For all the buzz about the new India, it’s quite charming to see that the old India hasn’t quite gone away.

Today’s Times of India has an extraordinary story about a wannabe library peon. . . . [more]

The world’s largest legal vertical search engine launched yesterday according to a press release. The Public Library of Law (pLoL) has partnered with legal research provider Fastcase, Inc. It may be more of a directory than a search engine, even though Fastcase CEO Ed Walters claims it makes”first-time legal research as easy as using Google.”

What is available on PLoL?

* Cases from the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals
* Cases from all 50 states back to 1997
* Federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states
* Regulations, court rules, constitutions.

“Unlike other free resources,

Here is a new development in the hostile Yahoo-Microsoft saga: Yahoo is now in talks with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. about combining their Internet properties under a single unit. This move would bring together Yahoo and MySpace.com, two of the most visited websites in the US.

See Globe and Mail article . . . [more]

I have prided myself from time to time on introducing Slaw readers to fairly arcane resources, but this may take the cake of abstruseness. The Visigoths, famous for sacking Rome, spread throughout Western Europe in the second half of the first millennium, reaching as far as what is now Spain and Portugal in what is known as the Kingdom of Toulouse. I confess I’d always thought of Goths as folks who wouldn’t bother much with law. Turns out I was wrong.

You can examine the Visigothic Code (in an English translation) on the Library of Iberian Resources Online, . . . [more]

[Note of disclosure: I do not have have any formal connection or relationship with Ozmosys, the company discussed below. However, while drafting this post I remembered I am part of a LexisNexis Canada advisory group and Ozmosys has partnered with Lexis. Clearly, though, that has not (and would not) influence me and LexisNexis generally invites all types of feedback, whether positive or negative. Despite the foregoing, I thought some SLAW readers might be interested in the product; hence this post.]

Yesterday I hosted for Toronto law firm and law library colleagues a demo at my firm by Ozmosys, a . . . [more]

As reported last night in The Chronicle of Higher Education,

Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted a policy this evening that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online.

The policy is described by the University Librarian Robert Darnton here. . . . [more]

The recently elected Australian Government yesterday made a long awaited apology to the Stolen Generation of the Australian Aboriginal people. The broadcast can be heard here

By way of background, the apology was recommended by the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families in 1997, also known as ‘Bringing them Home’, which can be found on Austlii. For many Australians this apology is long overdue. . . . [more]

Creative Commons and Public.Resource.Org have announced that they have made available the equivalent of 1,858 volumes of US Supreme Court and appeals courts decisions. The release is the first of a series to be made over the next few months, and there will also be an initial Requests for Comments period, when the technical suitability of the download will be discussed. More coverage at OA News. . . . [more]

2008 Canadian Association of Law Libraries Conference

The Academic SIG Chairs are very pleased to report that all three proposals designed by the SIG for the 2008 Conference have been approved!

We had prepared two proposals for sessions for the 2008 Annual Conference, and one proposal for a preconference workshop.

The first session is:

“Military Law in Canada, What it Is and How to Find It.” We are pleased to announce that Brigadier General Ken Watkin, Canada’s Judge Advocate General, and Andrea Belanger, Library Manager, Office of the Judge Advocate General, will be presenting this session.

The second is: . . . [more]

There’s been some action and a lot of debate recently on copyright reform in Canada. Of course, other countries are also reviewing their own legislation. And here’s an example of something that seems like a particularly bad idea – one that I hope Canada is not thinking of adopting.

The NY Times reports that the British Department of Media, Culture and Sport is floating a plan (in the very early stages) requiring ISPs to cut off subscribers believed by content owners to be sharing files illegally. The ISP would be responsible for monitoring transfers.

I’m not sure this is practical, . . . [more]

Yesterday’s brief (approx. 3 hours) Blackberry outage prompted a lot of email traffic on a listserv I read. The debate seemed to be between those who thought that notwithstanding the occasional system-wide failure, Blackberrys were still the preferred mobile device for the legal community, and those who favoured some of the newer devices that have more features and functions. Interestingly, there wasn’t much traffic blaming RIM for the service disruption.

Blackberrys have been in the news a lot lately. There have been news stories about employers cuttting back on employee off-hour use. There was even a story about a hotel . . . [more]

A number of colleagues I respect remain excited about “wikis in law firms” (see Connie Crosby here and Doug Cornelius here as two examples).

I remain contrarian and cynical. Aren’t all major law firms with mature document management systems (DMSs) “wikified” to the max already? If everyone in the firm has online access to the “Smith file” or the “Jones file” and can edit documents, view calendars or other lists of information, access research memos, and post comments, isn’t this “wiki” personified?

This raises the question: what makes “wikis” different than DMSs? Is it simply ease-of-use and the fact that . . . [more]