Marilyn Johnson is a fan of libraries. And librarians. She came to this appreciation while researching The Dead Beat (a book about obituary writers). To her, it seemed that librarians had the most interesting obituaries! So when the time came for a second book, librarians seemed a natural focus. The result is This Book is Overdue : How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us.

“I wrote the book originally to teach myself how to get more technologically savvy, and I wrote it for my parents, who I know felt like the computer age had zoomed of and left them in . . . [more]

Sadly, what I recently learned from Times columnist, Richard Susskind, is indeed the case: The Times, TimesOnline and the Sunday Times will begin charging for online access. Presented by the publisher as the advent of something new and better — “timesplus” — the wall will go up around the garden at some near but as yet unidentified time. In the meantime, you’re invited “register for our exclusive preview” and they’ll get in touch when it happens.

The economic plight of newspaper organizations has been in the news for years now, so this attempt to monetize internet access . . . [more]

The post below may be offensive to some who believe in the majestic integrity of the law, that law is central to our civilisation and that we should not poke fun at its divine origin. . . . [more]

The Infographic of the Day site has a fantastic item with some amazing graphics comparing the 100 Largest Sites on the Internet.

The BBC charted the top 100 sites by unique users in January 2010, encompassing the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil, U.S., and Australia. Oops – Canada didn’t make it, but suspect we are not that different.

If you think Google and social networking own the Internet – think again – and it isn’t shopping either. Yes these three types of sites are among the more widely visited – but all together they only account for . . . [more]

London may still be for the moment the “libel tourism” capital of the world for affronted folk, but Paris has its strong points, too, if the case of Professor Joseph H. H. Weiler is anything to go by. A professor of law at NYU and the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of International Law, Professor Weiler was summoned to appear in French criminal court to defend himself against a complaint of criminal libel lodged by Dr. Karin N. Calvo-Goller, a senior lecturer at the Academic Center of Law & Business in Israel. The basis for her complaint? Professor Weiler . . . [more]

Irwin Law’s new e-book platform is now available.

[Note of disclosure: Irwin Law is a publisher for me and also for Simon Fodden but I regularly post on e-books (see here and here, for example) and will continue to do so regardless of publisher].

It appears that Irwin Law has made huge improvements over earlier efforts of making their books available online. I think their new online platform will come closer to addressing some of the concerns that Angela Swan (see here) and others have expressed over how e-books in law may change or affect legal . . . [more]

I understand from various sources that preparations are well advanced for the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries. Among other things, the meeting offers an invaluable platform for legal publishers and law librarians to share information with each other.

A key element of the preparation for the meeting is the annual request for information on the anticipated price increases that the library community can expect in the coming year. The issue of price increases is a critical element in planning and budgeting and gives the library purchaser a useful guideline for use in budget presentations and in . . . [more]

On the afternoon of Friday January 29, the University of Texas at Austin will host a conference on judicial biography, as a tribute to Roy Mersky, who was the subject of an earlier Slaw post.

At 2 PM Texas time the discussion will turn to International Jurists, featuring Philip Ayers on Chief Justice Owen Dixon of Australia’s High Court, Philip Girard on Chief Justice Bora Laskin of Canada, and Pnina LaHav on Shimon Agranat of Israel.

We seem to be in golden age of judicial biography. Any recommendations from the readership? . . . [more]

I learned recently that the University of Alberta has been digitizing microfilm or microfiche from the collection of Canadiana.org and placing the scans on the Internet Archive. (There’s a PowerPoint presentation online that will give you some sense of U of A’s digitization projects.) At present a search for [contributor:(canadiana.org)] turns up over 22,000 items. Of these, just under 800 are tagged “law” in some respect.

There is no attempt to catalog these items in any useful way, which means a researcher must rely on searching — not the easiest thing on the Internet Archive. (For example, . . . [more]

In legal documents it’s the job of print to deliver the message smoothly and then get out of the way as fast as possible. Lots of things go into making this possible, as any book or magazine publisher will tell you, including the choice of typeface, point size, space between lines (leading) and colour of paper. Yet, when it comes to the preparation of legal documents the profession seems to be willfully ignorant about what makes for persuasive print, favouring remnants of the typewriter age combined with bad aspects of word processing technology.

I want to focus now on only . . . [more]

From the Yale Law Library’s latest exhibition, wonderful images of Justice, as portrayed in a forthcoming book by Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis, Representing Justice: From Renaisance Town Halls to 21st Century Democratic Courtrooms.

Here is a taste of images from “Praxis Rerum Civilium,” by Joost de Damhoudere, “De Jure Belli ac Pacis,” by Hugo Grotius, and “Dei Delitti e delle pene,” by Cesare Beccaria: . . . [more]

Today’s Calgary Herald reports the death of the distinguished Canadian legal author, John Ballem QC of Gowlings, at the age of 85.

Those of us who have had to refer to Ballem’s masterpiece, The oil and gas lease in Canada (now in its third edition) and his pioneering work on fiduciary duties in the 1963 Alberta Law Review, will likely not realize that he was also the author of fourteen novels (The Devil’s Lighter, The Dirty Scenario, The Judas Conspiracy (reissued as Alberta Alone), The Moon Pool, Sacrifice Play, The Marigot Run, Oilpatch Empire, Death Spiral, The Barons, Manchineel, . . . [more]