Blogs as PowerPoint Alternatives

This is a follow-up to the August 7, 2005 posting Tools of the Trade - How Not To Mess Up With Powerpoint and Word.

LawLibTech has a 2-part article discussing the possible advantages and disadvantages of using blogs as a presentation tool:

• PowerPoint Alternatives - From Browsers to Blogs, Part I
• PowerPoint Alternatives - From Browsers to Blogs, Part II

European Union Legal Materials: An Infrequent User's Guide

One of the new resources featured on the UK-based SOSIG site (Social Science Information Gateway) is entitled European Union Legal Materials: An Infrequent User’s Guide.

The guide was compiled by the head of reference of the Georgetown University Law Library in Washington, D.C. and it is aimed at researchers who are infrequent users of European Union legal information.

The guide is broken down into a brief overview of the European Union, its official websites and the role and functions of its principal institutions, a reading list of recommended introductions to EU law, dictionaries and directories, a list of founding treaties and accession treaties, sources of EU legislation, case law, journals as well as research guides.

Online Sources for U.S. Appellate Court Briefs

LLRX.com has published an overview of resources to help find American appellate court briefs.

The article is divided into sections on where to locate free copies of federal and state appellate court briefs organized by jurisdiction, where to find them by government agency or NGO or other organization, and where to finds briefs online for a fee.

Moving Day

My suitcases are all packed, the apartment is stuffed with stacked cardboard boxes full of books and files, furniture is waiting for the movers. Today is the day: I hop on the bus at 11:30 AM and move to Ottawa.

Tomorrow at 9AM sharp, I report for duty at the library of the Supreme Court of Canada.

What I learned while preparing the move:

• everyone I know prefers Ottawa to Toronto where I live for another 2 hours or so, everyone seems to have only positive stories about the lifestyle in Canada's federal capital city - greener, quieter, cleaner, more balance between life and work, fewer guns, and closer to Montreal, Canada's city of true cultural sophistication (as opposed to Toronto, which often acts like an American wannabe because of some inexplicable inferiority complex - chill out Toronto and be more like Montreal which doesn't give a hoot what others think of it, the sign of true confidence and worldliness)
• it is astounding how much totally useless "stuff" can hide for years in obscure corners of rooms, closets, kitchen cupboards, bathroom cabinets, etc. How did that "stuff" manage to get in here in the first place?
• it is even more amazing how much stuff you can get rid of if you put your mind to the task - on average, I calculate that I have eliminated the equivalent of 2 or 3 cardboard wine bottle boxes of "stuff" every day for the past 3 weeks. Books - leave them in the laundry room and they will be picked up by some other tenant within 10 minutes. CDs, DVDs, music cassettes - give them away. Clothes - charity will have them. Furniture, old computer equipment - again, there are charitable oreganizations that will take all your castaways.
• scan documents - I reduced 2 metal filing cabinet drawers of library science and IT-related paper files to 2 CD-ROMs that fit in my jacket pocket

For more web tips on how to "unclutter" your space:

• Managing Paper Clutter (Library Support Staff website)
• Organizing 101 (About.com Housekeeping website)
• Organize Paper Clutter (Piles of Files website)
• Paper Chase: The ABC of Household Paper Management (OrganizedHome.com)

Or try one of the following books:

• The Smart Approach to the Organized Home: Less Clutter More Storage
• The Complete Clutter Solution: Organize Your Home for Good
• The Organized Home: Design Solutions for Clutter-Free Living
• The Office Clutter Cure: Get Organized, Get Results!
• The Home Organizing Workbook: Clearing Your Clutter, Step by Step

Online Copyright-Related Courses Beginning in October and November

There are 3 interesting courses on copyright issues being offered online via the Canadian Library Association's Continuing Professional Development program.

