Annual Report of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

The annual report of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was recently published.

It outlines the activities of the Tribunal for the period from July 1st, 2008 to June 30th, 2009.

The Tribunal was created by United Nations Security Council Resolution 955 in November 1994 for the prosecution of persons responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the African country between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1994.

Canadian Bar Association 2009 Book Awards

Earlier this month, the Canadian Bar Association announced the winners of its 2009 Walter Owen Book Prize for outstanding new contributions to Canadian legal literature.

The winners are:

• Bradley Crawford, Q.C., counsel to McCarthy Tétrault LLP’s financial services group in Toronto, for his book The Law of Banking and Payment in Canada
• Prof. William Tetley, McGill University in Montreal, for Marine Cargo Claims, 4th Edition

Redesign and Relaunch of Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research

Catherine Best, a Vancouver-based research lawyer with Boughton Law Corporation, has relaunched her website Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research with a completely new look and lots of updated content.

Her site was one of the first Canadian legal research sites back in the 1990s.

It is divided into sections on:

• research methodology (including information about new tools such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, etc.)
  
• electronic research (including tables comparing search syntax for CanLII, Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada)
• links for statutory research
• links about researching the law of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, European Union, and International Law

UN Launches BASESwiki Alternative Dispute Resolution Website on Business and Human Rights

The United Nations has launched a new alternative dispute resolution wiki on business and human rights called BASESwiki, the Business and Society Exploring Solutions wiki:

"It is a forum where anyone can share, access and discuss information about the non-judicial mechanisms and resources available around the world to help companies and their external stakeholders resolve disputes. It will be a resource for all stakeholders - companies, NGOs, mediators, lawyers, academics and government officials. It will be an interactive forum, built over time by and for its community of users."

"BASESwiki will cover mechanisms based in companies, industry associations, multi-stakeholder initiatives, government agencies, national, multilateral and international institutions."

The collaborative site is broken down into sections on grievance mechanisms, outcomes from alternative dispute resolution efforts, experts, country profiles, and research and analysis documents.

BASESwiki is an initiative of the United Nation Secretary-General's Special Representative on Business and Human Rights and is undertaken in cooperation with the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and with the support and collaboration of the International Bar Association and the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman of the World Bank Group.

[Source: UN Pulse - United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library]

Coalition Against Google Book Digitization Settlement Launches Blog

This is a follow-up to Monday's Library Boy post entitled Controversy Heats Up Over Google Book Search Settlement.

The Open Book Alliance has launched a blog.

The Alliance is a coalition formed by the Internet Archive, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Yahoo and a number of library associations to oppose a settlement in a class action copyright infringement suit reached last year between search giant Google and U.S.-based publisher and author organizations.

The settlement is related to Google's plan to digitize millions of copyright-covered and public domain books to make them available to a worldwide audience.

Supreme Court of Canada Library: New Titles

The list of new library titles added to the Supreme Court of Canada collection for the period of August 1st to 15th, 2009 is now available on the Court website.

The web page explains: "The Supreme Court of Canada Library does not lend materials from this list, which is provided for information only."

But, once the material goes into the general collection, after about a month, the works do become available for inter-library loan to authorized libraries.

It is possible to subscribe via e-mail to receive the list.

Help Redesign the Supreme Court of Canada Judgments Website

Yesterday on Slaw.ca, Pierre-Paul Lemyre wrote about potential improvements to the Supreme Court of Canada decisions website which is run by the LexUM lab.

Lemyre is the products and business development manager at LexUM, the Université de Montréal's legal technology lab that hosts Court decisions for free.

In his post, Lemyre wrote:

" ... I drafted a wish list of features we always wanted to implement but that never made it online for all kind of reasons. I am interested to get your thoughts on this list and particularly on any missing feature (...)

• Structure all case related information under one interface (docket information, data from the bulletins, filings / factums, webcasts, decisions);
• Cross references between related information of one single case;
• Links on citations in the body of documents;
• Links to appeal and first instance decisions available on CanLII;
• Snippets or keywords displayed in search results;
• Improved highlights of search results with navigation;
• Ability to search in Webcasts;
• RSS feeds (for website updates and also potentially by case);
• Keywords displayed on updates for the mailing list / RSS / website;
• Interface for mobile device;
• Adding all PDFs from the report and making PDFs searchable"

Lemyre can be reached at lemyrep [AT] lexum.org

Criminal Intelligence Service Canada 2009 Report on Organized Crime

Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, a federal body that studies trends in criminal activity on behalf of law enforcement agencies across the country, recently released its 2009 Report on Organized Crime.

