Category Archives: Library News

High Noon at York?

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Choosing sides in Temple Garden – the start of the War of the Roses

For those of you who are interested in copyright and intellectual property (and I know that there are a lot of you), you will doubtless be familiar with the recent battles surrounding the shifting landscape of Canadian copyright law between Access Copyright and pretty much everybody else. For those of you unfamiliar with the drama surrounding these changes, in a nutshell there has been a huge shift towards “fair dealing” for the purposes of education. This shift began with the landmark CCH v. LSUC case in 2004 and was rapidly accelerated with the so-called “pentalogy” of SCC decisions in conjunction with the long-needed overhaul of the Canadian Copyright Act in 2012.

These changes served to further widen the already-yawning gap between champions of access to information and the advocates for artists’ rights. The rhetoric on both sides has been nothing if not pointed. However, while many (myself included) believe that the fair dealing provisions included in s. 29 of the Act and discussed by the SCC are rather clear-cut, it also represents a potentially massive shift away from the way things have been done previously. Which brings us to the the issue of Access Copyright, which represents a significant part of the status quo.

Previously, educational institutions would simply pay a set fee per student and that would serve as a basis for covering the licensing. After Access Copyright proposed a major fee hike, many institutions (understandably) balked, leading to a drawn-out impasse. Eventually, many institutions chose to “opt out” of signing an agreement with Access Copyright, instead choosing to deal with copyright internally, through fair dealing, licensing directly from publishers, and other means. York was no exception, announcing on May 29 of last year that they were not going to sign a new tariff.

Despite the relative clarity of the legislation and case law, there is still enough ambiguity with regard to what exactly constitutes “fair dealing” in the educational context to ensure that there would be continued struggles in attempting to frame these issues, particularly when the prevailing interpretation essentially threatens Access Copyright’s entire business model. It has long been seen to be a matter of when, rather than if, there would be what would likely be one last showdown between Access Copyright and Canadian educational institutions to finalize – once and for all – what the new status quo will be.

That moment arrived when Access Copyright filed a lawsuit against York on April 8 of this year, claiming that York’s fair dealing guidelines authorize and encourage copyright infringement. While I have some reservations about the substance of Access Copyright’s claim, it is undeniable that this is something that needs to happen, since the current environment of uncertainty is not sustainable in the long run. Whatever your feelings the changes in Canadian copyright, it has certainly been anything but boring.

For further information, in-depth analysis, and news, here are a few blogs worth keeping an eye on:

IP Osgoode

Michael Geist

Howard Knopf at Excess Copyright

Ariel Katz

Sam Trosow

New Online Services guide

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Check out our new Online Services guide.  You can find it under Topical on the Research Guides page. This guide links you to everything  you need  to know about Quicklaw, Westlaw Canada, Taxnet Pro and CCH Online. Find out how to register, how to find training, tutorials and reference materials, how to reach Customer Service and tech support, and what to do if you forget  your password.

The Face of the Ghetto: A Photography Exhibit in the Osgoode Library, February 24-March 17, 2013

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THE FACE OF THE GHETTO

Pictures Taken by Jewish Photographers in the Lodz Ghetto, 1940-1944

An Exhibition at the Osgoode Hall Law School Library
Ignat Kaneff Building, York University

February 24 through March 17, 2013

During World War II, the Nazis established the second largest ghetto for Jews in the occupied Polish city of Lodz (Łódź), renamed Litzmannstadt by the German occupiers. In April 1940, more than 160,000 Jews from the Warthegau region were crowded into the Lodz ghetto which consisted of an area of 4.14 square kilometers. Later on, 20,000 Jews from the German Reich, Prague and Luxembourg were deported to Litzmannstadt. Also, more than 5,000 Roma were incarcerated there in 1941. As a result of the abominable conditions, more than 43,000 people died in the ghetto. In 1942, tens of thousands of Jews with thousands of children among them were deported and killed in the Kulmhof extermination camp. The ghetto was dissolved in August 1944, and all save a handful of the remaining inhabitants were killed in the extermination camp Auschwitz.

In those desperate times, the ghetto’s Jewish council commissioned professional Jewish photographers to document the daily life and work of the ghetto’s residents. They took pictures of children playing, working and eating and produced touching portraits as well. The pictures were intended to show a functioning community and testify to the utility of Jewish workers for the German economy. Nevertheless, the images reflect the contradictions and complexities of the desperate situation in the ghetto and show the efforts of the inhabitants to maintain their dignity and survive as long as possible. A collection of 12,000 contact prints by these Jewish photographers in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto are preserved in the Lodz State Archive.

For this exhibition, 56 prints were selected and enlarged. Quotations from survivor reports and from the chronicle of the ghetto accompany each photograph, serving as captions. The choice of these examples shows one way to treat photographs as historical sources – to examine what they conceal and to approach them with a critical eye.