They are:

• Practical International Copyright Law Oct. 10-28 : The meaning and role of international copyright law including key organizations, and what it means to you; principles of international copyright law and how to apply them to your everyday copyright issues; how to enforce your copyrights on an international basis and how to deal with international copyright infringements; exploitation of rights internationally and global license agreements; obtaining permissions to use content from other countries; the future of international copyright -- what's covered, what's not, and what you have to be aware of now.
• Managing Copyright Issues Nov. 7-Dec. 9 : Who in my enterprise is responsible for being copyright compliance? How do we obtain permission to use copyright-protected materials? How do we audit our enterprise's own copyright-protected assets? How do we begin to develop a written copyright policy?
• Digital Content Management Nov. 7-Dec. 9 : The use of digital content in enterprises, governments and institutions is exploding. But who is managing that content? And what are the rules? Can I republish licensed content? Or post it on our Web site? Can I store it, and forward it to others? Can I save digital content in our enterprise's database? Over the past few years, most enterprises have established procedures for managing computer software to ensure compliance with software licenses and copyright law. These same enterprises are now uncertain of the rules for managing digital content. Such management involves legal, strategic, policy and practical considerations.

All 3 courses are given by Lesley Ellen Harris of Copyrightlaws.com. She is the author of the books Canadian Copyright Law (3rd ed. 2001) and Digital Property: Currency of the 21st Century (1997). She is also the editor of The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter: For Libraries, Archives & Museums.

Government RSS Feeds in Canada and the U.S.

A recent column on LLRX.com, RSS and Uncle Sam, provides a broad outline of what is available at the U.S. federal level.

Overall, "executive branch agencies have taken a relative lead in implementing RSS. Feeds from the judiciary are few and far between. In Congress, some individual members have feeds for their press releases, but offerings from committees are scarce".

The Canadian government website has organized its RSS feeds by department, audience and province/territory.

The LLRX.com column provides a cautionary note: "(...) people who use RSS feeds for current awareness begin to want all of their news available in that format. If you are a consumer of government news, you will have to be patient. Agencies that offer one or two RSS feeds may still have ten or twenty email lists that are not available in RSS".

Authors Sue Google Over Digitization Project

It has been a very busy week for Google Print.

The Authors Guild, a group that represents thousands of American authors, filed a class action lawsuit against Google in which it asks for damages and an injunction aimed at preventing the company from continuing its ambitious digitization project which began around one year ago. The Guild accuses Google of massive copyright violation, claiming Google cannot make available books for commercial use without permission.

As part of the Google Print project, Google plans to scan all or parts of the book collections of the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, the New York Public Library and Oxford University. Google would then make those texts searchable on Google and sell ads on the Web pages.

There has been a huge amount of material on the copyright controversy that has erupted.

Here is some of that material to help you find your way:

• Detailed coverage of the Authors Guild lawsuit from the Washington Post
• Official press release about the lawsuit from the Authors Guild
• Google’s position on the subject (along with many external links)
• Commentary and analysis on the Google Print project by intellectual property lawyer Jonathan Band. His big point is to remind people that "users will be able to browse the full text of public domain materials, but only a few sentences of text around the search term in books still covered by copyright. This is a critical fact that bears repeating: for books still under copyright users will be able to see only a few sentences on either side of the search term".
• Commentary from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, arguing that Google has a strong fair use defense
• Commentary from Lawrence Lessig who writes that "common sense [should] revolt at the claims of this law suit"
• Commentary by Business Week which puts the latest controversy in the context of a series of legal and political setbacks faced by the Internet giant
• Finally, commentary with a Canadian angle by University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist

Yahoo! and Human Rights Repression in China

The story of Yahoo's complicity in the arrest of a Chinese journalist has created an uproar among human rights and business watchdogs. Shi Tao, a journalist with the Contemporary Trade News in Hunan, was convicted for e-mailing comments made in a newspaper staff meeting to a democracy group in New York. His IP address was provided to the Chinese authorities by Yahoo!.

Yahoo! argued that foreign companies operating in China have no choice but to respect local laws and "customs".

The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, a research website set up by Amnesty International and various academic and business organizations, has an update on the case that raises many legal issues.

