It’s hard for some of us to read a book without feeling compelled to comment as the author’s argument unfolds. It may be that you scoff or cheer out loud. Or you may be one of those who read a book with a pencil or pen at the ready, leaving your remarks on the page to persist beside the printed marks, in which case you create what are known as marginalia.

It seems that this urge to annotate has existed for as long as Gutenberg’s gifts have been around — longer, indeed, as you see in the picture below, where . . . [more]

The Australian Research Council, as part of a program to assess Australian research efforts, has rated English-language journals in the sciences and in the humanities and creative arts, including law. According to the background page:

A journal’s quality rating represents the overall quality of the journal. This is defined in terms of how it compares with other journals and should not be confused with its relevance or importance to a particular discipline. There are four tiers of quality rating [A* = top 5%; A = next 15%; B = next 30%; C = bottom 50%] and their definitions

Someone at Google has woken up, a little belatedly I think, to realize that the Web is in large part about publicizing (I won’t say “exposing”) oneself and that they are the doormen, so to speak, of the Web. Sure, you could always — and did often — Google yourself, but there had to be something out there to find. In came Facebook and other webs within the Web, of course, and that took care of that: now it’s no longer a matter of Googling yourself: you are on Facebook (MySpace, Linkedin, and now .tel) or you’re not available in . . . [more]

Recent Slaw posts talk about Blackberry’s, the ABA Techshow, social media, online ADR, and online legal resources. Richard Susskind talks about how technology is fundamentally changing the practice of law, and how we will provide services in the future. One point he makes is that this is not a big bang change, but a creeping change.

That’s quite true. As I think back, I entered law school after being a computer science major. That was before computers were used in law firms (except perhaps for accounting purposes), and before the Internet. At the time, most people thought it was truly . . . [more]

♫Thy magic reunites those
Whom stern custom has parted;
All men will become brothers
Under thy gentle wing…♫

Lyrics by Friedrich von Schiller, music by L. van Beethoven, “Ode to Joy“.

When my trusty but basic cell phone died, it was time to look for a replacement. I knew that it was time to stop my resistance as one of the last holdouts against the western phenomenon that has blown thru the business world, namely the Blackberry. It was a difficult decision but ultimately driven by the need to carry my calendar around with me without . . . [more]

April 13.—An extraordinary coincidence: Carrie had called in a woman to make some chintz covers for our drawing-room chairs and sofa to prevent the sun fading the green rep of the furniture. I saw the woman, and recognised her as a woman who used to work years ago for my old aunt at Clapham. It only shows how small the world is.

April 18.—Am in for a cold. Spent the whole day at the office sneezing. In the evening, the cold being intolerable

July 30.—The miserable cold weather is either upsetting me or Carrie, or both. We seem to break . . . [more]

For those of us who were unable to attend the 9th International conference on Law Via the Internet in Florence last year, the Vox PopuLII blog now contains a nice overview of the discussions. . . . [more]

I picked up on a post this morning from Michelle Golden from the Marcom Writer Blog titled Pruning Deadwood from your Copy. The author Dianna Huff offers five solid tips for streamlining your content:

• Keep yourself to a specific word count
• Don’t fall in love with your copy
• Hunt down redundancies
• Print out the piece and look at it
• Consider *every* word

Knowing what an experienced group of writers we have here at Slaw, I was wondering if anyone would be willing to add to this list? Do you have a simple writing technique or strategy that trims volume . . . [more]

Something with only a tangential relation to law, but squarely in the middle of our interest in online resources and libraries:

As of today all Canadians can log into the Canadian Cochrane Centre, part of “The Cochrane Collaboration,” and free of charge read abstracts in plain language of studies in medicine and health care — or, as the welcome page puts it:

…the best available evidence on which health treatments work, which ones don’t, and which may cause harm.

I have to say I’ve never encountered the Cochrane Library before and am basically ignorant about how it’s funded and . . . [more]

Thanks to Yale’s Information Society Project, there are decent summaries available of the speakers’ and panelists’ remarks at the recent Library 2.0 Symposium, held at Yale Law School. (They’re presented something like a slide show, so you click through them a session at a time.)

This will give you some idea of what the symposium covered:

• Panel 1: The Future of the Library
• Panel 2: Ethics and Politics of Library 2.0
• Panel 3: The Challenge of Copyright
• Panel 4: Digitizing Collections

[via Law Librarian Blog] . . . [more]

I had the honour to be interviewed yesterday by the incomparable, estimable, and frankly able Charon Q.C. for his podcast series. We talked about Slaw, of course, and, surprisingly, about Canada and the Canadian legal system: it seems that we are indeed Brigadoon, and once you’re overseas, even in the mother country, you’re within a cloud of unknowing about this country.

The pseudonymous Charon — probably Britain’s premier legal blogger — was charming as always and helped me over my stumbles and occasional gaffes with aplomb; this is his 127th “lawcast,” after all.

You can hear the interview on Insite . . . [more]

The most recent issue of The Walrus has a profile of Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada.

The article, The McLachlin Group – How Canada’s first female Chief Justice has taken the heat off the Supreme Court, is by Susan Harada. . . . [more]