The presentation of the exhibition in Toronto is sponsored by the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University; The Azrieli Foundation; and The Mark and Gail Appel Program in Holocaust and Antiracism Education – Learning from the Past, Teaching for the Future; and is hosted by Osgoode Hall Law School. The exhibition is curated and provided by the Topography of Terror Foundation (Stiftung Topgraphie des Terrors), Berlin, and is supported by the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The exhibition was first shown in North America at the United Nations in New York City in January-March 2012 and then toured to several other American venues. The Toronto exhibition is its only showing in Canada.

Upcoming Zotero webinars

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Although I am currently in the midst of introducing first-year Legal Process students to the wonders of Zotero, for those of you who want a bit more information (or know nothing about it), York Libraries is offering free webinars for Zotero tomorrow (January 31st) and Monday (February 4th). The info about the webinars (and Zotero in general) can be found here:

http://researchguides.library.yorku.ca/zotero

I highly recommend it. If you don’t believe me, read this summary from the guide:

Zotero allows researchers to save references from library catalogues, research databases and web sites with a single click. It means your time is freed up from the tedious task of formatting citations, allowing you to focus on the research itself.

Why Zotero? Because it

  • is an open source software which is free to use and install
  • is easy to use
  • resides in your web browser where research happens
  • works on both Mac and Windows
  • its word plugin is compatible with Microsoft Word and OpenOffice

and it allows you

  • to import, manage, and annotate citations from various sources
  • to include PDFs of articles and other documents
  • to handle research and citation management in the same place
  • to generate bibiographies in a wide range of styles
  • to access your Zotero library from any computer with an internet connection
  • to share libraries and group accounts
You’re going to need all the help you can get for those 8,000 word papers you need to write in order to graduate, so learning about Zotero is highly recommended!

Cliffhanger!

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Credit: Cagle Post (http://www.cagle.com/2013/01/fiscal-cliff-deficit/)

Although I’m certain that the holidays were, for many, a chance to clear your minds and unwind (and for those of you at Law Games, I won’t tell your mothers), but it only took a cursory look at the newspapers to be faced with the unavoidable spectre of the so-called “fiscal cliff” south of the border. Like most things pertaining to American politics, it was larded with partisanship, brinksmanship, poor judgment, and general hyperbole (although coming from Toronto, I suppose I shouldn’t talk). What was certain, however, was that this was a) completely self-inflicted and b) likely to cause (yet another) global recession.

As we all know, they somehow managed to avoid imminent disaster (for now), but it did lead me to wonder what material we have in the library that might form the basis of a sound care package to American legislators (or, for that matter, to 100 Queen Street West), despite the fact that fiscal planning and public policy are arguably more likely to fall under the purview of our colleagues at the Bronfman library. However, I think that this is probably the best thing. Regardless, you can find all of our books on fiscal policy right here. A few highlights are as follows.

A recent text is Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction, which deals with the increasingly obvious fact that taxation and tax laws are inherently political. Although it is American, the politicization of taxation is hardly unique to the United States, so there is likely much that is transferable to Canadian readers.

Another interesting paper with a foreign focus is Jinyan Li’s paper on Chinese Development and Tax Policy (which is also available to download here). The paper analyzes the impact that tax law can have on both economic and social development, as well as the relationship between tax policy and rule of law.

Somewhat unconventional, but actually rather interesting, is Taking or Making Wealth?, which is essentially a series of short pieces on different government programs, dating back to the 1960s and 1970s. Some are longer than other, and all are very opinionated, but it does offer an interesting insight on government intervention and Canadian regionalism.

We’re #1, we’re #1!!

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As a final flourish to what has been an outstanding 2012, we have awakened from our holiday slumber to toot our own horn a little bit – as the freshly minted winners of a 2012 Clawbie for Best Law Library Blog!

You can read the full list of winners here, but here’s what they had to say about us:

Off the Shelf, the Osgoode Hall Law School Library Blog, is not your standard candidate in this category. While it does include notes on new titles and services that all good law library blogs provide, it complements that useful content with a regular supply of topical links to interesting blog posts and videos. We also liked the engaging (and sometimes irreverent) writing tone.

Aw, shucks! As Sally Field would say:

Happy New Year everybody, and see you in 2013!

Westlaw Litigator

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As you may or may not have heard, we are pleased to have added Westlaw’s newest tool – Westlaw Litigator.

Litigator is an impressive and powerful platform that covers the field in terms of litigation – from forms to research tools for all areas. While you are always free to muddle through Litigator on your own time (and indeed, you definitely should!), there will also be a training session held at Osgoode this coming Monday, November 19 from 1 pm to 2 pm in room 2003. If you wish to attend, please RSVP at library@osgoode.yorku.ca.

See you there!