The update includes an article from the San Francisco Chronicle that discusses how foreign Internet firms can resist Chinese government pressures, an official response from Yahoo! on the incident, as well as critical commentaries by 3 human rights experts:

• Mary Robinson, Chair of Business & Human Rights Resource Centre’s International Advisory Network, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, former President of Ireland
• Sir Geoffrey Chandler, Founding Chair of Amnesty International UK Business Group
• Nicholas Howen, Secretary-General, International Commission of Jurists

On a somewhat related note, the organization Reporters Without Borders has released a free Handbook forBloggers and Cyber-Dissidents with tips on how to sneak past Internet censors and the secret police in countries from China to Iran (as well as Western Internet companies investing there too).

New Book Out This Week: Future of Canadian Copyright Law

This will certainly be of interest to bloggers and anyone else interested in info tech-related matters. On my wish list for Xmas (bonjour papa!)

Later this week, Irwin Law will be publishing In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law. Edited by Ottawa University law professor Michael Geist, it is a collection of 19 essays by Canada's leading copyright experts.

Table of contents:

PART ONE: CANADIAN COPYRIGHT REFORM IN CONTEXT

• Copyright Talk: Patterns and Pitfalls in Canadian Policy Discourses - Laura J. Murray
• Interests in the Balance - Teresa Scassa
• International Copyright Law: W[h]ither User Rights - Myra Tawfik

PART TWO: BILL C-60: A CLOSER ANALYSIS

• Constitutional Jurisdiction over Paracopyright Laws - Jeremy F. deBeer
• Deflating the Michelin Man: Protecting Users’ Rights in the Canadian Copyright Reform Process - Jane Bailey
• If Left to Their Own Devices…: How DRM and Anti-Circumvention Laws Can Be Used to Hack Privacy - Ian Kerr
• Anti-Circumvention Legislation and Competition Policy: Defining A Canadian Way? - Michael Geist
• Rights Management Information - Mark Perry
• Making Available: Existential Inquiries - David Fewer
• Made in Canada: A Unique Approach to Internet Service Provider Liability and Copyright Infringement - Sheryl N. Hamilton
• The “New Listener” and the Virtual Performer: The Need for a New Approach to Performers’ Rights - Mira Sundara Rajan
• Filtering the Flow from the Fountains of Knowledge: Access and Copyright in Education and Libraries - Margaret Ann Wilkinson
• The Changing Landscape of Academic Libraries and Copyright Policy: Interlibrary Loans, Electronic Reserves, and Distance Education - Samuel Trosow
• Lights, Camera,…Harmonize: Photography Issues in Copyright Reform - Alex Cameron

PART THREE: THE FUTURE OF CANADIAN COPYRIGHT REFORM

• The Changing Face of Fair Dealing in Canadian Copyright Law: A Proposal for Legislative Reform - Carys Craig
• Taking User Rights Seriously - Abraham Drassinower
• Coming to Terms with Copyright - David Lametti
• Use of Copyright Content on the Internet: Considerations on Excludability and Collective Licensing - Daniel J. Gervais
• Crown Copyright and Copyright Reform in Canada - Elizabeth F. Judge

Podcasts and Internet Audio Resources in Law

An article in the September 2005 issue of the American Bar Association's Law Practice Today describes law-related podcasts and digital audio resources available via the Internet or RSS.

Available materials run the gamut from CLE seminars to discussions and interviews and run from a few minutes to a few hours. Most of resources seem to be American right now.

The articles links to resources describing what podcasts are, directories for finding recordings on topics of interests, and audio material produced by individual lawyers.

Legal Info and Disaster Recovery Post-Katrina

The Inter Alia legal research blog references a discussion on what the Katrina disaster "teaches us (...) about the value of electronic documents...".

Among the points raised:

• Many companies had all their important data digitally backed up but weren't able to get their operations up and running when having to rely solely on the back-up data.
• "How do you prove even simple matters when the filing systems and paper records that house that proof are gone, unavailable for long periods of time, or prohibitively expensive to recover? ... Will law firms who have conducted electronic discovery have an enormous advantage over law firms that have not? How will clients react when they find that the paper records they entrusted to their law firms were not protected and are not salvageable? "
• "PACER put out a post-Katrina notice that its information systems were affected in courts all across the Gulf coast, including Florida...In others, PACER said court information might not be current."

