Thanks to Steve Matthews for clearing up some misconceptions over at Vancouver Law Librarian Blog.

In his post RSS and Viruses? he clarifies:

Are RSS feeds a virus risk for law firms? or any other company? I’ve had this question before, so let’s clear this up. The answer is NO!

RSS is an xml file, which by definition is an ASCII text file with mark up. It is an interpreted file. By itself, it cannot execute a virus. The only potential risk would be within the feed’s description field, which can carry html data. Viruses can be embedded within

The latest issue of the Lewis & Clark Law Review is devoted to the implications of open access publication for legal scholarship, for law reviews and for access to legal information.

Serious issues which we might well consider exploring more fully in future posts on Slaw.

SYMPOSIUM: OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING AND THE FUTURE OF LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP

Foreword: Why Open Access to Scholarship Matters

Joseph Scott Miller

10 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 733 (2006)

The Movement for Open Access Law

Michael W. Carroll

10 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 741 (2006)

Access to primary and secondary legal materials is a . . . [more]

For those of you who are the administrators/facilitators of a group wiki:

The DARwiki has some hints and tips for improving and promoting participation in community-based wikis. Some DOs and DON’Ts that are mentioned include:
-DON’T create empty pages
-DON’T do it all yourself
-DON’T over organize
-DO initiate a wiki project (focus on a specific page or set of pages for a limited time period)
-DO design a good FAQ for the wiki

Also check out Meredith Farkas’ (“Queen of Wikis”) comments on these tips. . . . [more]

Robert Ambrogi nous annonce dans un billet sur Law.com intitulé Blogging Scooter que:

For the first time in federal court, two coveted media seats are reserved for bloggers. Not only that but the court is providing WiFi to permit them to blog live.

En effet, 2 bloggers auront des siègent réserver dans le cadre de la sélection des jurés pour le procès pour parjure d’I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby qui est accusé d’avoir menti aux enquêteur chargés de faire la lumière sur la fuite dans les médias du nom d’une agente secrète de la CIA, Valerie Plame. . . . [more]

Justia, a legal technology firm released BlawgSearch.com, a search engine and directory of legal blogs, and Blawgs.fm, a search engine and directory of legal podcastsWe discussed this briefly, earlier this month, but now it’s launched..

BlawgSearch.com includes a directory of over 1,000 editorially selected legal blogs, which are categorized by subject matter and locality. The BlawgSearch.com search engine enables sorting of results by relevance and posting date, and allows subscriptions to RSS feeds of the searches. BlawgSearch.com also includes daily, weekly, monthly and all time legal blog popularity rankings.

Slaw ended up as fifth highest ranked in the . . . [more]

Jim Milles, director of the Law Library at the University of Buffalo Law School, is teaching a course this spring entitled Teaching Legal Research.

The lecture for his first class was yesterday and is available in the form of a podcast.

Milles will be podcasting all of his lectures in the class.

On their own, I don’t think podcasts make for effective teaching tools because a large part of the learning experience involves interaction, reading, etc.

It appears though that the intention is for the site to include links to teaching materials in other formats such as PDF. I . . . [more]

The draft program for the 2007 conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries is up on the association’s website.

The event takes place in Ottawa from May 6 to the 9th, 2007 at the Fairmont Château Laurier, located just east of Parliament Hill.

Conference topics include:

• Managing the impact of technological change in law libraries
• Change management case studies
• Developing a Core Foreign and International Law Collection
• The Ultimate End-User: the Public’s Access to Law Libraries and Legal Information
• The Trail of a Trial
• Leveraging Library Skills and Competencies to Promote Knowledge Management Initiatives
• Are we becoming a secret

This is in the way of a postscript to Connie Crosby’s previous entry on January 5th. As I commented on the posting, I was in New York last week, and had some time to visit the New York Public Library and to look at some of their special collections. Its one of the few places where the general public can do this, subject to understandable restrictions. They have some amazing stuff, but I was impressed by the amount of visual material that they were scanning and making available in the NYPL Digital Gallery. I did a brief search using . . . [more]

Un peu dans la lignée d’Howard Knopf relativement au droit d’auteur canadien, qu’est-ce que 2007 est susceptible de nous apporter de retentissant, croutillant, en droit des technologies de l’information? Je me limiterai à 10 éléments avec, comble du ridicule, une prévision; prévisions qui s’apparentent souvent à des souhaits. On en reparle en décembre 2007. Pourquoi 10? Parce que!

1 – Commençons avec l’actualité: ce matin même, ont eut lieu les audiences de Kraft c. Euro-Excellence dont j’ai déjà parlé ici et là, et dont je reparlerai, assurément. Dans la même lignée que plusieurs décisions majeures de la Cour suprême, . . . [more]

Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post has an interesting story about a Harvard law student working at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, using our tools to track down war criminals.

As the student says he never suspected his addition of legal research databases to the 60-year hunt would enable him to find four suspects within a month.

He used simple database programs such as LexisNexis, Westlaw and New Detective that lawyers have at their disposal, and searched voting records, land transfer documents, professional licenses, property sales and death records.

A warm welcome to a new blog by Osgoode faculty and select students on Supreme Court hearings/decisions. Looks like it is attempting to duplicate the excellent USSC blog.

As Patrick Monahan puts it:

Welcome to The Court, Osgoode’s newest publication.

Osgoode has an unsurpassed record of scholarship and the Law Journal continues to publish research of the highest quality. But since the advent of the internet we are not limited to publishing in print: we can offer nimbler and more timely research online, and we can reach a wider audience more quickly. The Court will provide just such scholarship and,

This week’s Lawyers Weekly has a feature bylined donalee Moulton in Halifax on what’s keeping corporate counsel up at night.

Transpires that 50% of corporate counsel have liability concerns about blogs.

And that David Fraser has conferred perpetual youth upon us:

“Blogging is a young person’s interest. It is reflective of a comfort with technology. And it can’t be ignored.”

Thanks David. . . . [more]