Library Boy on Vacation

Library Boy will be taking some time off. Talk to you in a few weeks.

New OCLC Report on Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories

OCLC, the international library service and research organization based in Dublin, Ohio, has released a new report entitled Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories:

"Librarians need to be familiar with the evolving aspects of scholarly communication and the changing scholarly record. One component of that is the role of repositories. It’s crucial for anyone working in a research library to understand the repository landscape, both to advise researchers on where to look for information and how to disseminate their own research articles. Librarians should appreciate the nature of the leading disciplinary repositories and have a sense of their motivations, their scope, and how they operate. Before getting involved with a disciplinary repository, they should be familiar with the risks and opportunities in depending on the repository and, most importantly, they need to know if the repository has a sustainable model. For a library considering starting a disciplinary repository or taking on the operation of an existing one, these considerations are essential."

The report profiles 7 subject-based research repositories and examines issues such as sustainability, funding models, factors that contribute to a repository's success, and how librarians can support researchers in accessing and disseminating research information. The 7 repositories described in the report are:

• AgEcon Search—Research in Agricultural & Applied Economics
• arXiv.org e-Print Archive 
• Economists Online 
• E-LIS: E-Prints in Library & Information Science 
• PubMed Central 
• RePEc—Research Papers in Economics 
• SSRN—Social Science Research Network

OCLC has also posted a video intro on YouTube.

YouTube Tutorials for United Nations Legal Materials

Debbie Rabina, who teaches International Information Sources at the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science in New York City, has created three YouTube tutorials for learning how to use the following United Nations materials:

• U.N. Treaty Series: Multilateral treaty search
  
• Using the U.N. Juridical Yearbook
  
• Using the U.N. International Commission Law Analytical Year

[Source: beSpacific]

2012-13 Reports on Plans and Priorities for Canadian Judiciary

The 2012-13 Reports on Plans and Priorities (RPPs) have been tabled in the House of Commons on behalf of federal government departments and agencies. They are now on the website of the Treasury Board Secretariat.

These RPPs set out departmental/agency priorities, provide performance measurement indicators, and explain expected results.

Here are the RPPs for a number of federal judiciary institutions:

• Supreme Court of Canada
• Courts Administration Service (Federal Court, Federal Court of Appeal, Tax Court of Canada, Court Martial Appeal Court)
• Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs Canada (administration of the federal judiciary, Canadian Judicial Council)

Spring 2012 Issue of Law Library Journal Available

The Spring 2012 issue of Law Library Journal is available online. It is a publication of the American Association of Law Libraries.

Among the articles is one sure to interest Canadian readers: Cancellation of Print Primary Sources in Canadian Academic Law Libraries by Nancy McCormack.

Canadian Association of Law Libraries 2012 Conference Resolutions

A number of resolutions were adopted yesterday at the Annual General Meeting held during the conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries in Toronto:

• annual membership fees will increase over the next three years 
• members voted to support the principles and actions that will flow from the Calgary Statement on Free Access to Legal Information adopted in May 2011 by the Council of Canadian Academic Law Library Directors 
• members also voted to support the Save Libraries and Archives Canada campaign of the Canadian Association of University Teachers

Canadian Association of Law Libraries 2012 Conference - Judicial Librarians Meet

Judicial libraries met over breakfast earlier this week at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries in Toronto.

Judicial librarians meet informally once a year at the CALL conference to exchange info about projects and concerns.

Some of the things we discussed include:

• what kind of performance measures different libraries use
• examples of special services we offer: examples include electronic journal table of contents services, online posting of practice notes for judges, bulletins outlining important foreign court decisions, bibliographies of academic commentary on judgments rendered, etc.
• there was discussion of e-book trends in judicial libraries: it appears that most libraries do offer access to some e-books from different vendors but via the browser as opposed to devices of e-book readers - so far...
• the group has been compiling a list of social media policies of different Canadian courts. This will be published later this year on the CALL website
• During the rest of the year, I hope to post more detailed information about many of the issues listed above

Future Trends in Law Libraries

At a session this morning at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) in Toronto, New York-based consultant Nigel Holloway outlined some of the results of a survey conducted earlier this year among CALL members.

Some 140 law librarians responded, about one quarter of the CALL membership, with two fifths of respondents coming from law firms, a bit over one third from from courthouse libraries, and about one sixth from universities. More than 50% of respondents worked in small libraries (1-3 staff), more or less 20% in medium-sized libraries (4-9), and about one quarter in libraries with more than 10 staff members.