The discussion describes the huge mess the legal system is in down there and points to the importance of having a detailed disaster plan in place before disaster strikes.

Commonwealth Legal Information Institute - Law Resources from 51 countries

The Australian Legal Information Institute recently launched the Commonwealth Legal Information Institute, or CommonLII.

CommonLII aims to provide one central Internet portal for core legal information from all Commonwealth countries. It offers free access to case law, legislation, treaties, law journals and law reform reports with 464 databases from 51 Commonwealth countries. There is also a catalogue of links to legal websites in all countries, a search engine to search those sites, plus "law on Google" for each country.

Tips to Inspire Library Innovation

I missed the first instalment of this 3-part article.

The ever inspiring Stephen Abram, SirsiDynix vice president of Innovation, has written 32 Tips to Inspire Innovation for You and Your Library in the September issue of SirsiDynix OneSource. The article includes 11 tips and has a link to the 11 tips in an earlier issue. The final list of tips will be published in the October issue.

The tips are:

• Get out of your box! (you need to understand the user’s context and needs and not project your own onto them)
• Productize (brand your service and tie your name and institution to the brand)
• You can’t step in the same river twice (you can never predict pitfalls or benefits of any new technology, everything changes)
• Remember FABS (there are differences between features, functions, and benefits; you need to sell the benefits to your users)
• Don’t assume - TEST
• Don’t just ask your clients what they do, will do, or want. OBSERVE them
• Have a vision and dream BIG! (or be forever doomed to an endless series of the present)
• Ask the three magic questions of your users: What keeps you awake at night? If you could solve only one problem at work, what would it be? If you could change one thing and one thing only, what would it be?
• Never underestimate the customer
• Seek the real customer (of all the stakeholders who have contact with the product or service, whose needs must absolutely be met, and whose needs take second seat?)
• Respect diversity of information literacy skills, learning styles, and multiple intelligences

Banned Books Week - USA

The American Library Association marks Banned Books Week beginning September 24.

The most frequently challenged books of 2004 in the U.S. according to the Association:

• "The Chocolate War" for sexual content, offensive language, religious viewpoint, being unsuited to age group and violence
• "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers, for racism, offensive language and violence
• "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture" by Michael A. Bellesiles, for inaccuracy and political viewpoint
• Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey, for offensive language and modeling bad behavior
• "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky, for homosexuality, sexual content and offensive language
• "What My Mother Doesn't Know" by Sonya Sones, for sexual content and offensive language
• "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak, for nudity and offensive language
• "King & King" by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland, for homosexuality
• "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, for racism, homosexuality, sexual content, offensive language and unsuited to age group
• "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck, for racism, offensive language and violence

And should anyone think Canada is immune from attempts to target or censor writers, essayists, reporters and their articles or books, Canada has its own annual Freedom to Read Week to remind us that protecting the values of freedom of expression is a constant effort. The next Freedom to Read Week in Canada is scheduled for February 26 to March 4, 2006.

Canadian Telecom Review Submissions

In the 2005 budget, the federal government announced the creation of a special panel to review Canada's telecommunications policy. A special consultation website was set up and the public was invited to send submissions.

Many options are being explored to enhance competition, to spread universal service, and to encourage enhanced technology deployment and investment, especially broadband.

The panel is looking into 3 areas:

• Regulation: how to protect consumers and promote technological breakthroughs from advanced telecommunications networks and services
• Access: how to ensure "an appropriate level" of access to advanced telecom services
• Information and communications technologies: how to promote the development and expanded use of converging services across the economy

The deadline was September 15 and there were hundreds of submissions. They can be browsed on the panel website.

Law School Podcasting

I have found 2 reports to the effect that the Washington College of Law (American University) has begun podcasts of certain seminars and conference to students and faculty.

This was reported in Blawg and in LISNews.

