Legal research news from an Ottawa law librarian
Slaw.ca has published a boom review by a colleague of mine, Krisandra Ivings.
It is about the book The Justice Crisis: The Cost and Value of Accessing Law.
The Canadian Law Library Review, the journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries, has been supplying Slaw.ca with book reviews on a regular basis.
Labels: access to justice, books
The 2019 University of Alberta Press book entitled Government Information in Canada has won the 2021 Margaret T. Lane / Virginia F. Saunders Memorial Research Award.
There is a downloadable open access version available.
The Award is handed out every year by the Government Documents Round Table, which is part of the American Library Association:
"Canadian Government Information Systems mirror many of the federal, state, and local systems in the Unites States, yet publications dedicated to librarianship of Canadian government information are surprisingly rare. While reviewing literature on government information reference services, it was found that the most recently published book on the subject was nearly forty years old. Thankfully, Government Information in Canada: Access and Stewardship was published in 2019. Wakaruk and Li have brought together chapters from various sources and authors to fill this gap."
The editors are Amanda Wakaruk (University of Alberta) and Sam-chin Li (University of Toronto).
They explain that the book:
Table of contents:
I Historical Overviews
1 Government Publication Deposit Programs: The Canadian Federal, Provincial, and Territorial Landscapes
Graeme Campbell, Michelle Lake, and Catherine McGoveran
2 Official Publications and Select Digital Library Collections at Library and Archives Canada, 1923 to the Present
Tom J. Smyth
3 Parliamentary Information in Canada: Form and Function
Talia Chung and Maureen Martyn
4 Commissions and Tribunals
Caron Rollins
II Provincial Landscape
5 Alberta Government Publishing
Dani J. Pahulje
6 Saskatchewan Government Publications Deposit in the Legislative Library
Gregory Salmers
7 Inside Track: Challenges of Collecting, Accessing, and Preserving Ontario Government Publications
Sandra Craig and Martha Murphy
8 Digitization of Government Publications: A Review of the Ontario Digitization Initiative
Carol Perry, Brian Tobin, and Sam-chin Li
III Looking Forward: Collaborative Stewardship
9 GALLOP Portal: Making Government Publications in Legislative Libraries Findable
Peter Ellinger
10 The Canadian Government Information Digital Preservation Network: A Collective Response to a National Crisis
Amanda Wakaruk and Steve Marks
11 Web Harvesting and Reporting Fugitive Government Materials: Collaborative Stewardship of At-Risk Documents
Susan Paterson, Nicholas Worby, and Darlene Fichter
Labels: awards, books, digital collections, government documents, open access
"The Boat People follows the story of Mahindan and other Sri Lankan refugees who escaped a civil war in their country only to arrive on Vancouver Island’s shores to face accusations of terrorism and the threat of deportation. Mahindan’s lawyer, Priya, a second-generation Sri Lankan Canadian, and Grace, a third-generation Japanese Canadian adjudicator, also feature prominently in the story."The prize, which is sponsored by ABA Journal and the University of Alabama School of Law, is "given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change."
"The prize ... is given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change."It is sponsored by ABA Journal and the University of Alabama School of Law. The first winner was John Grisham in 2011 for his novel The Confession.
Labels: books
"Solicitor-Client Privilege explains key aspects of lawyer-client confidentiality, analyzes the exceptions to privilege, conditions where privilege is unclear, and situations of competing interests that might bring into question the application of privilege (...) "The Prize seeks to recognize excellent legal writing and to reward outstanding new contributions to Canadian legal literature that enhance the quality of legal research in this country.
"Prof. Dodek teaches public law and legislation, constitutional law, legal ethics and professional responsibility, and a seminar on the Supreme Court of Canada at University of Ottawa. He is a founding member of the faculty’s Public Law Group, the director of the Professionalism Initiative, and co-founder of the Legal Writing Academy."
Labels: awards, books, legal research and writing
"It preserves books, in particular out-of-print and old books that have been forgotten in the bowels of libraries, and it gives them new life. It facilitates access to books for print-disabled and remote or underserved populations. It generates new audiences and creates new sources of income for authors and publishers. Indeed, all society benefits."The Infodocket website has full coverage and reaction from parties and observers. It also includes a full-text of the court decision.