The report provides a national overview of criminal markets in Canada, such as those for illicit drugs, financial fraud and environmental crime, and offers analysis on how organized crime is positioned within the country.

Controversy Heats Up Over Google Book Search Settlement

The proposed book digitization settlement between search giant Google and U.S.-based publisher and author organizations is running into increasing opposition.

Under the 2008 deal ending a copyright dispute in US courts, Google agreed to pay $125 million (US) to create a Book Rights Registry. Authors and publishers who registered would get roughly two thirds of the revenues from the sale of the copyright-protected books digitized by Google.

The deal will be reviewed this October in a New York City court.

But opposition is organizing:

• Library brawl: Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon teaming up to oppose Google's digital book settlement (San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 20, 2009): "Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. are joining a coalition that hopes to rally opposition to Google's digital book ambitions and ultimately persuade a federal judge to block or revise the Internet search leader's plans. The group, to be called the Open Book Alliance, is being put together by the Internet Archive, a longtime critic of Google's crusade to make digital copies of as many printed books as possible. A growing number of critics already have filed objections to Google's book settlement, but none have the clout that the Open Book Alliance figures to wield with three of the world's best-known technology companies on board."
• UC Academics Raise Major Concerns About Google Settlement (Library Journal, Aug. 20, 2009): "Offering a crucial little-heard voice in the debate over the Google Book Search Settlement, 21 leading University of California faculty members have written a letter to the court asking for supplementary provisions to address their concerns. In the letter, the scholars speak on behalf of academic authors more interested in the public interest than in supporting themselves from their book revenues. 'We are concerned that the [plaintiff] Authors Guild negotiators likely prioritized maximizing profits over maximizing public access to knowledge, while academic authors would have reversed those priorities,' the faculty members wrote. 'We note that the scholarly books written by academic authors constitute a much more substantial part of the Book Search corpus than the Authors Guild members’ books'."
• Tech giants unite against Google (BBC, Aug. 21, 2009): "Much of the focus of the proposed settlement has been on anti-trust and anti-competitive concerns, but just as many are worried about privacy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU of Northern California and the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group wrote to Google to ask the company to 'assure Americans that Google will maintain the security and freedom that library patrons have long had: to read and learn about anything... without worrying that someone is looking over their shoulder or could retrace their steps'."
• Europe Divided on Google Book Deal (New York Times, Aug. 23, 2009): "Some big European publishers, like Oxford University Press, and Bertelsmann and Holtzbrinck, which own Random House and Macmillan respectively, support the agreement, which remains subject to approval by a U.S. judge. They see the pact as greatly expanding the visibility of their archives for online purchase. But opposition to the deal, which would allow U.S. consumers to buy online access to millions of books by European authors whose works were scanned at U.S. libraries, is mounting. There is widespread opposition among French publishers, and the government of Germany, along with national collection societies in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Spain, plan to argue against it and encourage writers to pull out of the agreement. "

Earlier Library Boy posts about the Google Book project controversy include:

• Google Settles Lawsuit With U.S. Authors and Publishers (October 28, 2008)
• Google Book Scanning Project Settlement: More Reaction and Analysis (February 23, 2009)
• Association of American Publishers on Recent Google Book Project Settlement (February 24, 2009)
• Google Books Project on CBC Ideas Tonight (August 10, 2009)

Proposed Privacy Guidelines for BC Administrative Tribunals

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia and that province's Ministry of the Attorney General have developed guidelines on how to protect privacy in administrative tribunal decisions posted to the Internet:

"Access issues engage a fundamental element of our democratic system – openness and transparency of court and administrative proceedings – that has been increasingly met by tribunals posting decisions and other documents on their websites. But privacy concerns have been identified about the potential for data-mining, identity theft, stalking, and other misuses by powerful search tools that can access and extract personal information from those decisions and documents. The Guide discusses how to address these difficult issues in the context of the applicable legislation1 and how to comply with that legislation when collecting information, providing access to records, and publishing reasons for decisions."

The public is invited to comment on the proposal. The deadline is November 30 of this year.

[Source: Courthouse Libraries BC]

Get Supreme Court of Canada Decisions on Twitter

Simon Fodden of Slaw.ca posted yesterday that he has created a Twitter feed for Supreme Court of Canada decisions at his CanCourts site.

The Twitter feed is based on RSS feeds from CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute.