When asked to identify the biggest opportunity they face in the next year, more than 35% answered decreased reliance on print, a little less than 20% mentioned being viewed as 'knowledge managers' and about 15% answered new technology.

What is next year's biggest challenge in Canadian law libraries? 40% said doing more with less, 15% answered less reliance on print and about one out of 7 said budget cuts.

The survey is quite revealing about the trend toward digital content. Right now, some 45% of respondents state that more than 40% of their content is in digital format. 70% of respondents expect this to be the situation by 2014.

What about non-legal research (marketing, competitive intelligence, production of continuing professional development products...)? Right now, less than a third of respondents say that they spend more than 20% of their time on non-legal research, but more than 40% expect to be spending that much time on non-legal matters within 2 years.

The law library budget picture appears stable. One survey question asked about money spent last year by law libraries. About 45% answered that it had stayed the same, and there were more people who answered they had spent more than had spent less.

Another question was about money to be spent this year. The picture was pretty much the same as for the previous question. Of course, stable spending levels when vendor subscriptions continue to rise means some other expenditures have to take a hit.

One question about vendors was revealing, Close to 30% of respondents explained they were considering moving to a single online provider, a figure Holloway described as fairly large.

The full results of the survey will soon be made available on the CALL conference website. I will post the link when it is up on the site.

CALL Webinitos - Law Librarian Videos on YouTube

In preparation for the 2012 annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) now taking place in Toronto, organizers prepared a series of Webinitos, short videos on topics from educational to playful.

Available on YouTube at  http://www.youtube.com/user/CALLWebinitos, the videos cover topics such as apps on the iPad, knowledge management, Meebo for instant messaging, the new RDA cataloguing standard, the Canadian Law Library Review, Toronto landmarks and roller derby!

Canadian Association of Law Libraries 2012 Conference - Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing

The 2012 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing was announced today at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries in Toronto.

The Award goes to JuriBistro UNIK, the global search engine on the website of CAIJ, the network of courthouse libraries in Quebec.

With this one interface, one can simultaneously search Quebec Bar association continuing education materials, the CAIJ catalogue, full text of Quebec and federal caselaw and legislation, full text of secondary literature from publisher Wilson & Lafleur, the contents of legal journal indexes and the TOPO knowledgebase of answers by CAIJ researchers to more than 3000 questions from lawyers.

Canadian Association of Law Libraries 2012 Conference - Vendor Demos

The 2012 annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) got off to a start today in Toronto.

Demos of new products by vendors were one of the highlights of the day. I attended the sessions by LexisNexis (provider of the Quicklaw database) and Thomson Reuters (the company behind the Westlaw Canada database).

New products or features from LexisNexis include:

* the first edition of the encyclopedia Halsbury's Laws of Canada will be completed this year, with regular annual updates after that
* 21 of the 25 volumes of the Quebec legal encyclopedia Jurisclasseur Quebec will be completed and available on Quicklaw by the end of the year
* new labour and employment content from publisher Lancaster House
* the Quicklaw Legal Topics bilingual and bijural topical classification is being enhanced
* caselaw cited in LexisNexis e-books will  link to the full text in Quicklaw
* the really big new thing that will be rolled out next fall is "Quicklaw for Microsoft Office": subscribers will be able to add a Quicklaw tab to the ribbon of Microsoft tools such as Outlook and Word. By clicking on the tab, any company names, parties, legal citations, legal terms of art in an e-mail or document will become links to Quicklaw collections. From within any Microsoft application, it will be possible to conduct research, note up cases and legislation, find forms and precedents, and track work to a client file

Among the highlights presentedby Thomson Reuters, those that caught my eye were:

* the legal research memo collection on Westlaw Canada is growing at a rate of 100 a month (entirely new memos or updates). The memos are in 53 areas of law and come from law firms or legal research firms. They are organized using the well-known Canadian Abridgment taxonomy and contain links to caselaw and legislation in Westlaw. As well, memos citing cases or legislation now appear as secondary sources when noting up
* Westlaw Canada is adding Kim Orr Class Action Newsletter, a biweekly bulletin of news, analysis and feature articles on class actions by defence and plaintiff sides and judges
* it is adding the Solicitor's Core product, a forms/precedents collection in the areas of corporate commercial law, estates, family law and real estate
* the merger with publisher Canada Law Book will mean the integration of tens of thousands of new tribunal cases in labour law in Westlaw Canada
* some 25 new titles are coming to the Carswell e-Reference Library in 2012 in aboriginal law, defamation, corporate commercial law, administrative law, condo law and landlord and tenant relations. The Collection is the electronic equivalent of well-known loose-leafs
* the Thomson Reuters Proview e-book platform, currently available for the browser or the iPad, is coming to the Blackberry

Victorian Law Reform Commission Project on Guardianship

The Law Reform Commission of the Australian state of Victoria is undertaking a review of guardianship laws that allow a designated person ("guardian") to have someone deprived of their liberty in a residential care context.