Among the recent podcasts are:

• A panel discussion on various judicial clerkship experiences
• A conversation on the relevance of foreign law for American constitutional adjudication with U.S. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia & Stephen Breyer
• The drafting of a new Iraqi constitution

Librarians Without Borders

There are humanitarian and human rights organizations known as Doctors Without Borders, Reporters Without Borders, Engineers Without Borders, Architects Without Borders, Teachers Without Borders, Builders Without Borders, Lawyers Without Borders, Grantmakers Without Borders, Clowns Without Borders, Geeks Without Borders, Diplomats Without Borders, Mothers Without Borders, Basketball Players Without Borders and even Knitters Without Borders.

Now, Librarians Without Borders joins the club.

Based at the Faculty of Media and Information Studies at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) in London, Ontario, the humanitarian group's first project is to help develop a desperately needed medical and nursing collection at the state university in Huambo, Angola, a country that recently saw the end of a civil war that lasted almost 30 years.

The group will be celebrating the launch of the project in Angola on Friday, September 23rd at the London Public Library. (7-9:30pm in the Stevenson & Hunt Room of the main branch).

Anyone in the London/Waterloo/Toronto area who wants to attend should send an RSVP (with name, title, and organization) by Monday, September 19th to events@lwb-online.org.

U.S. Supreme Court Nomination Resources

The nomination hearings of U.S. Supreme Court chief justice nominee John Roberts began this week in front of the American Senate.

Newshour on PBS has created a special section on its website devoted to the hearings. The section includes biographical information on all the major players, news, analysis by legal scholars and audio from the hearings.

The Law Library of the Library of Congress has also created a compilation of resources that includes a bibliography of Roberts' writings and a list of his judgments, and links to web and news resources on the topic.

GPO Access has put together a collection of Senate Judiciary Supreme Court Nomination Hearings in PDF format from 1971 onwards.

For news, one can follow the Roberts hearings on the Jurist website from the University of Pittsburgh, the FindLaw Supreme Court news section, and on the Law.com Supreme Court Monitor.

Open Access Publishing in Law

A post on the Canadian Association of Law Libraries listserv yerterday drew attention to the movement for "open access archiving" in legal publishing.

The post linked to an article entitled Open Access to Law Articles on the "Out of the Jungle" blog.

Open access archiving means that scholarly reviews allow authors to make the published work freely available on the public internet, up to and including permitting users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles.

A number of American law professors have created the "Open Access Law Program" to encourage open access archiving.

According to the article, "Already twenty-one US law reviews have adopted the Open Access Principles, or have policies that are consistent with them. Leading journals such as Animal Law, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Indiana Law Journal, Lewis & Clark Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Michigan State Law Review, New York Law School Law Review, Texas Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and Wayne Law Review have signed on, as have all of the journals published by Duke Law School and Villanova Law School."

In Canada, the University of Ottawa Law & Technology Journal has adopted the open access principles for law journals.

Moving to Ottawa - It's Getting Real

As I have posted recently, I will start a new job as a librarian at the Supreme Court in Ottawa in a little less than 2 weeks.

My wife Viviane and I spent Saturday apartment hunting and we found a place in less than a day in the Centretown area - it is near the German Embassy about 2 streets from the Rideau Canal and less than a 3 minute walk from the many bars and shops on Elgin Street, 7-8 minutes from City Hall, the National Arts Centre, the Ontario Provincial Courts and the War Memorial. And we timed the walk to the Supreme Court - less than 25 minutes. It is bigger than what we have in Toronto and a few hundred dollars a month cheaper, too. And we can easily walk across the bridge over the Ottawa River to the Quebec side.

Some of our future new neighbours we met while walking Saturday night on the street to which we will be moving joked that I will be able to skate on the Canal most of the way to work in the winter.

The area appears to be crawling with students, civil servants, embassy people, translators, teachers, and "government consultants" (whatever those are). We were told that Margaret Trudeau looked at our apartment some 10 days ago or so. One of Pierre Trudeau's former press officials once lived there, as well as a former Mulroney political aide (not at the same time of course). Right now, it is occupied by a psychiatrist who is moving because she is getting married. The landlords, an older couple, regaled us for about 45 minutes with stories about many of the former and current inhabitants of the neighbourhood: diplomats, doctors, many government librarians, a few lawyers, profs, international development aid workers.

