What is the future of legal academic publishing in Canada? I ask for two reasons. First, as the leading publisher of Canadians legal casebooks I’d rather be on the cutting edge than on the trailing edge of new developments in publishing. I’d like even less to fall off the edge! Smart companies must anticipate changes in the marketplace and position themselves accordingly. That means, not being too far in front (remember, it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese) and not being too far behind. Secondly, as a law professor I reflect often on how to improve the student learning . . . [more]

This is my last working day at Cornell. I’ll continue to post next week on a few more of the outstanding aspects of this law library that I’ve had a chance to see close up, but I thought a bit of a fillip might be in order. So here are some interesting quirks and bits I’ve discovered at Cornell:

The faculty was established with the start of the university in 1886, and the law building was erected in 1932. It is a charming and imposing structure, incorporating a variety of scales and degrees of formality. The main building has been . . . [more]

What appears to be a personal effort by Robert Burnham, the Napoleon Series website offers some legal material from around the turn of the 18th century that will be of interest to historians and and others perhaps. On the Government and Politics page, for instance, there are links to essays on diplomatic missions and treaties, plus translations of select treaties, declarations and conventions written between 1799 and 1815, essays on some laws passed by the British Parliament during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Eras, and the whole Napoleonic (i.e. Civil) Code in a 1805 translation. . . . [more]

I am always leery of using SLAW to mention the services or product of a particular company, but I have been impressed with the earnestness at which XMLaw focuses on delivering practical solutions for law firms in delivering Intranet solutions to their users using the SharePoint platform (I am currently attending a conference they are sponsoring in Boston for their [primarily) law firm customers; my positive comments on their company have nothing to do with the boat tour of Boston Harbour and the open bar they just sponsored . . . .).

They seem to “get it” by their focus . . . [more]

You may find it handy to be able to convert a file from one format to another using an online service, Zamzar. You can go from any of 16 different types of document file, for instance, to half a dozen or more alternative types. So, for example, you can convert a PDF file into a .doc file, or a .docx file into a .odt (OpenDocument text document) file, etc. Zamzar works as well with image, music, video and compressed formats.

Files are converted when Zamzar has the time, although my test files all were cooked within two hours; you . . . [more]

I wanted to introduce Convictions, Slate’s new legal blog, but I noticed Simon beat me to it (great minds think alike!). An About page has been added to Convictions since Simon’s post which lists its contributors and touts itself as a “destination for smart legal conversation and commentary.” A quick glance at the blog’s tag cloud shows its popular topics include 9/11 plotters, gun control, Iraq, law schools, war crimes, and the second amendment. Also, see Law.com for a review of the blog. . . . [more]

The groundbreaking history of Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (LII) and the resources it makes available (for instance the Supreme Court decisions) are too well known to Slaw regulars to detail, but it is puzzling how absent the LII seems to be from the consciousness of other OA law projects. The most recent example is the release of CC US court decisions by Public.Resource.org. In a press release the CEO of the group Carl Malamud claims that “The U.S. judiciary has allowed their entire work product to be locked up behind a cash register” which is misleading. . . . [more]

I just noticed while browsing CTV news on a wireless connection in my hotel room in Boston that their lead story is that Mr. Justice Bastarche is retiring from the Supreme Court of Canada . . . [more]

Osgoode Hall Law School has launched its first fully online journal, the Osgoode Hall Review of Law and Policy. Edited by students and offering student articles for the most part, the Review will also publish in each issue articles on law or policy by practising lawyers or academics. This is the table of contents of the first issue [(2008) 1 Osgoode Hall Rev.L.Pol’y]:

• D. Vaver, “Chocolate, Copyright, Confusion: Intellectual Property and the Supreme Court of Canada” [PDF]
• A. Scotchmer et al., “The Right to Counsel: Policy Reasons for Fundamental Reforms to Promote Access” [PDF]

My time at Cornell is flying by ((My first week was too busy to allow time to post, but I have several items in the works)), and I’ve put together lots of notes on the law library. However, today I’m going to post about how Cornell University Libraries has developed a wonderful system for creating digital resources. The Digital Initiatives page provides access to the their many projects and partnerships. Central to the operation is the Digital Consulting and Production Services unit (DCAPS). . . . [more]

Queen’s University of Belfast has an International Law Video Library that offers “video holdings of interviews with leading commentators and practitioners in the field of international human rights.”

There are interviews on:

• Regional Human Rights Systems
• International Criminal Law
• National Human Rights Institutions
• Women’s Rights
• Genocide
• The Slavery Project

For me, the Library of Congress subject headings have been a source of bafflement, perplexity — and to a lesser extent, wonderment — ever since I wandered into the stacks, way back in university. I suppose the creature is a little like you and me, the product of evolution’s twists and unexpected turns working on a legacy laid down when the world was a very very different place to produce a working, if sub-optimal, just-so animal. Now, should you want to use the subject headings to actually find something, you might find a little help quite useful. Bernhard Eversberg at . . . [more]