Yesterday, it published a background paper comparing the legislation on the topic in a number of jurisdictions, including England and Wales, the Australian state of Queensland, Ontario, British Columbia, and Yukon.

Winners of the 2012 AALL Day in the Life Photo Contest

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) has revealed the names of the winners of its latest annual Life in the Day Photo Contest.

The overall winning submission is from Rita Kaiser: I Wonder What it was Like to "Shelve a Book." The caption reads: "Yumi Blackwell, associate research librarian, evaluates the library's choices to use the shelves now that we access the reporters electronically."

New Zealand Law Commission Consultations on News Media in Digital Age

The Law Commission of New Zealand is conducting consultations on the need for changes to the regulatory regime for news media in the digital age.

It is looking at who regulates the media as well as at whether existing criminal and civil remedies for wrongs such as defamation, harassment, breach of confidence and privacy are effective in the new media environment.

In December 2011, the Commission released a discussion paper ("Issues Paper")  and invited submissions. Earlier this week, it released a list of submissions received.

May 2012 Issue of Quebec Bar Association's Journal du Barreau

The May 2012 issue of the Journal du Barreau is available online. It is the monthly news bulletin of the Quebec Bar Association.

One of the articles describes the work of the recent public commission that looked into end of life issues such as medical assistance to people who want to "die with dignity".

See the related Library Boy post of March 29, 2012 entitled Quebec National Assembly Select Committee Calls for Doctor-Assisted Euthanasia.

Fifth Annual Link Rot Report of the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group

The Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group has just published its 5th annual study of link rot among the original URLs for online law- and policy-related materials it has been archiving since 2007. 

"Every year, the Chesapeake Group investigates whether or not the documents in the archive can still be found at the original web addresses from which they were captured. The group analyzes two samples of web addresses, or URLs, pulled from the archive's records"

"The first sample includes 579 original URLs for content captured from 2007-2008. This sample is revisited every year to document link rot and explore how it changes over time (...) "

"In 2012, 218 out of 579 URLs in the sample no longer provide access to the content that was originally selected, captured, and archived by the Chesapeake Group. In other words, link rot has increased to 37.7 percent within five years."

Link rot describes "a URL that no longer provides direct access to files matching the content originally harvested from the URL and currently preserved in the Chesapeake Group's digital archive. In some instances, a 404 or "not found" message indicates link rot at a URL. In other cases, the URL may direct to a site hosted by the original publishing organization or entity, but the specific resource has been removed or relocated from the original or previous URL" (from the 2011 link rot report)
 
More than 90% of the sample URLs were from state governments (state.[state code].us), organizations (.org), and Us government (.gov) top-level domains.

The Project has built a digital archive collection comprising more than 8,600 digital items. Most of the material archived is American. The Project is an initiative of the Georgetown Law School and Harvard Law School Libraries, and of the State Law Libraries of Maryland and Virginia.

This issue is also of major concern to Canadian legal researchers, as illustrated by the following posts on the collaborative Canadian law blog Slaw.ca:

• Link Rot and Legal Research, Ted Tjaden, August 3, 2005
• Link Rot is Alive and Well, Ted Tjaden, March 19, 2008
• Link Rot in Court Decisions, Shaunna Mireau, May 7, 2009

CanLII and Lancaster House Launch e-Text on Wrongful Dismissal and Employment Law

CanLII (Canadian Legal Information Institute) and Lancaster House, a Canadian legal publisher specializing in employment law, have teamed up to launch an open access online textbook on wrongful dismissal and employment law:

"This text will explain the law on hundreds of employment-related topics, and provide commentary on leading decisions of courts and labour tribunals. An easy-to-use, searchable guide, the e-text will permit the public and legal professionals alike to efficiently navigate the thousands of cases on the CanLII website that bear upon the subject of employment law and wrongful dismissal in order to uncover leading and influential decisions."

The textbook will be integrated into CanLII as of tomorrow, May 4th, 2012.

CanLII, whose funding comes from members of Canada’s provincial and territorial law societies, makes Canadian jurisprudence and statutes available for free via the Internet. It already contains over 1 million documents across over 200 collections, including the statutes, regulations and current court rulings of all Federal, Provincial and Territorial Jurisdictions.

