Our Nicholas is the top item in today’s LLRX feed. It’s featuring his Update to Researching Australian Law.

Good on you, Nick. (And next time, Sabrina, a wee plug for Slaw wouldn’t hurt. ;-) ) . . . [more]

They've closed Bow Street Magistrates Court and are going to turn it into a boutique hotel.

I just know that among all you Slawyers there are hidden artistic talents waiting for the merest opportunity to spring forth and suprise the world. In order to prevent any such springing, I offer you Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas. I mean, five minutes with a Pollock and the whole artistic endeavour seems a trifle overblown. And, believe me, this is something your six-year-old niece could do.

Go to the site and you’re presented with the archtypical blank canvas. Some of you might choose to leave it at that. Others, however, will wiggle the mouse, as we say. Ta . . . [more]

I’m pleased to announce that Michel-Adrien Sheppard has joined Slaw as a core contributor. As Slawyers will doubtless know, Michel-Adrien is the Reference Librarian at the Supreme Court of Canada, and, perhaps even more important, Library Boy the blogger, at http://micheladrien.blogspot.com/.

Welcome, Michel-Adrien, to Slaw, made even more significant by your participation. . . . [more]

I was trolling the Canadian Library Association/association canadienne des bibliothèques website to see what is new (note their new bilingual name!). I found a couple of interesting items on copyright: a letter to the Ministers about Copyright Legislation, and a Resolution by the Association regarding an Access Copyright iniative, “Captain Copyright“. . . . [more]

If you're into podcasts, you might not be able to find what interests you without relying on titles to search with -- something that won't take you very far into the audio world.

In a recent Slaw comment, Connie asked if someone would write something about Drupal. Subsequent comments from Patrick and Simon gave brief summaries, but I thought I’d go a bit further, and try to relay some of the basics surrounding this type of web software.

Briefly, Drupal is an open source CMS, written for the LAMP stack, which is modular in design. What does this mean? Well, let’s start with a couple definitions.

• Open Source (OS) – open source software (generally) lets you download the software for free, view the source code, alter and re-distribute. Each OS product typically

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KNOXVILLE, Tenn.–A 1995 e-mail extracted from the hard drive of a recently unearthed Compaq desktop PC offers a tantalizing glimpse into the day-to-day life of a primitive Internet society, said the archaeologists responsible for its discovery.

“We’re very excited by this find, because only by understanding our e-mail past can we hope to understand our e-mail present and future,” said Northwestern University archaeology professor Lane Caspari, who has been leading the dig through the equipment storage area of a Knoxville-area credit union since late April, on Tuesday. “The discovery also sheds new light on the 1990s–an era we know very . . . [more]

Intute is a free online service providing access to the very best web resources for education and research.

Is anyone using Westlawecarswell’s Litigator? If so, is it proving useful? The databank of precedent facta seems to be a useful additional tool on one’s desktop, as well as the annotated Rules of most jurisdictions across Canada including Federal and the SCC. . . . [more]

The following is copied from an Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, Court Services Division Directive and may be of interest.

An amendment to Rule 1.06 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, which removes RCP forms from the Rules and incorporates them by reference to a website, comes into effect on July 1, 2006. This change, made by O. Reg.77/06, moves the forms from the body of the Rules to the following public website: http://www.ontariocourtforms.on.ca. The forms will no longer be published on the “e-laws” website. The regulation also includes a new Table of Forms that gives the Form

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A research team at IBM is working on an application called Dogear that brings social bookmarking to large enterprises. Just as with del.icio.us (I never know where to put the first period), the idea is to let others benefit from pages you find interesting and that you tag this way and that; only here the others are folks in your firm. IBM’s software is typically sophisticated, and Dogear won’t be an exception, it seems: the front end lets you search by tag (natch), lets you see a list of those who’ve bookmarked a particular page, and gives you a list . . . [more]