Apiece in yesterday’s NYT about how US courts are using Wikipedia

The NYT story suggests that it’s largely due to law clerks who turn to Wikipedia to verify background facts, even though the controversy about the source has not abated. That’s also what I’ve seen recently, marking Jessup Moot factums, where Wikipedia seems to be substituting for conventional authority.

The NYT story ends with Stephen Gillers of NYU:

Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University Law School, saw this as crucial: “The most critical fact is public acceptance, including the litigants,” he said. “A judge should not use Wikipedia

. . . [more]

The Guardian has a piece on the petition signed by 12,000 academics “urging the European commission to make publicly funded academic research available for free on the internet.”

Be quite a thing, wouldn’t it, if all the legal research funded in whole or in part by public money were made freely available? . . . [more]

I've been meaning to post about open ID for some time now, but have been held back by the fact that I didn't understand it—a small matter, you might think, but one that even so got in my way.Now, thanks to man-about-the-internet Simon (isn't everybody?) Willison, I grasp the thing, and find it to be both more and less useful than I'd imagined.

The New York Times has reported that Google has adjusted its search algorithms to avoid Google Bombs. Victims have included President George W. Bush, President Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Rick Santorum, and Senator John Kerry.

It used to be searching for the words “miserable failure” would lead to President Bush’s home page at the White House.

Google announced on Thursday on its official blog that “by improving our analysis of the link structure of the Web” such mischief would instead “typically return commentary, discussions, and articles” about the tactic itself.

Indeed, a search on . . . [more]

The legal market is not known – yet – for embracing innovation. And the life of a law practice management innovator can be lonely. That can and will change…  

The College of Law Practice Management (of which I am a Vice-President – full disclosure) sponsors the InnovAction Award, which is designed to identify and honor innovation in law practice management.

To get an idea of what we’re up to, take a look at the ezine on Innovaction that Jordan Furlong edited, and which we discussed last year.

If you are in a law firm, inhouse department, or . . . [more]

Word from this morning’s Telegraph, that the British Library may be starting to charge scholars to use its reading room (yes the haunt of Marx and Dickens)

With a threat of cuts of up to seven per cent to its £100 million budget, money-saving measures are being lined up at the library, which has a collection of 150 million items. Opening hours would be cut by more than a third under the proposals. In a further symbolic blow, a reduction of 15 per cent would be made to the library’s permanent collection, which includes a copy of every book . . . [more]

26th January 2007 18:02 CETSweden is to become the first country to establish diplomatic representation in the virtual reality world of Second Life, officials said on Friday.“We are planning to establish a Swedish embassy in Second Life primarily as an information portal for Sweden,” Swedish Institute (SI) director Olle Wästberg told AFP.

After reading and several times re-reading it, I am constrained to conclude that Judge Farris’s 8-page opinion [in Brewster Kahle v. A.-G. U.S.] for the 9th Circuit panel is simply indefensible. I had the strong impression at oral argument that the panel had not understood (or perhaps even read) the briefs we or the government had submitted, and was in any event not particularly interested in the real issues in the case. By my lights, the opinion confirms this.
C. Sprigman, “9th Circuit rejects constitutional challenge to copyright laws in Kahle v. Gonzales” Public Knowledge

The suit . . . [more]

Eoin O’Dell a Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, has launched a new blog cearta.ie (Irish for rights, as Eoin says). I like a blog that uses the teaser: “Either the High Court is wrong, or I am.” Welcome, Eoin, to the world of law bloging. . . . [more]

Environment Canada – Climate Data Online

It’s been a while since I’ve needed to use this wonderful web tool. It’s one of those sites that I would expect most legal researchers to know about but there are surely some who don’t. It’s a gem and I don’t think it’s been highlighted on Slaw before.

Use the “customized search” option to further narrow your search. You can even select a park or a location by longitude and latitude.

It was -25 and clear during the hour that I was born. . . . [more]

Eggs, today. Cooking and eating them, that is. And in particular the eternal struggle to boil the perfect egg (I leave aside the challenging business of poaching an egg properly.) And for the way to win that struggle I can do no better than to point you to khymos.org, a site on “molecular gastronomy and the science of cooking.” The formula for boiling an egg is clear:

There’s hardly anything more to say on the subject, you might think. Well, for me, whose mathematics education approached (but never reached) zero, it’s important to explore some of the variables rather more . . . [more]

News from the biblioblogosphere!

Earlier this month Michael Lines notified us that blog LISNews was looking for nominations of blogs for the library set. Well, I received a note from Blake Carver that he has now posted the results!

See: 10 Blogs to Read in 2007.

One of my favourites, Tame the Web by Michael Stephens, was the clear winner. . . . [more]