In response to the changing needs of students and researchers, and the changing information environment, academic libraries are re-evaluating their roles, and planning their futures. As part of this general and ongoing adjustment, there is an opportunity for librarians to capitalize on their expertise in bibliography, to shore up their position at the heart of scholarly communications, and to improve their budgets by supporting in-house academic publishing.

Karla Hahn, Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication at ARL, has done a lot of ground breaking research in this area, and an accessible interview with her on the topic has . . . [more]

A couple of days ago, David Bilinsky blogged on Slaw about the new Client ID rules that have come into force in most jurisdictions in Canada (Slaw: New Client ID Rules). The rules are an attempt by the legal profession’s regulators to try to get the federal government to back off from attempting to undermine solicitor client privilege in pursuit of money launderers.

While I’m no fan of money laundering, I have to say I’m not a fan of the new rules.

The purpose of the rules is to “know your client” in the same ways that banks . . . [more]

Just say “Ahaa!”

If you’re looking to say “no” in Nepali, that is. Jennifer Runner maintains a page that tells you how to issue negation in 520 languages. You tell me I’m exaggerating? I say, “naw nae na mo aowa ne saate and, just to be clear, nou!”

Beyond a simple “no,” she’s got a number of phrases translated into a wild variety of languages. Perhaps the second most useful word to know when you find yourself in parts scarcely known, is “yes.” In which case, this is the page you want, and where you’ll find 520 affirmatives, . . . [more]

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced plans this morning for more stringent regulations for listeria testing.

This represents a reverse move from proposed plans earlier this year. It appears the Maple Leaf episode provided the political will to change the policy.

Change is coming to Canada too. . . . [more]

An English court has recently held that the fact that a defamatory comment has been published online does not mean that anyone has read it. The plaintiff must show that the comment has been accessed as well.

In the English case, Brady v. Norman [2008] EWHC 2481 (QB), described on OutLaw.com, the question was one of qualified privilege, and whether some people without an interest in knowing the information had nevertheless been given access to it.

While this is reminiscent in some ways of the Bangoura case in Ontario, where the only visitors to the online defamation appeared . . . [more]

Expect a version of Firefox capable of running on your mobile. Code named Fennec, the mini-browser is being tested on various platforms in “developer alpha” form, and likely will be available in a more stable alpha early in the new year. You can read the vision statement here. Of course, the iPhone will not be among fox friendly phones, having a developer policy that forbids browsers other than Safari, as Opera learned.

A fennec is a small fox, as you probably knew: see the Flickr collection of photos (cuteness warning!).

If you’re feeling adventurous — and . . . [more]

Well it seems as if Barack Obama might be the first black Twitter president of the United States. The Twitter blog indicates he will be the first to have an official account.

They also indicate an enormous spike in Twitter usage during the election.

Canadian politicians seem slightly ahead of the game in this respect, with our own Prime Minister having an account. But his number of followers, around 2,000 at present, pales in comparison to that of Obama with over 120,000.

Sure, we can cite population differences between Canada and the U.S., or talk about the impact of American . . . [more]

The Australian government has just started a public consultation on the desirability of ratifying the UN E-Communications Convention in that country. The page containing the public notice also offers a link to the consultation paper in PDF or Word.

The American Uniform Law Commission (formerly NCCUSL) has a Committee to study implementation of the Convention in the US. The working group met recently to discuss options for implementation.

In Canada, there appears to be little action since the Uniform Law Conference meeting on the topic in August. Professor Gautrais’ paper on the impact of the Convention on Quebec law . . . [more]

I posted on the CALL KM blog today about Mumboe. Mumboe got some press recently on Read Write Web and Technolawyer.

Mumboe is another service in the cloud. The premise of it and other contract managment tools is to take a document that a lawyer uploads, automate the indexing and extraction of critical data (times, parties, other things you ask for) and create actionable business data out of those details.

Tools like this blur the insubstantial lines between document management, knowledge management, and data mining. I wonder what other niche products will appear as cloud computing apps in . . . [more]

Slaw is experiencing some technical difficulties at the moment. All of the posts and comments from yesterday are acting coy, but we’re working on teasing them out of hiding. Until things look to be running smoothly again, we’ll likely not make any further posts today.

We’re sorry for this hiccup.

UPDATE: I’ve reposted the missing entries in the order in which they were originally posted. Apologies to those who follow us on RSS: you’ll be getting these once again in your feed. I’m now working on reposting comments.

UPDATE 2: I’ve now restored the comments. The site appears to be . . . [more]

I know there are a bunch of us Firefox fans here at Slaw, so I thought I’d pass along the fact that our favourite browser went over 20% market share point this past month.

Given that Firefox is not the default install for any of the major operating systems, and that users must adopt because of personal choice, hitting the 20% mark can’t be considered lightly.

Most less-savvy computer users will tend to keep the default program installed, IE for Microsoft, or Safari for Mac. And for those of us in the legal industry, with our obsession of all things . . . [more]

Former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci has been asked to help mediate the dispute that has paralyzed the work of the Truth And Reconciliation Commission that was set up earlier this year to deal with the historical legacy of the Indian residential school system.

Over the years, thousands of aboriginal students were subjected to physical, sexual and emotional abuse by personnel working for the church authorities that ran the boarding schools on behalf of the Canadian government.

Last month, the work of the Commission was derailed after its head, Justice Harry LaForme, resigned, complaining that he could no longer work . . . [more]