CALL 2009 Conference - New Vendor Products

I attended yesterday afternoon's vendor demo session at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) in Halifax. Here are some off the highlights:

a) LexisNexis Quicklaw:

• parallel citations now appear on the face of every Canadian case
• new content menus are being offered, called Quicklaw Full Service, Full Service International Version and Quicklaw Library. Quicklaw Full Service comes with the regular Quicklaw Canadian content plus the new Canada Digest service, the Halsbury's Laws of Canada encyclopedia and the new Canada Quantums. The International Version has all that plus foreign law content. Quicklaw Library includes the Full Service plus about 40 electronic versions of Butterworth treatises
• pricing for the menu offerings will be on a flat rate (per lawyer) basis, with pricing to be finalized by late summer

b) Canada Law Book:

• the company has introduced various interface enhancements to its various Spectrum database products such as the ability to print/e-mail/save an entire hit list, PDFs of cases from a hit list, case summaries only, note ups from selected cases, etc.

c) WestlaweCarswell:

• it is now operating under the new name of Westlaw Canada
• the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest encyclopedia is now in its 4th edition, with 104 titles updated as of May 2009. By the end of 2010, all 220 titles will have been updated. CED content is being "rechunked" into larger pieces for readibility (entire sections will fit onto a document instead of each individual paragraph being a separate document). As well, CED documents will all contain electronic links to Canadian Abridgment digests on point
• KeyCite (noting up) enhancements include pinpoint linking inside the content of citing caselaw
• the Carswell eReference library is a new offering that includes the electronic edition of many well-known loose-leafs, included in the price of the print subscription to the same volumes

d) CanLII:

• in the last year, CanLII has launched a new legislative publishing system that allows for comparing versions of statutes at different points in time
• users can also note-up entire statutes of sections of statutes