Labels: books, copyright, digitization, Google, litigation
"The novel chronicles efforts by a lawyer, recovering alcoholic Michael Seeley, to help a group of aging Cuban jazz musicians and their families reclaim copyrights to their works. When his main client, Héctor Reynoso, goes missing, Seeley begins to realize that there is more to the story than music, and that a far deeper conspiracy is involved that might include both the Cuban secret police and his former law firm."The prize, which is sponsored by ABA Journal and the University of Alabama School of Law, is intended to recognize a work of fiction that “best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society."
"Now? The settlement (modified) is dead: The judge struck it down as being unfair. Most of those who were commenting on it (including me) really didn’t deal with what turned out to be the core issue: You can’t substantially transform copyright law by settling a class action lawsuit."
"We are, in some ways, back to square one after the better part of a decade. There will assuredly be more developments over the next (year? five years? decade?), but given the clear death of the settlement itself, I thought this would be a good time to update the situation (...)"
"This is a long set of notes and comments (cites & insights). It strikes me that the topic and complexity deserve that length—but note that I’m offering much briefer excerpts and comments on most items than I normally would in this sort of roundup."
Some of the topics Crawford covers include monopoly and antitrust; privacy and confidentiality; the public domain, open access, copyright; libraries and metadata; authors and publishers."After two sets of general notes and overviews (one before the settlement was rejected, one after) I’m breaking the discussion down by topics rather than chronologically."
Labels: books, copyright, digitization, Google, litigation
"The Google Books Bibliography presents selected English-language articles and other works that are useful in understanding Google Books. It primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Books and the legal, library, and social issues associated with it. To better show the development Google Books, it is organized by year of publication. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories. Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical."Google has been digitizing millions of books to create a massive online library / bookstore but the plans ran into legal difficulties when US author and publisher groups launched a copyright violation lawsuit against the search giant. A proposed settlement was rejected by the courts.
Labels: books, digitization, Google
Labels: awards, books, law societies, legal research and writing
Labels: books, copyright, digitization, Google
"Google Book Search (GBS) has captured the attention of many commentators and government officials, but even as they vigorously debate its legality, few of them have marshaled new facts to estimate its likely effects on publishing and other information markets. This Article challenges the conventional wisdom propounded by the U.S. and German governments, as well as Microsoft and other competitors of Google, concerning the likely economic impact of mass book-digitization projects. Originally advanced by publishing industry lobbying groups, the prevailing account of mass book-digitization projects is that they will devastate authors and publishers, just as Napster and its heirs have supposedly devastated musicians and music labels. Using the impact of GBS on the revenues and operating incomes of U.S. publishers believing themselves to be the most-affected by it, this Article finds no evidence of a negative impact upon them. To the contrary, it provides some evidence of a positive impact, and proposes further empirical research to identify the mechanisms of digitization’s economic impact."Earlier Library Boy posts about the Google Books Settlement include:
"The debate surrounding the GBS settlement is important to students, writers, researchers, and the general public, as it may decide whether a federal appellate court or even the U.S. Supreme Court allows the best research tool ever designed to survive. If the theory of Microsoft and some publishing trade associations is accepted, the courts may enjoin and destroy GBS, just as Napster was shut down a decade ago."
"The Article aims at a preliminary estimate of the economic impact of mass digitization projects, using GBS as a case in point. It finds little support for the much-discussed hypothesis of the Association of American Publishers and Google’s competitors that the mass digitization of major U.S. libraries will reduce the revenues and profits of the most-affected publishers. In fact, the revenues and profits of the publishers who believe themselves to be most aggrieved by GBS, as measured by their willingness to file suit against Google for copyright infringement, increased at a faster rate after the project began, as compared to before its commencement. The rate of growth by publishers most affected by GBS is greater than the growth of the overall U.S. economy or of retail sales. Thus, the very publishers that have sued Google have seen their revenues grow faster than retail sales or the U.S. economy as a whole (measured by gross domestic product). This finding parallels some of the research that has been done since the Napster case on the economic impact of peer-to-peer file sharing on sales of recorded music. Future studies may provide a more granular estimate of the economic impact of frequent downloads or displays of pages of particular books on the sales of such books."
Labels: books, copyright, digitization, Google
"This bibliography presents selected English-language articles and other works that are useful in understanding Google Books. It primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Books and the legal, library, and social issues associated with it. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories. Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical."
Labels: books, digitization, Google
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As Michel de Montaigne would say, "Je vais au change indiscrètement et tumultuairement - mon style et mon esprit vont vagabondant de même" (Essais, III, 9, De la vanité): I go where my fancy leads me, but my fancy always leads back to the law