Discovering the Real Value of Your Information Contracts

The American Association of Law Libraries is organizing a webinar on September 16, 2009 on Discovering the Real Value of Your Information Contracts:

"You know what you pay for your subscriptions, but what is the real value of the content within your contracts? Accessing and obtaining information has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, but vendor contracts for this content have remained unchanged. Bottom line, yesterday's contracts won't work in the today's economic climate. This program will review the motivation of vendors to maintain status quo and arm you with tactics and techniques to review and evaluate your own contracts intelligently."

"Webinar attendees will learn:

• How to respond to vendor justification tactics
• Practical tips and techniques for reviewing your own contracts
• Action steps to establish the value of your contracts"

The webinar takes place 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM - Central Time (U.S. and Canada) via WebEx and teleconference dial-in.

Cost is $45 (US) for members and $60 for non-members.

Ontario Human Rights Commission 2008-09 Annual Report

The Ontario Human Rights Commission today released its annual report for 2008-2009.

This has been the first year under a new structure.

On June 30, 2008, the Human Rights Code Amendment Act, 2006 came into effect.

From that date, all new complaints were to be filed with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. There was a transition period during which people who still had complaints with the Commission after June 30, 2008 could either continue with this direction until December 31, 2008, or could opt out and file an application directly with the Tribunal up to June 30, 2009.

Under the new law, the Commission took on a new role: it shifted its focus away from processing and litigating individual cases, to education and advocacy on bigger picture human rights issues.

The report contains a statistical section near the end with data for the transition phase on:

• New complaints filed by social area and grounds cited
• Monetary damages in settlements by ground
• Cases completed or referred, by disposition and grounds
• Cases completed or referred, by disposition and social area

Australian Law Reform Commission Releases Discussion Paper on Royal Commissions

The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) yesterday released a discussion paper on Royal Commissions and Official Inquiries.

The ALRC is reviewing the operation of the Royal Commissions Act 1902 (Cth), the first real examination of the legislation in its 107 year history.

The ALRC is recommending ways to ensure that official inquiries have adequate investigatory powers while at the same time ensuring the protection of the rights of individuals concerned. This would put what are now simply 'ad hoc inquiries' on the same solid footing as more formal Royal Commissions.

It also wants the government to follow-up in response to inquiry reports. For example, one proposal would have the government make inquiry reports public by tabling them in Parliament and publish updates on the implementation of inquiry recommendations.

The ALRC is seeking public feedback ahead of its final report and recommendations to be delivered to the Australian Government in October.

Quicklaw Founder Hugh Lawford Passes Away

Hugh Lawford, former law professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and the founder of the Quicklaw database, passed away Monday.

Lawford was 76.

Simon Chester, partner at Heenan Blaikie in Toronto, wrote yesterday on Slaw.ca about Lawford's contributions to the world of law:

"We learned this morning of the death of Professor Hugh Lawford, a legend in Canadian legal information. He will be mourned by many students who studied with him at Queen’s University Law School, and his passing should be noted by every Canadian lawyer, because Hugh and his colleagues revolutionized how law is practiced. "

"QUIC/LAW which became QL Systems which became Quicklaw merged its identity into LexisNexis. But anyone who encountered Hugh from the pioneering days of the late Sixties to his retirement in 2004 will have been struck by his vision, his tenacity and his commitment to making legal information more accessible."

One indication of his immense influence is the fact that the Canadian Association of Law Libraries has named its annual Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing after Prof. Lawford.

Canadian Copyright Reform Updates

University of Ottawa law prof Michael Geist has put together another summary of the contributions to the copyright reform consultations the federal government has been holding in the past few weeks.

Here is a breakdown of the positions taken by recent submissions to the hearings. This covers public submissions up to August 9, 2009.

Also today, his blog published a summary of what has been said in the hundreds of online comments made on the government's copyright consultation website.

The consultation, which runs to mid-September, is asking 5 questions:

1. How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?
2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time?
3. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?
4. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?
5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?

American Association of Law Libraries Launches Online Learning Platform

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) has a new online learning platform called AALLtogo.

It is intended to offer access to professional educational opportunities between annual general meetings of the association.

The site does include handouts and presentations from the three previous annual conferences, as well as a series of other educational programs.

It is possible to register even if one is not an AALL member.

Video on United Kingdom's New Supreme Court

The House of Lords no longer exercises any judicial function as the highest appellate court of the United Kingdom since July 30th, 2009.

