It seems that my initial bookmarklet Canlii Find won’t work in IE on Windows (but does in IE on a Mac — which is where I made it). I’ve done another version that should work on IE in the way that the original works in Firefox.
So here they are, renamed for clarity: Canlii Find (IE) and CANLII Find (FF)
Thanks for the feedback. Keep it coming with respect to the new one, too, please. . . . [more]
Sabrina I. Pacifici on her BeSpacific website/blog mentions the US GPO website providing free online access to an annotated US Constitution prepared by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. This site appears to be an excellent (and free) source of information for online researchers.
The Canadian equivalent (but not quite) are the Canadian Charter of Rights Decisions Digests prepared by Graham Garton of the Department of Justice and available on CanLII. . . . [more]
This is a link to an article on the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Microsoft, Joining Growing Digital-Library Effort, Will Pay for Scanning of 150,000 Books.
http://chronicle.com/temp/email.php?id=93ohnmza2fvcsjur1iqon9hkj8v1vbgu
Six of the participants are Canadian universities: Toronto, York, McMaster, Ottawa, Memorial, and UBC. . . . [more]
I was a guest at a meeting of Toronto research lawyers today (see Ted Tjaden’s post below) and found it very interesting. Among other things, I got a couple of ideas from it for research tools that might be helpful, one of which is set out in this post.
I’m an academic and for me the commercial databases are free; so it always takes me a moment to remember that practitioners have to pay — correction: their clients have to pay — for these services. Moreover, I don’t think I properly appreciated how careful practitioners can be about whether . . . [more]
A question arose today among colleagues how best to stay “current” with law-related information without becoming overwhelmed.
Certainly, technology has a role to play but I also suspect there is no “one size fits all” solution for every person. For example, I find my information-seeking habits and needs now (as an academic law librarian) are quite different from when I was a practicing research lawyer. Set out below are some of the various techniques I have used, along with a list of some of the standard websites I would ordinarily visit on a regular basis. . . . [more]
Welcome to http://www.copyrightwatch.ca/ which Larry Lessig’s blog led me to. Exploding the myths of Canadian copyright law, one fallacy at a time. . . . [more]
I only just noticed now that WestlaweCARSWELL has added “IP Source” as one of its “modules” – perhaps it has been there for awhile but I only noticed it now (by default, the system only appears to accept a maximum of 6 tabs and adding IP Source to existing tabs results in 7 tabs, so you would need to drop one of your other tabs).
I don’t want to seem too “promotional” here but the IP Source looks interesting for IP practitioners/researchers and includes a number of Carswell-authored IP texts, including those by Fox/McKeown, Joliffe and Dimock, in addition to . . . [more]
In an October 24, 2005, op/ed piece in the Hill Times – available for free on the website of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) – AUCC President Claire Morris accuses Access Copyright of distorting the position of Canadian educators who merely want the right, as educators, to access material that is “publicly available” on the Internet. An important piece in the debate on Canadian copyright reform and an eloquent plea for a balanced approach. . . . [more]
Stray thought on a Sunday night. One of the most difficult places remaining in the Commonwealth, in legal research terms. is the West Indies. There are now more requests for assistance on law librarian listservs for assistance for materials from Caribbean jurisdictions than anywhere else – whether it be tax legislation from Jamaica or cases from Barbados. The region is not as well covered as most African or Pacific jurisdictions which, given its location on the North American doorstep, is inexplicable. And this is the case with respect to both free and paid services as far as I am aware. . . . [more]
The University of Texas’s Institute of Transnational Law has posted some 1,000 translated foreign judgments and statutes to the UT Law School website.
The material is from France, Germany, Israel, Austria and Italy. . . . [more]