Overlooked Ron Friedmann’s thoughtful article, for American Lawyer Media, on whether blawgs are worth the investmentFor which also see a more generic analysis, until Jordan Furlong’s Canadian Bar Practice Pro links drove me to it.

As usual for Ron, well written and thoughtful. And it gives us the answer to the question, why are we doing this? . . . [more]

I happened by the Jurist Canada site today. It seems to be running on automatic pilot — kicking out news as the result of a fixed set of search terms — and falling weirdly out of date otherwise. I mean, you’ve got to love the first thing your eye falls on (assuming it goes to the upper right corner of a window, as mine usually does, as if on a print page), a snapshot of which you see to the right. Apparently Osgoode is looking for a new dean! Patrick Monahan will be interested in the position, no doubt, given . . . [more]

While SONY got our attention most recently, because of their Digital Rights Management approaches and the resulting backlash, let us look at them in a more positive light. This time, its e-book the sequel. Sony demonstrated their latest attempt at the e-book at the recent International CES trade show for the electronic gadget industry in Las Vegas.

Rumors are floating all over the web. After scouring through several web sites, I have put together this probable list of features: This new device is reportedly to be priced in the range of an iPod – $300-500 USD. It will use E . . . [more]

Genie Tyburski at The Virtual Chase (an excellent site, by the way) reports on a January 13, 2006 article in Nature by Michael Hopkin entitled “Web Users Judge Sites in the Blink of an Eye“. The article reports on a study from Carleton University that flashed websites in front of volunteers who were asked to then rank the sites based on visual appeal. The study found that volunteers were able to make impressions about the websites in 50 milliseconds!

On her site, Genie makes a good point that information professionals need to be aware that many users may . . . [more]

Anyone passing Chancery Lane might wish to pop in to the Law Society to see an exhibition that must have had the legal researchers there busy.

According to a BBC article this is one of those extraordinary exhibitions that make the public wonder whether we’ve collectively taken leave of our senses or inhabit a netherworld of time warped irrelevancy.

They report:

* It is still illegal for anyone to wear armour to Parliament, (Royal Prerogative 1279)
* Hanging washing in the street, beating a carpet and flying a kite are set out in the Town Police Clauses Act, 1847, . . . [more]

A student on our Vis Moot team yesterday asked me how I stay current with developments in international commercial arbitration and where I look for ideas to write about. My favourite source for both is Mealey’s International Commercial Arbitration Report. This is a montly publication which summarises interesting recent cases, legislation and other happenings, and a simply invaluable resource. It is available on Lexis but I prefer to receive it in print (yes, anachronism that I am). The other great source for new ideas and just monitoring important happenings is to trawl the web-sites of the major appellate courts (Canadian . . . [more]

Larry Lessig’s blog features a very cool 30 minute video explaining the copyright issues posed by the Google Books project.
Beautifully clear way of explaining the issues to a wider audience.
Clearly a technology that legal authors should be making more of. . . . [more]

Pinsent-Masons have a wonderful e-letter called Out-law which focuses on the law of technology. Today’s issue has a piece called Search Engine Wars by Andy Atkins-Kruger, which is a provocative read.

There may only be room for one winner in the battle of the titans, which will soon break out in the search market. MSN and Google, antler to antler, have been eyeing each other up for the last year – each trying to exploit their own strengths and overcome their weaknesses as they face a competition in which the stakes are all too high.

Out-Law claims that this . . . [more]

For those of you who access PubMed or NLM Gateway for medical literature, here is a useful article from the New England Journal of Medicine on researching: “Searching for the Right Search – Reaching the Medical Literature”: http://content.nejm.org/current.shtml. Dr. Steinbrook describes how web-based search engines are transforming our use of medical literature, and discusses the various search engines available, eg. PubMed, Google Scholar, and Yahoo. . . . [more]

Those were the terms that Harry Arthurs used a quarter of a century ago in the SSHRC Study into Law and LearningReport of the Consultative Group on Research and Education in Law, mandated by Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Law and Learning / Le droit et le savoir.

And a comment at the end of a recent Tribune piece on Outsourcing legal research leads me to ask who in fact does know more.

The comment is made by David Goodman, a practising lawyer who says he doesn’t feel threatened by Dov Siedman’s cadre of moonlighting professors who’ll . . . [more]

From the ABA’s question of the week: QUESTION OF THE WEEK
PICKING YOUR BRAIN: What would you be willing to contribute to Wikipedia’s Wikilaw project?
There’s a new legal resource on the horizon, and it’s going to be written by you—or anyone else who has knowledge of the law and time to put it into words. It’s called WikilawSee the interesting debate on Larry Lessig’s blog about whether this is a doomed undertaking, and it’s being spawned from Wikipedia, the Internet-based encyclopedia that allows anyone to contribute and/or edit entries. The goal of Wikilaw—as stated on its home . . . [more]

There was a rumour going around recently that the special Canada Post rate for mailing library books which some institutions enjoy would soon be discontinued. TALL President Wendy Reynolds has contacted the Canadian Library Association about it. She has confirmed this was just a rumour, that the book rate is continuing.

Moreover, Canada Post, the Canadian Library Association and l’Association pour la science et les techniques de la documentation (ASTED) launched a new tool for shipping library books with the Library Book Rate in late November 2005. Press release.

If you have any questions regarding the Library Book Rate . . . [more]