As of October, this function will be taken on by the new Supreme Court.

The BIALL blog (British and Irish Association of Law Librarians) has posted an interview with Lord Mance, one of the 12 Law Lords.

More background information:

• It took 142 years, but at last Bagehot has got his way -The birth of the supreme court is not just for show. The removal of judges from parliament is a victory for liberty and law (The Guardian, July 30, 2009): "There was no mob to be seen or heard in the House of Lords this week. No sign of a tumbril, or the guillotine either. The untoppled throne still glistened as it always does amid the dark grandeur of Pugin's neo-gothic debating chamber. Voices were, as usual, respectful and measured. Yet be in no doubt that the handful of us who watched or participated in this week's proceedings were in the midst of a very British constitutional revolution. For the past threedays the judicial committee of the House of Lords – that's the 12 law lords to you and me – has been winding up 133 continuous years of lawful business in the Palace of Westminster. Yesterday, in a mix of rulings that ranged from Debbie Purdy's assisted suicide application to the argument about which member of Procul Harum owns the royalties to A Whiter Shade of Pale, the lords delivered their last judgments. A Michelangelo-style day of wrath, though, this was not. In most respects it was judicial business as usual."
• A potted history of the Law Lords (BBC News, July 30, 2009): "As the Law Lords ruled on Thursday that there must be a clarification of the law on assisted suicide, following a legal challenge by multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy, they were handing down their final judgements from the House of Lords. At the same time, an ancient constitutional anomaly was coming to an end. "
• New Home (The Lawyer, July 15, 2009): "In 1876 the Appellate Jurisdiction Act created the judicial function of the House of Lords, the highest court in England and Wales. At the end of the month the Law Lords will pack up their judicial robes and wigs for the summer break, but they will have heard their last case in the House of Lords. When they return in October they will be supreme justices in the newly opened Supreme Court, sitting in Middlesex Guildhall in Parliament Square. On the surface it appears to be little more than a symbolic move, but in reality it marks the beginning of a new era for the judiciary, which is determined to highlight its transparency credentials."

New Site to Track Canadian Government and NGO Reports

I was just made aware of a relatively new site called Reports Canada that seeks to track "new reports released by federal and provincial government departments and committees, NGOs and other Canadian organizations involved with public policy."

There is a category for legal and security reports.

The site has an RSS feed.

Reports Canada is maintained by Carl Meyer, assistant editor of The Hill Times' DailyPubliNet, a news service in Ottawa that tracks federal parliamentary business.

Reality Shows for Librarians

Students in the Master of Library and Information Studies program at the University of Western Ontario have come up with a list of reality shows for librarians.

My favourites:

• The Week the Internet Left Town – professional librarians answer questions without Wikipedia or Google Scholar
• Pimp My Bookmobile – remaining members of Run DMC and a local auto body modification shop 'trick out' city bookmobiles.

[Source: Special Info & Musings for Ottawa Information Professionals]

Blogosaurus Lex Publication Education Blog

The Legal Resource Centre (LRC) recently launched a new blog: Blogosaurus Lex (brilliant name, almost as brilliant as Library Boy!).

The LRC is the publisher of the magazine LawNow and of the legal information website Access to Justice Network.

It was registered as a charity in 1977 and its mandate is "to contribute to, advance and promote the legal knowledge and education of the people of Canada." It is based in Edmonton, Alberta.

According to the initial post on June 22, 2009, the blog will feature:

• new happenings at the Legal Resource Centre (LRC)
• community engagement with other public legal educators and sharing new resources and activities emerging in the field
• LawNow – our magazine relating law to life
• LRC library news including interesting frequently asked questions (and their corresponding answers!) as well as new purchases for the Garvie Reading Room
• and other interesting stuff that appeals to us and that we hope might be of interest to you
  

United Nations Launches RSS Feed on Gender Equality

WomenWatch, the UN portal on gender equality, has launched a new online service known as the UN Gender Equality Newsfeed.

It automatically collects gender equality-related news from individual RSS news feeds from UN agencies and displays a combined up-to-date news list.

Participating agencies include the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN Program on HIV/Aids (UNAIDS), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Google Books Project on CBC Ideas Tonight

The CBC Radio program Ideas will be looking tonight at search giant Google's project to digitize as many books as possible and make them available to a worldwide audience over the Internet. Tonight's episode is called The Great Library 2.0 CD :

"There’s been nothing like it since ancient times. As producer Sean Prpick explains, Google’s computers will soon hold the largest collection of books in history. What will this mean for our culture and the way we get our information?"