Apartment hunting in Ottawa was an eye-opener. When I explained I worked as a law librarian and that I would be working at the Court, everyone we met seemed to have a positive story about a special librarian they knew. Ah... a city that appreciates our profession.

Special Library Programming Ideas for the 2006 CLA Conference

The deadline for submitting programming ideas for the 2006 Canadian Library Association conference to take place in Ottawa next June is September 26, 2005.

The national executive of CASLIS (Canadian Association of Special Libraries and Information Services) is meeting in Ottawa this weekend to put the finishing touches on proposals that will be of interest to the Canadian special librarian community.

Some of the sessions ideas being discussed include:

• Evidence-base Librarianship
• First Steps as a Supervisor
• Information-seeking by management/senior execs. - behavioural aspects, motivation, etc.
• Negotiating with vendors - skills, techniques, etc.
• Roving librarians
• Virtual/Electronic Collaboration tools - what's new in info gadgets & software
• Information Audit - why do it (i.e. value) and overview of how do it
• Women in Management
• Successful Outsourcing - skills for productive consultant-client relationships
• "Law libraries 10 years from now", "Health libraries 10 years from now", "Financial libraries 10 years from now", "Public library services to business, 10 years from now", - (mixture of technology, service changes, staffing changes, even employer changes, space/location changes)
• Researching international/overseas markets

If anyone has any other ideas they would like to see CASLIS pursue or if anyone is interested in putting together a session or knows someone else who might be, contact:

Nancy MacKenzie
President
CASLIS National
nancymackenzie@shaw.ca
403.221.2061

Talking to Strangers for Competitive Advantage

The listserv of the Toronto Association of Law Libraries referred today to an article from the Knowledge@Wharton newsletter.

It is an very good explanation of what makes knowledge sharing work.

Excerpt:

"(W)hat gives firms competitive advantage isn't just their repository of sheer knowledge, but their use and encouragement of so-called 'performative ties' -- those impromptu communications made by colleagues who are strangers in which critical knowledge is transferred with no expectation of a quid pro quo."

In other words, as Wendy Reynolds of the Ontario Securities Commission wrote in her posting to the listserv: "Now I've got proof that building networks of people you can trust for answers is more important than knowing the answers yourself." Sounds like half the secret for excellence in reference librarianship.

The "Biblioblogosphere"

Walt Crawford of Cites & Insights has evaluated the "top" library bloggers. The article takes an in-depth look at the metrics of various blogs, examining longevity, frequency of postings, "wordiness" (total length of posts), average length of postings, total comments (blogs that allow comments and discussions), blogroll, Technorati count (in-linking sites) and other factors.

It is fascinating approach to the "biblioblogosphere".

After examining what he considers the 60 top library blogs, Crawford concludes with some interesting comments:

"Quite a few library-oriented blogs have fairly broad reach—sometimes outside the library community (again, The Shifted Librarian stands out) but mostly within the community. There’s no single model for a librarian blog. beSpacific churns out more than two dozen very brief pointers a day; Tales from the 'Liberry' offers a 500-word commentary on the charms of small library life four or five times a week. librarian.net maintains extended conversations of sorts despite not accepting comments directly; several blogs (including mine) are substantially enriched by frequent, thoughtful comments."

In other words, the top library blogs are all over the place. Which is a good thing.

But overall, as Crawford writes: "How many of these 60 blogs fall into the idle chatter and semiliterate categories attacked by people who should know better? A few are rich in the personal lives of the bloggers, but most aren’t. I wouldn’t accuse any of these bloggers of lacking writing skills. I would be hard-pressed to choose even a dozen I don’t consider worthwhile."

More Canadian Content Needed for Law Journal Current Awareness Service

On August 1, I posted about the current awareness service called Current Law Journal Content from the Washington and Lee University Law School. The service makes available tables of content from more than 1000 law journals from around the world.

