At the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Blog ACRLog, California Law Librarian Michael Ginsborg issues a call for united action on the part of libraries to protect themselves from anticompetitive practices in the publishing world. Ginsborg references Robert Darnton’s recent work in the New York Review of Books highlighting the extent to which libraries (and their users) are damaged by such practices. He also links to his own more detailed article in Spectrum, the American Association of Law Libraries’ topical monthly, where he looks at some of the current realities in the relationship between law libraries and legal publishers. . . . [more]

Analysis is a destructive process. It involves dissolving the whole so as to get at the constituent parts, something human beings seem to like to do. I know I was into it as a kid, “analysing” my bike, my radio, and pretty much anything that wasn’t a clearly solid lump. (Now putting it all back together was a different story. But that’s a different story.)

There’s legal analysis, of course. And then there’s fun breakdown. One good example of the latter is the separating out of the tracks that are combined to make our recored music. I seem to recall . . . [more]

Facebook, like bad weather, is everywhere. Nothing new there. What is new is how it’s appearing in the legal system. When Facebook is used as a tool for revenge it may lead to litigation. It can become a sword to undermine an opponent. It can even be a force for good for police and courts.

In a racy case being played out in the Federal Court in Melbourne, Australia Facebook was used as a sword to inflict pain that led to a high profile lawsuit. Then in the same case Facebook was used by the court to summons the inflictor . . . [more]

This is a follow-up post to a previously published Slaw post on a case in which two members of the Church of the Universe claim that the Ontario’s marijuana prohibition violates the freedom of religion protections in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Members of the Church of the Universe believe that smoking marijuana brings followers closer to God and use the drug as a sacrament.

I recently read on the Chaire en droit de la sécurité et des affaires électroniques blog that on February 1, 2011, the British police service has launched a website that allows their citizens to obtain statistics of crimes in their region and neighbourhood. It allows a person in the United Kingdom to track local crime levels.

Law librarian and colleague Susan Barker at the Bora Laskin Law Library has let me know that the new 5th edition of Legal Problem Solving – Reasoning, Research & Writing (LexisNexis Canada) is now out. She has worked with author Maureen Fitzgerald in updating this new edition and has let me know that purchasers of the book will receive a mini 36-page “insert” guide called The Ultimate Guide to Canadian Legal Research, which provides a nice overview of legal research (I have seen the mini-guide but not the new edition).

I have always liked this book and use it . . . [more]

Many years ago I took an excellent time management course for lawyers that was put on by our local Continuing Legal Education Society. The instructor had many good tips on how to manage a busy lawyer’s day. I went back to my office filled with enthusiasm that finally I was going to feel a sense of control over my life. I diligently experimented with many of the suggestions from the course. However, despite my best efforts, I did not manage to successfully implement a single one of the instructor’s recommendations.

My assistant was less than pleased when I tried to . . . [more]

As readers may recall, a few weeks ago a delegation of Sikhs, invited to the Quebec National Assembly to make a presentation to a committee, was turned away by security when they declined to surrender their kirpans. Subsequently the Parti Québécois tabled a motion yesterday respecting kirpans, and today Quebec’s Liberal government has said it will support that motion.

The motion put forward by the PQ is rather more narrow than has been reported in the press, which speaks simply of “a ban”; it reads as follows:

Que l’Assemblée nationale appuie sans réserve la décision prise par sa Direction de

. . . [more]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued two new draft documents on cloud computing for public comment, including the first set of guidelines for managing security and privacy issues in cloud computing. The agency also has set up a new NIST Cloud Computing Collaboration site on the Web to enable two-way communication among the cloud community and NIST cloud research working groups. Ethics regulators, lawyers and cloud providers may wish to become involved in the dialogue to ensure the development of the cloud to serve the public interest as well as the needs of lawyers, clients and cloud developers.

Governments, courts, school boards, and people in general too often focus on the wrong aspects of new things. Whenever a new tool arrives – such as various forms of social media or smart phones – two seemingly opposite things happen.

First, as we experiment with new tools, people inevitably do stupid things with them. Such as making comments or posting something on social media that the person would never have posted on a physical bulletin board, or written in an open letter to a group of friends.

Second, because humans have flawed risk perceptions, we are more comfortable with the . . . [more]

After close to 10 months with a 3G-WiFi iPad, I am finally “returning” my BlackBerry (through my employer) in favour of using my own iPad as my sole communication tool.

The advantages of the iPad:

• screensize: larger screensize with the ability to “expand” text using the 2-finger swipe/stretch technique (this is a huge factor for older people like me with dwindling eyesite)

• browsing: fully functional browsing on the Internet, including the ability to do meaningful Westlaw, Lexis and CanLII searching (among other legal research databases)

• email: a great email client, allowing the ability to have both personal

. . . [more]

My kids watch a popular TV show called Mythbusters in which the hosts seek to uncover the truth behind popular myths. While watching it with them the other night, it struck me that outsourcing has its own share of myths. One that I think deserves having a light shined on it is benchmarking. In this article, I’ll discuss the myth around benchmarking, its impact on an outsourcing agreement, what I take to be benchmarking’s proper role, and I’ll endeavor to do it all with the same “gleeful curiosity and plain old-fashioned ingenuity” that the hosts of Mythbusters are described by . . . [more]