The timing is exactly right: I discovered the brand new TaxHeat on the next to the last day of the tax year.

TaxHeat is a weblog about researching primarily Canadian tax topics and issues.

Targeted at librarians who engage in quick and in-depth tax, legal, or business research, TaxHeat has two purposes:

• to inform readers of new developments concerning tax issues, legislation, and research, and
• to teach readers new tax research skills and sources.

Agnese Caruso, whose blog this is, works as a librarian in a corporate tax library in Toronto.

The feed for TaxHeat is http://taxheat.typepad.com/taxheat/index.rdf . . . [more]

1. TaxHeat
2. The Gavel Store
3. Gavel bouquet
4. China.org.cn: Shanghai Courts Start to Use Gavel
5. Silk Robes and Sou’westers: Scene 4: The Supreme Court of Newfoundland in session
6. The Green Bag: J. Wright, “An American Visitor to a Canadian Court” [pdf]
7. Canoe: Judge’s own “Da Vinci Code” cracked
8. The Guardian: Books: How judge’s secret Da Vinci code was cracked
9. WorldLII: Free Access to Law Movement: Declaration on Free Access to Law
10. SPARC
11. Larry Downes
12. CIO Insight: L. Downes, “Why Johnny Can’t Stop Sharing Files”
13. Citizens for Open Access to Civic Information and Data
14. O’Reilly Radar: Open Text Mining Interface
15. Nascent: Open Text

I’ve recently finished working on part of a website that makes use of icons to symbolize certain concepts — pretty stock stuff on the web. Except that it isn’t easy to find appropriate symbols, at least those that can work as icons, for abstract notions or large social institutions (which may be the same thing, now that I come to think about it).

How do we symbolize law in a tiny picture? Court? A lawyer? For the last, the best I could do was draw a mini-person and hope that it was clear the person was a lawyer because of . . . [more]

Not quite a copyright issue, but still and all a question of free access and control:

We would like to announce the launch of a new online space for Canadian civic engagement – Citizens for Open Access to Civic Information and Data (aka: CivicAccess.ca). CivicAccess is being founded by librarians, civil servants, academics, lawyers, free- and open-source advocates, geomatics professionals and community planners from across Canada. We are motivated by the belief that open civic information and data are necessary for being engaged citizens in an “information society”.
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Nous souhaitons vous annoncer le lancement d’un nouvel espace en

As all legal researchers know, meaning is the compass direction we follow as we divert the flood of data through information and on towards knowledge. At some point we pass any given canalization project on to others — typically lawyers or judges who work ultimately with pipettes and eyedroppers to pursue meaning among the bonzai garden pools and fountains. Staying on top is important — which means at times getting that Google Earth view from above of the grand ocean-to-irrigation project, so that one is prepared when glaciers melt, releasing a gush of data, when dikes fail and meaning is . . . [more]

This just in to Slaw from William Abresch, Director, Project on Extrajudicial Executions, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law:

We’ve just launched a web site that I think Slaw’s readers would be interested in: http://www.extrajudicialexecutions.org

The site aims to make information about issues taken up by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions more accessible.

Two features that we are especially excited about are:

• A country-by-country guide to the Special Rapporteur’s fact-finding visits and correspondence with governments. This will be helpful to anyone researching the human rights situation in a particular country.
  http://www.extrajudicialexecutions.org/communications

Can you write three sentences?

I need help from those whose practices – or lives – have been affected – for good or ill – by the advent of the BlackBerry.

The American Bar Association’s Law Practice MagazineWhose Editorial Board I chair – full disclosure is running a feature in its next issue on the impact of the BlackBerry on the practice of law, and I’ve been asked to canvass views for a sidebar.

I’m not looking for an essay. Just the sort of flip three lines that one would expect from a BlackBerry.

I’ll need them by May Day . . . [more]

Starting tomorrow, Monday April 24, we’re initiating our first theme week here at Slaw. The theme is copyright, and our hope is that many if not most of the posts made this week will explore this topic. I’m imagining that some will point to research resources on copyright that might not be common knowledge and that others will tackle issues of how copyright affects legal research, particularly as done with IT. But whatever their approach, theme week posts will sport this logo in the upper left-hand corner of the post:

At the end of the week, we’ll gather them . . . [more]

1. Well-Tempered Clavier
2. The Billable Hour Clock
3. Ontario Legislative Assembly
4. Ontario Public Bills Index
5. Ontario Bills Before the House
6. IMA (Internet Marketing Attorney) Awards for 2006/07
7. Internet Marketing Attorney M. Buchdahl
8. Internet Marketing Attorney: International Firm Reviews from 2004-05
9. Clark Wilson
10. The Williams Law Firm: J. Williams
11. Law Office of Robert J. Ambrogi
12. Legal Talk Network: Lawyers’ Websites
13. Justia.com
14. FindLaw
15. PaperStreet Web Design
16. Dennis Kennedy
17. ABA Techshow: Ladies and Gents, In this Corner, Microsoft and in this Corner, Google
18. T. Friedman, “The World is Flat”
19. DUI Blog
20. Construction law blog
21. Video Game Law Blog
22. Financial Institution Law Blog
23. Beyond Structured Settlements

In today’s Fillip temperament is key — a whole lot of keys, as it happens, because it’s about a site that does wonders with the already marvelous Well-Tempered Clavier by J.S. Bach. The site, also called the Well-Tempered Clavier, invites you to chose (from either a scrolling list of key signatures or a keyboard) one of the 24 keys you’d like to explore with Bach. When you click on the chosen key in the list, a small window pops up and the first few bars of the selected prelude and fugue start playing. In the upper right corner of . . . [more]

I attended a sneak preview of the new Quicklaw/Lexis platform earlier this week and found it to be quite interesting. A good way of describing it would be a Lexis platform with a Quicklaw feel. But make no mistake, the platform we are all so familiar with is on the clock. Lots of bells and whistles for the seasoned researcher with some newer features to come. Knowing the readership of Slaw I don’t want to go to far and get the folk at LexisNexis Canada Inc. too ticked off at me, but with the CALL conference coming up many of . . . [more]

This announcement came out from the Legislative Library at the Ontario Legislative Assembly yesterday, and permission has been obtained from Erica Anderson to repost here:

* * * * *

In an effort to move towards one access point for all information about current Ontario Bills, the Legislative Assembly website is undergoing some changes. Most recently, current bill information has been integrated into one site.

There have been two places to find bill information: The Public Bills Index (on the “Bills” portion of the website), and the Bills Before the House pages (on the “Library” portion of the website).

For . . . [more]