In late August, John Doyle, one of the people in charge of the service, sent out a message to the Canadian Association of Law Libraries listserv asking if there is anyone who subscribes to any Canadian law journal that's not currently listed who might be interested in scanning (on an ongoing basis) the contents pages and e-mailing them to him at doylej@wlu.edu

In particular, Doyle is looking for the following journals:

• Appeal: review of current law and law reform (U. of Victoria)
• Canadian Labour & Employment Law Journal
• Revue de droit de l'Université de Sherbrooke
• Revue du Barreau du Québec
• Revue générale de droit (U. of Ottawa)
• Revue juridique des étudiants et étudiantes de l'Université Laval

Canadian law journals presently in Current Law Journal Content:

Advocates' Quarterly, African Journal of Legal Studies, Alberta Law Review, Annals of Air and Space Law, Banking & Finance Law Review, Cahiers de Droit, Canadian Bar Review, Canadian Business Law Journal, Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Canadian Journal of Family Law, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société, Canadian Journal of Law and Technology, Canadian Journal of Women & the Law, Canadian Tax Journal, Canadian Yearbook of International Law, Constitutional Forum, Criminal Law Quarterly, Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies, Dalhousie Law Journa,l Education & Law Journal, Health Law Journal, Health Law Review, Indigenous Law Journal, International Journal of Comparative Criminology, Journal of Conflict Studies, Journal of Law & Equality, Journal of Law and Social Policy, Manitoba Law Journal, McGill Law Journal, National Journal of Constitutional Law, Ocean Yearbook, Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Ottawa Law Review, Queen's Law Journal, Review of Constitutional Studies, Revue Juridique Themis, Revue québécoise de droit international, Saskatchewan Law Review, Supreme Court Law Review, UNB Law Journal, University of British Columbia Law Review, University of Ottawa Law and Technology Journal, University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review, University of Toronto Law Journal, Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues, Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice

Back From Vacation - 957 E-Mail Messages Waiting

Got back from my British Columbia adventure Monday morning at 6 A.M. (took the late flight out of Vancouver).

Highlights of the trip:

• Vancouver: walking along the beaches, Lilliget Feast aboriginal restaurant on Davie, hanging out in the latte bars and used bookshops of Kitsilano, Rodin sculpture exhibit, the wild and bumpy 5-hour ride in a Zodiac through the waters of the Georgia and Juan de Fuca Straits in search of whale pods coming in at high tide in search of salmon (we saw dozens of orcas)
• Similkameen Valley: visiting the abandoned gold mine in Hedley, camping high up in Cathedral Lakes Park (arrived right after a blizzard, froze various body parts at night), then arriving in Osoyoos the next day to be greeted by the desert landscape and 37 degree temperatures (Celsius - that's like 100 for any Americans reading this)
• Okanagan Region: Desert Ecology Centre (the northernmost desert in North America is just outside Osoyoos on the road to the vinyards in Oliver), getting served in French at a winery, horseback riding on a ranch run by expatriate Rhinelanders in Summerland (at night we were serenaded by the yip-yip-yipping of dozens of coyotes, answered in turn by the howling and barking of dozens of farm dogs all over the valley), hanging out in alternative cafes and honky tonk bars in Vernon, wife jumping off a cliff (it was a paragliding lesson but I was very glad when she landed)
• Thomson and Fraser River Valleys: vegging out on Victoria St. in Kamloops, visiting their new downtown library branch which the mayor has denounced as looking like a Soviet-era shoe factory (but I'm a modernist when it comes to architecture so I liked it), careening around the winding gravel and dirt roads of Deadman Valley, the tram over the rushing waters of the Fraser at Hell's Gate, the Diez Vista hiking trail in Coquitlam just outside Vancouver from whose vantage points we could see Vancouver, the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island beyond

Came back to work Tuesday morning to be greeted by more than 900 e-mails...

Now I have to start packing boxes to prepare my move to Ottawa later this month where I start as a reference librarian at the Supreme Court. Off to Ottawa this weekend to search for an apartment. Life is a blur but fun.