I’m sure a contributor or reader of SLAW can enlighten me on a point of Canadian historical legal research that has stumped me. Since coming to Canada I’ve looked (on and off, and without a great deal of thoroughness I must admit) for a tool that will give the “Founders” view of the Constitution. S omething equivalent to the Australian Federation Debates compilation. Federation in Australia, and the Constitution of 1901, grew out of a series of debates held in the capital cities of the then colonies during the 1890s. Everything that was said was recorded by hansard reporters and . . . [more]

(Link hat tip to Michel-Adrien Sheppard aka Library Boy)

On November 14, 2005, Canadiana.org announced receipt of a new grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage, Canadian Culture Online (CCO) program.

At a time when there seem to be endless cutbacks for these types of programs, it’s nice to see consistent funding for the digitization of our national history. It’s been quite a while since I last checked in on CIHM, and I found clicking around the ECO project to be an enjoyable experience – and highly recommended!

From the press release:

“Canada in the Making, now

Missed in all of the diplomatic to-ings and fro-ings over control of internet governance and the domain naming system was a fascinating report by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) on The Internet of Things. This internet of things combines to create a network that is literally everywhere and which becomes increasingly intelligent: the report points to four key technologies, all at advanced stages, that will enable ubiquitous network connectivity: RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, sensor, embedded intelligence and nanotechnology.

Nicholas Negroponte spoke of his vision of an entirely new networked world, far more ubiquitous than the network of

It must have been a decade ago in DC when I heard Dov Seidman tell a group of sceptical partners that he (and an adjunct group of academics, powered with technology) could seize a significant part of the market for business clients who wanted legal research.
Since then his business, LRN, has prospered, as can be seen in this press release from LRN about Dupont, which has contracted its outside legal research to Dov for the last 8 years:

A new multi-year agreement for online ethics and compliance education will extend a three-year relationship that has assisted DuPont in

Following up on the post that resulted from my trip to India just before Slaw started, have a look at Tony Williams’ recent piece in Legal Week on the topic of outsourcing. Williams was Managing Partner of Clifford Chance before leaving to head up Andersen Legal – which was a casualty of Enron. His consulting firm site Jomati has some interesting perspectives on trends, generally from a European perspective. For a different take on outsourcing see http://www.jomati.com/NewFiles/cloutsourcing_nov04.pdf . . . [more]

King Harald Blåtand (Harold Bluetooth in English) was King of Denmark in the 10th century and before his untimely death in battle with his son, he united parts of present day Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It is the legacy of unification which led Bluetooth technology to be named after King Blåtand as it is a technology which enables various devices to communicate or to be united, it is hoped that Bluetooth technology will be able to unify wireless networking.

I do not profess to be an expert on the subject of Bluetooth technology, I do own a device that is . . . [more]

NYU law librarian Mirela Roznovschi is the editor of GlobalLex, an excellent, free online source of research guides for international law and the (domestic) laws of foreign countries throughout the world.

They have just published my November 2005 guide called “Researching Canadian Law“. . . . [more]

Slaw now offers email subscription. Using the text entry box in the right menu, you can obtain a daily digest of postings to Slaw, courtesy of Feedblitz. You ought to be able to unsubscribe very easily, and suspend email if you’re going to be away for a while. Feedblitz will provide you with a management link with each email and will once a month remind you of your Feedblitz password. Please let us know if for any reason this doesn’t work the way it ought. . . . [more]

1. Google Books
2. Information Week: “Pay by the Page”
3. CNET: Amazon Throws Book at Google
4. Walter Benjamin: “Illuminations on Unpacking a Library”
5. Blog Juridique: L’archivage électronique de l’histoire du droit
6. mozbot search: british library msn
7. Library and Archives Canada: Le Répertoire des projets canadiens de numérisation
8. Soquij
9. CNN: Google Base
10. Google Base
11. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
12. KM World Wiki
13. Connie Crosby’s Blog
14. KM World and Intranets 2005
15. KM World photos on Flickr
16. CBC Radio, The Current: Google’s digitization project [streaming media]
17. AustLII
18. Moninfo
19. LLRX: Australian Legal System
20. York University: Academic Jobs postings
21. Alan Gahtan’s Blog
22. Techdirt
23. CRN: “Murder Suspect’s Google Searches

Google Books, and away we go……. . . . [more]

During all of this debate about Google Print, Amazon has been awfully quiet. But in reading the print version of Information Week (Nov 7, 2005) I came across a short article “Pay By The Page” outlining Amazon’s plans to expand its “Search Inside the Book” technology to let customers buy part of a book or read it online – for a fee.

This got my curiosity. In roaming around the web I came across references to two potential new services from Amazon, “Amazon Pages” and “Amazon Update” on a recent (Nov 3, 2005) CNET story:

Amazon’s new

Two weeks ago when I’d last posted, I’d asked for replies on your use of commercial versus free online databases for legal research, with a breakdown between legislative, caselaw and legal commentary issues. My own practice is predominantly using commercial databases over free. The response I received from others on Slaw, and from some colleagues at my firm, were instructive:
*Use of commercial ($) db’s rather than free: Legislation: 50%: 4
<50%: 3
50%: 1

*Use of $ db’s rather than free: Caselaw: 50%: 7
<50%: 0
50%: 1

*Use of $ db’s rather than free: Legal commentary: 50%: 7 . . . [more]