Earlier this year, CanLII describes its strategic priorities for 2012-2014. In its plans, CanLII described what look like initiatives such as this current project with Lancaster House:

"When it comes to accessing content on or through the CanLII site, CanLII will strive to expand its users’ access to high value legal materials. This may involve incorporating secondary sources into CanLII, but it could also occur through facilitating searches of materials hosted elsewhere as CanLII’s interests go beyond growing its own site and extend to pursuing partnerships that advance the goals of other leading legal information providers. Potential partners include not-for-proft as well as for-proft institutions with an interest in expanding the free availability of their legal materials."

"CanLII will also seek out opportunities to improve understanding. For example, working with educational and other organizations, CanLII will explore opportunities to develop specialized services such as topic compilations and open access casebooks, and other professional user-generated content."

16th Annual Webby Awards

The winners for the 16th annual Webby Awards for outstanding achievement in Websites, online film and video, mobile and apps, and interactive advertising and media were announced this week.

There are dozens of categories, including law. The winner in that category is CitizenshipWorks,a U.S. non-profit that provides information about naturalization. Canadaian law firm McInnes Cooper was one of the nominees in the law category.

Many Canadians won awards in other categories.

The Awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, an international organization of leading Web experts, business figures, and cultural celebrities. Members include musicians Beck and David Bowie, Internet inventor Vint Cerf, "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone as well as writers and editors from publications such as The New York Times, Wired, Details, Fast Company, Elle, and The Los Angeles Times.

Canadian Library Association Dismayed by Federal Budget Impact

The Canadian Library Association (CLA) today released a statement criticizing the 2012 federal budget which it believes will hit federal libraries and Libraries and Archives Canada very hard.

I am not a member of the CLA (I am with CALL, the Canadian Association of Law Librarians). However, this CLA press release was sent out to quite a number of librarian lists and was on Facebook. So, I am forwarding it on to readers for informational purposes about the CLA's concerns:

"At Library and Archives Canada, 430 people have been given notices, with more than 200 jobs to be cut over the next three years, representing a reduction of 20% of their workforce.  They have also had to cut their acquisitions budget, end their role in national inter-library loan activities, and cut the National Archival Development Program, which has provided funding to Canadian archival organizations to increase their capacity to preserve archival materials and make them available to Canadians (...) "

"CLA has also received reports that many libraries in federal government departments will be losing staff; some will be shuttering their libraries altogether.  Not only does this result in less support for departmental staff and researchers to access relevant information; but as many of these libraries also provide direct services to the public, Canadians will be prevented from having access to that information.  Affected departments identified so far include Agriculture Canada, Environment Canada, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Industry Canada, the National Capital Commission, National Defence, Public Works and Government Services, the Public Service Commission, and Transport Canada.  Earlier this year, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada had already announced their intention to close that department’s library."

Other news stories on the impact of the recent federal budget on federal libraries:

• Visiting Library and Archives in Ottawa? Not without an appointment (Globe and Mail, May 1, 2012)
• Federal libraries, archives shutting down (CBC News, May 2, 2012)

April 2012 Issue of Connected Bulletin on Social Media and the Courts

The April 2012 issue of Connected is available online. The bulletin covers news about the impact of new social media on the courts.

It is published by the Virginia-based National Center for State Courts and the Conference of Court Public Information Officers.

According to the inaugural April 2011 issue:

"This newsletter will provide news, information and resources on topics such as how courts are using new media, the impact of new media on court proceedings, ethical implications of judges and court staff using new media, and court policy issues relating to new media."

Most of the stories are about the United States, but there has occasionally been material about non-US matters.

AALL Spectrum 12th Annual Architecture Series

The May 2012 issue of the AALL Spectrum, the monthly publication of the American Association of Law Libraries, presents one new building and five remodels/renovations at three law schools, two federal courts, and one law firm. It is part of its 12th Annual Architecture Series.

The individual articles are:

• Renew, Reuse, Renovate! - Transforming the main reading room in FSU College of Law's Research Center on a budget (Florida State University)
• Let There Be Light - Bryan Cave HRO debuts its redesigned library space (Denver)
• A Study in Light and Nature - University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law's new Legal Studies Center unites its law community (Sacramento)
• A Sense of Place - The new U.S. Federal Courthouse in Jackson traverses the past and keeps pace with the future (Mississippi)
• Careful Planning Pays Off - Growing services and space at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School Auburn Hills campus library (Michigan)
• A Long, Long Road - The U.S. Courts Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, moves into a new space