The Canadian Association of Law Libraries/L’Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit (CALL/ACBD) sent out a reminder today that members of CALL/ACBD have until 31 March 2008 to nominate a person or organization to receive the Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing.

Although it would be extremely presumptuous of me to suggest that readers of SLAW who are also members of CALL/ACBD think of SLAW as a possible recipient (in light of the high calibre of past recipients of this award – listed here if you scroll down the page), it would be an honour to just be . . . [more]

From Lo-Fi Librarian, and apropos of the discussion about the future of CLB, QL, etc., a note that BAILII has started a collection of secondary legal materials. It includes currently journals here and here, and the full text of two law books for anyone to read free of charge. . . . [more]

As Slaw readers know, effective April 1, 2008, Canada Law Book is pulling its law reports and case summaries from Quicklaw Lexis Nexis ((Dominion Law Reports (since 1912)
Canadian Criminal Cases (since 1898)
Labour Arbitration Cases (since 1948)
Canadian Patent Reporter (since 1941)
All-Canada Weekly Summaries
Weekly Criminal Bulletin
Canadian Law List
Alberta Civil and Criminal Cases
Federal Court of Appeal Decisions
BC Civil Cases
BC Criminal Cases
BC Labour Arbitrations
BC Labour Relations Board Decisions
Canadian Labour Arbitration Summaries
Saskatchewan Civil and Criminal Cases
Supreme Court of Canada Decisions
Manitoba Civil and Criminal Cases))

CLB today announced a new . . . [more]

These are “amber waves of grain” and they close off a short movie that would never win an Oscar. Edward Tufte, who’s appeared more than once before in Slaw ((Tufte Touted, Visualizing Ideas, The Friday Fillip)) does the voice-over in a film that, in his words:

blur[s] and… reduce[s] distinctions between movies and statistical graphics, to get some visual depth to data graphics, and to bring all the capacities of HD movie-making to data-graphics-making. As the metaphor for sparklines is the resolution of typography, the metaphor for wavefields is the HD video (which records approximately

Friday’s Daily Texan (which is yet another reason to keep an eye on Austin) featured a piece on Anthony Taussig, retired tax litigator and his visit to the Tarlton Law Library.

Not much unusual there, except that Taussig owns the largest private collection of rare English law texts in the world. His library is surpassed by only a small number of institutions in the United States and England. He teaches a one day course on Collecting Law Books and Manuscripts. . . . [more]

Two weeks ago over on my personal blog I talked about taking part in My ooVoo Day, an event taking place in the new video chat platform ooVoo in which participants could sign up and talk to their favourite new media specialists. I took part in a talk with Joseph Jaffe of Crayon and Jaffe Juice fame.

Last week I participated in a workshop via ooVoo with Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting in Boston in which she taught us how to improve our presentations. I was doubtful how much I could get out of a one-hour session in . . . [more]

Back in September we joined the chorus of praise for the New York Times’ decision to make a whackload of their archives available free (Some NY Times Articles Now Free). Now the folks at the Times have shown once again that they really are interested in making their data available, this time by releasing a browser designed to view the free archives (which stretch from volume 1, September 18, 1851, through that of December 30, 1922). Called, naturally, the TimesMachine, the browser is in fact an online app that appears within your current browser. A few clicks . . . [more]

1. Introduction
A recent Global Television poll claims that 90% of Canadians are upset with Canada’s criminal justice system. Can anything be done to change this perception? Not while we have our present Constitution.

2. Constitutional Mistakes
The criminal justice system got off to a very bad start in 1867 when the framers of our Constitution made two fundamental mistakes.

First, they gave the subject of criminal law to federal legislators. This mistake overlooked the fact that most criminal conduct like most civil misconduct are best controlled by local or provincial law makers. The federated common law nations of Australia . . . [more]

Huge tip of the Slaw collective headgear to our friend Michael Geist for being one of the winners of the Electronic Frontier Foundation 2008 Pioneer Awards: three awards, to the Mozilla Foundation and its Chairman Mitchell Baker, University of Ottawa Professor Michael Geist, and AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein.

Michael’s stance on the threat to community implicit in copyright change was one of the major reason’s for his win:

Dr. Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa. Last year, he led the public protest to proposed Canadian copyright law changes that would have

One of the more frequently asked questions I would receive when I was at the Faculty of Law at U of Toronto was: “Is there an online version of the McGill Guide (the Canadian guide for legal citation)? (The answer of course was “no”).

Two posts just now by LawyerKM and Jim Milles indicate the American equivalent – The Bluebook – is now online for a very reasonable annual subscription fee.

I hope Carswell is considering doing the same for the Canadian McGill Guide (print version details available on Carswell’s site here). One of the better, free online guides . . . [more]

We just added a couple of links to our homepage to help with research. You can download a plugin that lets you search our catalogue from your toolbar. You can also search for any other catalogue or database, or make your own. Its all here.

It might help you come to grips with complex research tasks, which are described helpfully in a couple of recent ACRL blog posts, here, and here.

Finally, if none of that helps, try what this guy tried. . . . [more]

University of Toronto law professors Andrew Green and Benjamin Alarie have posted a new paper on the Social Science Research Network entitled Should They All Just Get Along? Judicial Ideology, Collegiality, and Appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada:

“Over the past 25 years, the justices of the Supreme Court of Canada have not exhibited the divergent policy views along party lines that have been characteristic of the justices of the United States Supreme Court. This apparent lack of partisan polarization in Canada may at first give rise to smugness about the appointments process in Canada; after all, our