Blogging No NO

There was an interesting email alert from Lancaster House today. An Alberta arbitration board upheld the firing of a provincial government employee, ruling that what she had written in her blog caused irreperable harm to the employee-employer relationship.

Apparently, this employee was advised by her doctor to write her feelings out on a blog to help her cope with the stress of her father's illness and recent death. Unfortunately, she took the advice a little too literally. Not only did she write down her personal feelings, but she also shared her insights into colleagues and clients that she was helping. Many of her comments were insentive and derogatory. Thus, the arbiter ruled that the blog had become part of the public domain, and as such, caused so much hurt and distress that the relationship was irretrievably broken.

I won't repeat the snipets of what was said here. Suffice it to say that thiis is one of those times when you just want to say to someone that before they write something, THINK!! Then, after that, THINK!!! AGAIN!!! When you are done writing and just about to post, THINK!! AGAIN!! one last time.

Like Lancaster House, I agree that the dangers of blogging are minimal, as long as you are responsible with what you are writing. In this day and age, with so much information being available, anyone and anything can be found, even things we don't want to find out. If you are writing a blog, don't say anything bad about anyone. Keep it to yourself. We'd all be much happier if we were careful.

A good lesson for anyone to remember. Read the article from lancaster house here.

Quickcite statute citator

If anyone has not had the chance to view the new Quickcite statute citator on Quicklaw, now might be a good time to do so.

This new database is an improvement over what you had to do beforehand in Quicklaw, with all those quotations marks and other symbols you needed to have. Now, all you need to do is pick the jurisdiction, enter the name of the act, and (this is the best part), enter the section on a clearly marked seperate line, so no more annoying quotation marks or other symbols to put in.

The other thing is that when you get the results, they are accurate to what you want. What I mean by this is that, before, when you inputed your search string on Quicklaw, you had to hope that all your hits were accurate. For example, if you were trying to find the Labour Relations Act, section 5 for Ontario, your search string would get you what you wanted, but you might also get hits with either "Labour Relations Act", or ones with just the number 5. Thus it was highly inaccurate. It appears that they have corrected this problem.

There are a couple of drawbacks. So far, it only goes back to 1992 (2005 for Quebec). Also, it doesn't give as many hits as there are in Westlaw for the same thing. In Quicklaw, I tried the labour relations act, section 5 for Ontario, and only got 2 hits. Contrast that with Westlaw, and I ended up getting 51 hits, all accurate to section 5.

Quickcite still has some work to do, but it is better than it was. Let's hope it keeps going!

Finally! Someone actually said the things we've all been waiting for!

The title here says it all. An interesting post on law librarians blog, stating that some law firms will not hire law school graduates until the various schools improve their legal research program. I said something close to that last year in my article, "Law Students and legal research: What's the problem?"

Amazing how most law schools still haven't gotten the message, but then again, until more law firms insist on improvements to the legal research program, nothing much will change.

To read the posting in law librarians blog, click here

Translation blues

Most of us have had the distressing difficulty of trying to translate a document at some point in our careers. What is most frustrating is that many of the translators, such as babelfish, do a horrific job of translating. There was an interesting discussion on the int-law listserv today about it. Many bemoaned the fact that there was not a translator out there that could do justice to translating a legal document. With all the technology and web 2.0, one would think someone would have had the brains to think up of a decent translator. Oh well, one can always hope!

What's in a name?

I heard something quite interesting on cbc.ca yesterday. A judge in New Zealand has made a 9 year old girl a ward of the court so that she can get her name changed. Why is this? Her name is Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii. That is her first name, not a nickname or a last name. Apparently she is so embarassed by her name that she hasn't even told her friends the name, asking them to refer to her as "K".
This isn't the first time this particular judge hs heard these type of bizarre names. Its probably why he did this. Other odd names that heve been allowed in New Zealand is No. 16 Bus Shelter, although apparently Sex Fruit was not allowed.
What kind of society do we have when parents are allowed to go off on the deep end like this? I'm all for good names, but these sorts of names are not only silly, but an embarassment to the famiy and especially the child.

Getting court documents when they are first filed

I was on vacation all last week. It was great not to worry about work, and doing my own thing, but all things must come to an end!

Anywas, a couple of weeks ago, just before I went on vacation, we had an interesting question being put to us at the reference desk. The question was how to get court documents that have just been filed in court. An example of this would be a statement of claim from the recently publicized Beirut Canada bank case. We tried to figure this out, and then we asked our chief law librarian, who has experience working at one of the big downtown Toronto firms. He said that in Ontario, there really is no way to get these sorts of things online when they are first issued. What normally happens is that you have to go down to the courthouse to get it. Most of the big firms have people who will run down to the courthouse to get the documents. Apparently, Quebec is one of the few places that have their documents online. You can get them on Azimut/Soquij, I believe. (if you can speak French, well and good!)

It works well for law firm libraries, which is fine as they would really be the only ones who need it most of the time. However, sometimes professors would like to see them as they write about them in articles and other papers. It would be nice if Ontario followed Quebec's lead, and for that matter, all of Canada.

A call to digitize all statutes

Yesterday, a law student came to the Reference Desk and wanted to know how to note up a section in the criminal code from the 1970's. I told her she would have to use the print sources once she went back prior to the R.S.C.'s 1985. She had never done it before and did not know what to do. I spent about an hour or so explaining it and going over it with her, especially how to use the print sources. Fortunately we weren't too busy at the desk, and she was finally able to understand it.

This brings me to my point. If Library and Archives Canada can digitize all of the issues of the Canada Gazette, would they not at some point do the same for all of the statutes. When I mean all of the statues, I mean digitize all of the statues, not just those in the present, but also in the past, all the way back to the very beginning of Canada in 1867. I'm not suggesting that digging for the history of the statutes would be that much easier on a computer (the process can still be a pain), but at least the students could do it on a medium they are familiar with, at any time of day.

Just a thought.