Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has launched a new website called A Nation’s Chronicle: The Canada Gazette:

“Often referred to as ‘the official newspaper of the Government of Canada,’ the Canada Gazette has been an important instrument in the Canadian democratic process for more than 160 years. It has served to inform Canadians of the operations of government and to involve them actively in the legislative process. With this site, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), in co-operation with the Canada Gazette Directorate, Public Works and Government of Services Canada, will make the Gazette available online, in its entirety, for

Last week I was invited, wearing my hat of law librarian, to participate in a round table discussion on art, the Internet and intellectual property with the group ArtMob. ArtMob is a group of artists, scholars and other stakeholders interested in the intersection between Canadian culture and copyright and intellectual property law, and how it comes into play with the Web. . . . [more]

LawInfoChina offers a combination of free and subscription services to keep you up to date on Chinese law. Many of China’s regulations have been translated into English and can be searched here. As well there are notes on the Chinese legal system and doing legal research into Chinese law.

Curiously, I wasn’t able to find any links to RSS feeds. Perhaps I was looking in the wrong places. Which brings me to another criticism: the site is poorly laid out in my view — too busy, way too many red hyperllinks, and generally the kind of unlovely appearance we’ve come . . . [more]

The University of California at Berkeley’s library has a wiki with some tutorials on how to find Congressional materials on the internet (and in their library, natch). So, for example, you can learn how to find a bill, a hearing or a congressional debate.

The instruction is delivered in a Flash slideshow (no sound). Below the Flash window is a live window on the actual web source so that you can mimic the lesson in real time. . . . [more]

The international NGO Human Rights Watch recently published a report on the upcoming Beijing Summer Olympics that states that the “corporate sponsors of the Olympics risk lasting damage to their brands if they do not live up to their professed standards of corporate social responsibility by speaking out about the deteriorating human rights situation in China.”

The report targets the 12 highest-level corporate benefactors of the Beijing Games, known as the TOP sponsors (“The Olympic Partner”): Atos Origin, Coca-Cola, General Electric (GE), Manulife (parent company of John Hancock), Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Lenovo, McDonald’s, Omega (Swatch Group), Panasonic (Matsushita), Samsung, . . . [more]

Ron Jones of Law Librarian Blog reminds us about the 4th edition of the bibliography of online Canadian federal government databases released way back in January and containing some 488 datatbases available online. . . . [more]

I have been thinking about books recently while considering our firm’s own print and online collection. Paul Emond’s column last week on The Future of Academic Legal Publishing addresses head-on the challenges and opportunities facing publishers of law-related books (and casebooks). In my September 2007 SLAW posting titled Digital Law Books in Canada, I suggested that we have perhaps reached a (positive) tipping point on the availability of digital law-related books with (very) roughly 10% of the major Canadian legal treatises being available in digital format. Since that time, I have had the opportunity to consider and debate this . . . [more]

John Ruggie, appointed UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on business and human rights has recently released his report, “Protect, Respect and Remedy: a Framework for Business and Human Rights.” [PDF]

From the summary:

Responding to the invitation by the Human Rights Council for the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises to submit his views and recommendations for its consideration, this report presents a conceptual and policy framework to anchor the business and human rights debate, and to help guide all relevant actors. The framework comprises

I am a total sucker for this kind of stuff.

This week is National Library Week for our American friends.

Many commercial database vendors and aggregators are marking the occasion by providing temporary free access to their products.

For example:

• Greenwood Publishing is providing free access to database products as diverse as Praeger Security International Online, Reader’s Advisor Online and ARBAOnline (thousand of reviews of reference works). You have to register first.
• Gale is allowing free access to a long list of popular and academic collections like Literature Criticism Online, Science Resource Center, and the Gale Virtual Reference Library

What appears to be a personal effort by Robert Burnham, the Napoleon Series website offers some legal material from around the turn of the 18th century that will be of interest to historians and and others perhaps. On the Government and Politics page, for instance, there are links to essays on diplomatic missions and treaties, plus translations of select treaties, declarations and conventions written between 1799 and 1815, essays on some laws passed by the British Parliament during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Eras, and the whole Napoleonic (i.e. Civil) Code in a 1805 translation. . . . [more]

Osgoode Hall Law School has launched its first fully online journal, the Osgoode Hall Review of Law and Policy. Edited by students and offering student articles for the most part, the Review will also publish in each issue articles on law or policy by practising lawyers or academics. This is the table of contents of the first issue [(2008) 1 Osgoode Hall Rev.L.Pol’y]:

• D. Vaver, “Chocolate, Copyright, Confusion: Intellectual Property and the Supreme Court of Canada” [PDF]
• A. Scotchmer et al., “The Right to Counsel: Policy Reasons for Fundamental Reforms to Promote Access” [PDF]

For me, the Library of Congress subject headings have been a source of bafflement, perplexity — and to a lesser extent, wonderment — ever since I wandered into the stacks, way back in university. I suppose the creature is a little like you and me, the product of evolution’s twists and unexpected turns working on a legacy laid down when the world was a very very different place to produce a working, if sub-optimal, just-so animal. Now, should you want to use the subject headings to actually find something, you might find a little help quite useful. Bernhard Eversberg at . . . [more]