A couple of unrelated things in this post. Firstly, this link to a NY Times article about an author who utilizes a computer to actually compose his books; explains a lot of material out there web or non-web.

I’m also trying to get something straight. It seems that a number of graduates who are preparing for licensing examination are getting a raw deal from the L.S.U.C. Somebody please help if I don’t have a proper handle on this. But it seems that to obtain the materials to prepare for the exam, a student can either pick them up in person . . . [more]

askON (http://www.askon.ca) is an online chat service available presumably to anyone with an internet connection and a question for a librarian. There are ten public libraries in Ontario involved, as well as those of three universities (Lakehead, Ryerson, York) and four colleges. I’ve checked and the York Law Library at Osgoode Hall Law School is not involved in the project.

When you’ve finished your online chat, a transcript can be sent to your email address. . . . [more]

Today at 3 pm CST/4 pm EST there is a trial run of a new law library phone-in show hosted by Brian Striman and Richard Leiter. Guest will be legal publishing industry expert Ken Svengalis. Call in or chat–details below from one of the AALL email lists. It’s a hot topic so I expect it to be a lively discussion! . . . [more]

Herewith three questions from Slaw readers who, by the sound of things, aren’t lawyers or librarians. If anyone has an answer, he or she might submit it as a comment to this post.

1. Michael: “I noticed from one of your earlier blogs that Ontario passed whistleblowing legislation in 2006, did this receive royal assent?”
2. Mark: “I am a US citizen trying to understand the revision history of Canada’s Criminal Law, Part III (Firearms and other weapons), 89(1) and (2). (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/ShowDoc/cs/C-46/bo-ga:l_II_1::bo-ga:l_III//en?page=3&isPrinting=false#codese:89) It says it was revised 1985 C-46. I’m trying to learn the specific date in 1985 that revision took effect,

Occasionally a single appointment can signal everything. Today, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan announced the long-awaited replacement for Harry S. Martin, who has been director of the Harvard law Library ((Which is the most extraordinary law library I’ve ever used, with due apologies to Ruth at the Bodleian and David at the Great Library)) for 27 years. Martin’s contribution deserves a post in its own right for his service as Henry N. Ess III Librarian and Professor of Law at the Law School and his seminars on Art and the Law.

But let’s focus on the new . . . [more]

You’ll have noticed that on the revamped Google Advanced Search page there’s a link that will expand into a drop-down menu, letting you select whether you want results from pages that have been indexed for the first time — i.e. pages newly discovered by Google, which will likely be brand new pages but needn’t be, of course — in the last day, week, month etc. (See the Research Buzz post from a year ago for more on what the dating means.)

You can customize your searches by altering the date range component at the end of the search string. The . . . [more]

I wrote a few months ago about labour unions gathering in Second Life for a virtual protest against IBM. Well, the the trend is continuing, this time in a more celebratory fashion.

The Trade Union Congress in London has been organizing virtual May Day celebrations in Second Life. Participants can learn about the campaign for a minimum wage in Germany, get training on using Second Life for online organization, or – and this just seems a little bizarre to me – chat with other virtual activists in a virtual bar over a pint of virtual beer.

You can check . . . [more]

The archive of Nazi concentration camp logs and other German war documents are now available to the public. Administered by the Red Cross since the 1950s, this archive containing information about Holocaust victims was accessible only by Red Cross staff. Historical researchers, survivors and relatives had to wait for replies from Red Cross staff to find out about missing persons or to obtain records supporting compensation payments. The decision to make the 50 million pages in the archive open to the public was made in November after the 11 countries that oversee the archive ratified an accord.

Reported in The . . . [more]

As academics might be said to live and thrive by consideration of fair use, we need to perk up when this vital legality goes to court, and all the more so when it is a good knock-down case of goliath celebrity taking on struggling Davidesque scholar. As most readers will know, with works of “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research,” to use the example of the U.S. legal system, authors can in the name of fair use reasonably cite others’ published work without violating copyright.

Fair use, in this sense, represents the larger society’s recognition that learning . . . [more]

On 30 April 1993, the European nuclear research lab CERN put the web in the public domain, meaning that the protocols of the World Wide Web would be non-proprietary and could be used by anyone free of charge.

To mark the occasion, the BBC talked with web luminaries about their vision for the future. . . . [more]

A little bit of fancy stuff for mid-week:

iGoogle has introduced themes by a whole bunch of famous designers, artists and charity figures — Jeff Koons, Michael Graves (pictured above), Robert Mankoff (pictured below), Akira Isogawa and more than five dozen others, so you’re bound to find something that appeals. This is eye candy with some power to nourish.

. . . [more]

There has been some recent debate (on one of the legal community’s discussion forums) on the merits of SharePoint, Microsoft’s portal product. Our firm launched its SharePoint portal earlier this year (although we are still migrating content from our old intranet, and adding features and functions).

Even at this early date, we are enjoying two of the important benefits that led us to implement SharePoint in the first place – “one stop shopping” is not far from reality and distributed content contribution is taking place.

“One stop shopping” is the short-hand we use for our efforts to deliver all the . . . [more]