Make sure to catch the article in today’s Legal Post on the Canada Law Book/Lexis debacle.
I wish everyone could just get along and make one giant database of everything that’s available. Obviously, that’ll never happen. Still, a law library tech can dream.
Steve Matthews has done it again. As announced today on his Vancouver Law Librarian Blog, he’s just created LegalPubs.ca, a website/feed that aggregates Canadian legal publisher RSS feeds for a one-stop collection development shop. Another great project, Steve - way to go!
We had our trainer in today to do one of his excellent sessions on how to be most cost-effective when searching WestlaweCarswell. Even though I’ve seen eCarswell presentations a million times, I always learn something new.
Today I learned that:
(a) a search for the word “martian” actually retrieves documents that talk about extraterrestrials
and
(b) when searching for words that might be hyphenated, leave the hyphen in. It will automatically search for your word with and without the hyphen and also with a space. Same goes for acronyms - leave the periods in and it will also search for the acronym sans periods.
Obviously, (b) is the more useful tip.
It’s that time of the year, when scores of copies of BC Annual Practice (the “white book” that contains court rules) become useless as they are replaced by new editions.
In previous years we have donated our superseded copies to high school law classes, but the word on the street is that they’ve got enough already.
Has anyone found another use for them, aside from recycling?
My colleague Steve Matthews, who is the president of VALL this year, recently left Clark Wilson, the law firm where he’d been the Director of Knowledge Services for almost ten years. He’s just launched a new company called Stem Legal, which helps law firms develop and deploy web marketing strategies. And of course, he’s writing a blog to go along with it: Law Firm Web Strategy.
If Steve’s first blog, Vancouver Law Librarian Blog, is anything to go by, Law Firm Web Strategy will be a stellar resource, too. He’s already got some good posts up on managing web properties and law firm website demographics.
While I think the Vancouver law library community will feel somewhat at a loss with Steve not being “one of us” anymore, his drive and leadership in his VALL position will continue to inspire and motivate us. Steve was one of the first people who encouraged me to start a blog, and has been a great informal mentor to many of us library techs who are passionate about technology.
New and future Stem Legal clients are luckier and wiser than they know. I’m so excited for Steve, and wish him success and fulfillment in his new venture!
I had a call from Mike Pasta at Quickscribe a couple of weeks ago. He called to get us set up with our free trial of Quickscribe Online, a legislation service similar to QP Legaleze, and gave me a very thorough tour of the system. It contains all BC stats and regs, and a “growing list of federal legislation” as well.
I’ve used it a few times since then, and I have to say, it’s very good. Where Quickscribe really stands out is its RSS feeds. You can subscribe to feeds for all stats & regs, topical groups, or create a feed of selected titles. Items in the feed tell you exactly what’s been added, amended, or repealed, and when you click on the “view change” link next to each item, it takes you to exactly where the change was, and shows you in an easy-to-read, colour-coded layout, exactly how the text reads now, and what it looked like before the change. Score!
Another great feature is the Point in Time archive that you can access with one click.
Mike tells me that they are updating the service daily, so with its visually appealing design and excellent RSS feeds, I think I’ll be making more and more use of this.
We had our WestlaweCarswell trainer in yesterday to give a session on cost-effective searching. I learned a few things that I either didn’t know or I had forgotten about:
And how would you catalogue the title, for that matter?
I’ve been putting off dealing with the first three volumes of Halsbury’s Laws of Canada, but finally got to them today. Confusion central. The volumes aren’t numbered; they’re named. And each volume has a distinct author/editor.
My recollection of cataloguing rules is embarrassingly patchy, but as far as I can tell, following the CCIP, each volume would be its own record. Halsbury’s of Canada would be listed as the series, not the title, unlike the other Halsbury’s sets. But it seems excessive to eventually have 57 records for one series. But I think it’s the best way to go.
What we’re going to do is give each volume its own record, with an abstract and appropriate subject headings. This will result in more ‘publicity’ for each volume than would exist if only the series were catalogued under the subject heading “Abridgments, encyclopedias, digests”.
What have others done for Halsbury’s Laws of Canada? Leave a comment if you have a solution, or if you just want to mock my totally hobo-style cataloguing skills.
After months of pleading, I finally convinced my boss to subscribe to CLE Course Materials online. I am beyond excited. Instant access to more than 1600 conference papers…so convenient! The service offers fully searchable PDF versions of all CLE course materials since 2001. I’m such a nerd; this is one of the most exciting things to happen to me all month! Woo hoo!
I’m thrilled to see the BC Courthouse Library A-Z Knowledgebase is up and running. I got a sneak peek of it as a tester, and now it’s available to the public. It’s been really helpful already: the first day it was up and running, I used it to find some helpful info on the review of lawyers’ bills. Way to go, BCCLS!
