defined knowledge work as:

• Non-repeated
• Unpredictable
• Emergent
• Robust in the face of variable conditions

Presumably, then, all other work done by knowledge workers is information work. It is work that is repeated, predictable, routine or otherwise fairly straight-forward.

This is not a new consideration. We have been good at ensuring the repetitive or predictable work is given to people at more junior levels so . . . [more]

The U.S. Federal Judiciary launched a radical redesign of its website recently.

As part of the redesign, it even created its own YouTube channel.

Other law-themed YouTube channels I have come across include:

• euTube (European Union)
• ICLR Channel (Incorporated Council of Law Reporting – publisher of the Law Reports in the UK)
• Law Library of Congress
• Courthouse Libraries BC
• HeinOnline

Those are just a few examples of what is out there. . . . [more]

I learned a lot at the recent CALL/ACBD/MichALL Conference. I am very happy to report (just in case my management team wonders why they send me to these things) that I am putting one of the things I learned into immediate practice.

Susan Gibbons, Vice Provost and Andrew H. & Janet Dayton Neilly Dean at River Campus Libraries at the University of Rochester, gave a plenary presentation on May 11 titled “Avoiding Obsolescence: Understanding and Engaging the Net Generation”. Susan’s talk had several objectives including understanding what the new generation of library users expect from libraries. She discussed . . . [more]

This is a bit of a global pot-pourri drawn from what I’ve been reading from elsewhere.

Access to Justice in Australia
Another Thomson/West acquisition – this time a Brazilian publisher was acquired
Harvard Law Library joins the Chesapeake Project
The Guardian picks up on Rob Martin’s hyperbolic rant against Canadian Legal Education
An English law firm outsources all of its non-billable activities, including its law library, IT and knowledge management.

. . . [more]