Ideas, a program about contemporary ideas, is broadcast every day between 9 and 10 PM in all North American time zones, Monday to Friday, on hundreds of stations in Canada and the US.

It can also be heard live on the Net.

A podcast of tonight's show will be made available on August 24, 2009.

Supreme Court of Canada Library: New Titles

The list of new library titles added to the Supreme Court of Canada collection for the period of July 16th to 31st, 2009 is now available on the Court website.

The web page explains: "The Supreme Court of Canada Library does not lend materials from this list, which is provided for information only."

But, once the material goes into the general collection, after about a month, the works do become available for inter-library loan to authorized libraries.

It is possible to subscribe via e-mail to receive the list.

New Interface for Social Science Research Network

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is working on a new interface for its large collection of open access research papers:

" After spending time thinking about different approaches to display large quantities of articles, we created the eLibrary Viewer. "

"The eLibrary Viewer places search results in the left hand column of the page. Each result displays hyper-linked title and authors, and the first few lines of the abstract. In addition, we included buttons to open the full abstract page in another window; view citations, references, and footnotes where available; add the abstract to a user’s MyBriefcase; and share, email, or download the paper. These features will allow readers to quickly review and share multiple articles without having to go back and forth between the results and the content pages."

SSRN hosts an electronic library with abstracts, full bibliographic data, and full text for close to 200,000 scholarly papers.

The Legal Scholarship Network is one of the many SSRN e-Libraries available.

Keeping Up With Canadian Copyright Reform Hearings

University of Ottawa law prof Michael Geist has put together very useful summaries of the contributions to the copyright reform hearings the federal government has been holding in the past few weeks.

For example, today he provided a breakdown of the positions taken by recent submissions to the hearings.

Also today, his blog published a summary of what has been said in the hundreds of online comments made on the government's copyright consultation website.

The consultation, which runs to mid-September, is asking 5 questions:

1. How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized?
2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should copyright changes be made in order to withstand the test of time?
3. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster innovation and creativity in Canada?
4. What sorts of copyright changes do you believe would best foster competition and investment in Canada?
5. What kinds of changes would best position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy?

Newest Issue of Law Library Journal

The most recent issue of Law Library Journal (vol. 101, no. 3) is available online. It is a publication of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL).

Articles that caught my attention include:

• Inspiring Innovation: Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating the Web 2.0 Challenge by Deborah Ginsberg, Meg Kribble, and Bonnie Shucha: "The three authors created the Web 2.0 Challenge for the Computing Services Special Interest Section of AALL. In this article they describe their experience running the Challenge and the feedback from the librarians who participated in the Challenge."
• Practicing Reference...Getting Facts Straight (and Writing Well Too) by Mary Whisner: "Librarians who provide information need to ensure that they are providing the best information and that they are communicating it as accurately as possible. Ms. Whisner reviews some situations where things can go wrong and ways to make sure that they don’t."
• Managing by the Book...Plays Well with Others? by Jean M. Holcomb: "From our earliest school days, we have been evaluated on our ability to play well with others. Now, more than ever, the prosperity of our careers and our institutions rests on our ability to cooperate, coordinate, and collaborate."

Webcast of Georgetown Law Library Symposium on Blogs as Legal Scholarship

This is an update to the Library Boy post of February 11, 2009 entitled Georgetown Law Library Symposium on Blogs as Legal Scholarship.

On July 25, 2009, Georgetown Law Library organized a symposium that sought to tackle 3 questions:

1. How can quality academic scholarship reliably be discovered?
2. How can future researchers be assured of perpetual access to the information currently available in blogs?
3. How can any researcher be confident that documents posted to blogs are genuine?

A webcast of the event (Quicktime format) has been archived on the Georgetown Law Library website.

New Zealand Law Commission Report on Liquor Laws

The Law Commission of New Zealand has released a consultation paper on reforming the country's liquor laws:

"Many New Zealanders drink alcohol for enjoyment and relaxation. While the moderate use of alcohol can be a positive aspect of our lives, a significant minority of drinkers drink excessively."

"This culture of harmful drinking among some New Zealanders has consequences for us all."

"These include health costs, law and order costs and accident compensation costs, among others."

"The evidence of alcohol-related harms along with some preliminary ideas for reform of the law, is presented in 'Alcohol in Our Lives', a public Issues Paper released by the Law Commission."