Every first-year law student is taught the thin-skull principle, wherein the tortfeasor finds the victim as they find them, even if they have a pre-existing condition. I've been thinking about this over the past few weeks as I've been laid up at home recovering from a concussion and making the slow return to "normal" day-to-day […]
Open Access & Legal Scholarship
Open access is an important thing to think about whenever you are creating or consuming scholarship. And it’s not important just because it happens to be Open Access Week. Richard A. Danner talks about the importance of legal scholarship in his article, “Open Access to Legal Scholarship: Dropping the Barriers to Discourse and Dialogue.” “Legal […]
Additional training sessions for online services
The Law Library is pleased to offer additional training sessions for online services for those who couldn't attend previous sessions. We have scheduled the following sessions: CCH Online: Wednesday October 9 from 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM - Room 2011 Westlaw: Tuesday October 15 from 1.00 PM to 2.00 PM - Room 2011 Quicklaw and […]
What Happened to CanLII?
On September 19, CanLII introduced its new user interface. Don’t be startled by the new homepage: you can either use the “everything” search box that initially appears for doing a keyword, citation, case name or statute name search, or you can click on the “+” to the left of that box to give yourself the […]
Free music - legally
As a child of the Napster generation, the idea of "free" music is something that has a long and fraught history. Until Napster's debut in 1999, it was simply assumed that you would fork out $20 for a CD because what other option did you have? Online music was largely relegated to downloading (in retrospect, […]
RomaRisingCA: Photography Exhibit in the Osgoode Library
The RomaRisingCA photography exhibit, a collection of photographs of members of the Canadian Roma (Gypsy) community, was officially opened this afternoon in the Osgoode Hall Law School Library. Roma Rising / Opre Roma – Portraits of a Community (romarisingCA), was created to challenge stereotypical views of the Roma community. Opre Roma derives from the Romani language, […]
No food in the library - here's why
It is no secret that the eating habits of Osgoode students have recently fallen somewhat under the microscope. However, this focus has been largely limited to what students are snacking on in the classroom, and not in the library. The obvious reason for this is that food is strictly forbidden in the library - crunchy, […]
CanLII's Law, Government and Open Data Conference & Hackathon
I had the opportunity to speak about linked data at the Canadian Legal Information Institute's Law, Government and Open Data Conference & Hackathon in Ottawa this past weekend. My presentation was entitled Linked Data and Canadian Legal Resources and my slides and speaking notes are available on York Space. It has a fantastic event which began […]
Online database training sessions
Brush up on your online searching skills! The Law Library is pleased to offer training sessions for the following databases: 1) Westlaw - Canadian content: Monday Sept. 23 from 12:40 to 1:30 2) Westlaw - American content: Monday Sept. 23 from 1:30 to 2:20 3) Quicklaw: Monday, Sept. 30 from 12:40 to […]
InterAm Database Relaunches as NatLaw World
Just a quick note to let you know that the new NatLaw World database has replaced the InterAm database of the National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade. NatLaw World contains the same information as InterAm with some additional user-friendly features and enhanced search capabilities. NatLaw World is a one of a kind legal on-line database […]