Take a look at Google China, if only to be like the bear who went over the mountain to see what it could see. The URL is simply http://www.google.cn, and it will accept English queries. Try “tienamin” and the variants “tiananmen” and “tianamen,” because it seems likely that China will not want to let viewers find out about the massacre in 1989 — provided that it’s worried about English.

Then compare (English) results with those that google.com throws up. I followed some of the Google China links, and found that, because of my browser history function I guess, that . . . [more]

When someone asks you for the Wagon Mound (1) Case, just where do you look? At the BC Courthouse Library Society’s Popular Case Name Table, of course!

Someone asked me to get a copy of the Wagon Mound 1 case. That was all they had for me. No proper case name. No citation. “Funny name for a case,” I thought, after I had them repeat it to me about three times. So I did a Google search and I stumbled upon this BC resource that lists the popular names of cases and their corresponding proper names and citations, . . . [more]

The Wall Street Journal has a law blog. It's apparently about law, business and the business of law, written mostly by WSJ writer Peter Lattman. Here's the link: http://blogs.wsj.com/law.

I was wondering (offline) with Michael and Connie, how many Slawyers we have attending the Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference in early May?

And, if there are a significant number of us, what kind of interest there would be for a Slaw Blogger Meetup? (for Contributors & Readers both, of course.)

Ladies & Gentlemen, please chime in… :-) . . . [more]

Simon (C’s) recent posting recalling the work of the Canadian Law Information Council (CLIC) set me thinking. None of the CLIC material is now online, I think, so I searched through the UVic law library catalogue. The work of CLIC on behalf of Canadian law and legal information and technology was truly astounding. It is worth bearing a look or a relook.

I don’t mean this to merely duplicative of Simon, nor to remiss fondly about the old days, but to revisit one of CLIC’s innovations that truly useful, and which could be reinvented in the online world. That is, . . . [more]

As I was shovelling snow on the NS Public Highways last week, (btw Connie, the best shovel is 24-in. Yukon Ergonomic Snow Pusher, lightweight, gets 2 feet of snow at once) I got to thinking about blogs, the usefulness of which is a popluar Slaw topic. So in the midst of a particularly heavy shovel full, I decided to do a little legal lit. review of traditional sources (Canadian context) and review some caselaw where Blogs are being mentioned.

It seems that Blogs have not yet made a forceful entrance in the Canadian courtroom. My fairly quick and dirty . . . [more]

With the escalation of fury we are witnessing over the publication (and re-publication) of the Danish cartoons my curiosity over Canadian blasphemy laws was aroused and I did a quick search of the CED on Westlaw. This is what results: “At common law, blasphemy and blasphemous libel consisted of the publication of contemptuous, reviling, scurrilous or ludicrous matter relating to God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, or the formularies of the Church of England. It was not blasphemy at common law to attack any religion except Christianity, and an attack on the Christian religion had to be such as tended to . . . [more]

The Canadian federal Department of Justice finally appears to be improving the currency of its online legislation, with the following formal announcement at http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/index/index.html:

Updates to Justice Laws Web page

The Department of Justice is in the process of upgrading its online ability to consolidate legislation and to provide for regular and timely updating of Acts and regulations on our public Web site. As of January 27, 2006, all Acts on this site have been updated to September 28, 2005 at a minimum and many have been updated to dates beyond this point, as will be indicated at the

. . . [more]

This is my hundredth Slaw posting and rather than post on legal information, research and the Technologies of access and knowledge analysis, I’d like to think about slaw as a community of knowledge and where we’ve come from since those trans-mondial postings about taxonomies of legal knowledge back in June en route to India.

Funnily enough what strike me this morning are not so much the innovations or the extraordinary Technologies of web-enabled collaborations, as much as the continuities.

We have in some sense been here before, but with tools of community that were less sustainable and more enclosed.

First . . . [more]

1. Educause Review: J. Campbell, “Changing a Cultural Icon: The Academic Library as Virtual Destination”
2. Boing Boing
3. Baidu
4. Guardian Unlimited: German ad boss apologises to bloggers
5. Jung von Matt
6. Spiegel Online, English Edition: The toilet walls strike back
7. The Galloping Beaver: I’m a toilet wall
8. coeruleus: Du Bist Deutschland
9. Manchester Guardian
10. Adweek: WPP Comments on French Controversy
11. CNNMoney.com: 101 Dumbest Moments in Business
12. CNNMoney.com: Imagining the Google Future
13. CNNMoney.com: Google is the Media
14. CNNMoney.com: Google as the Internet
15. CNNMoney.com: Google is dead
16. CNNMoney.com: Google is God
17. Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
18. Teilhard de Chardin
19. Wikipedia: Omega

. . . [more]

Continued problems with Blogger tonight. Things I’ve posted haven’t gone up, and you might not even be able to reach my blog. The problem appears to be with the (Blogger-owned) host, blog*spot. For anyone wondering, there is a “status” page that updates us on what is happening; not sure if you need a Blogger account to view it: Blogger status page. Blah! . . . [more]

Yesterday I attended a talk by fellow librarian blogger Michael Stephens at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies (FIS). The talk was called “Weblogs & Libraries: Communication, Conversation and the Blog People” which outlined the results from a survey he did of blogging librarians back in November for his PhD thesis at the University of North Texas. (I remember taking that survey!) He was in town as speaker at the OLA Superconference, and dropped by FIS to talk to MISt and PhD students, as well as the general librarian community. Thanks to Ted Tjaden for pointing . . . [more]