***Cross posted to http://mireau.blogspot.com***

Back in January I wrote a Tip at the (then) newly launched Slaw Tips blog titled <a href="http://tips.slaw.ca/2011/research/monitoring-a-case-law-subject-with-canlii">Monitoring a case law subject with CanLII</a>.  There were a lot of great comments on the tip.  I also heard that CanLII was working on a built in solution to subject Query RSS feeds.

I am extremely pleased to pass on the news that <a href="http://www.canlii.org/en/blog/index.php?/archives/52-Major-Improvements-to-Search-Tools.html">CanLII has made some improvements to their search tools</a> this week and Subject Query RSS feeds is one of them.

Way to go CanLII.  Hat tip to <a href="http://twitter.com/stevematthews">Steve Matthews</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/Hannasus">Susannah Tredwell</a> for tweeting this.

Along with faster results rendering CanLII has also added the ability to more specifically target your hit results based on the query. 

Thank you to CanLII for the innovations and for the fabulous example of what a well organized and reasonably funded free access to the law movement can do in 10 short years.

Shaunna

A while ago, I wrote at Slaw on Digital Books.  Today there is an important new report from the Council on Library and Information Services that explores the question of whether the library of the future is inevitably digital. At page 81 of this report, there is an essay on the Cost of keeping a book. 

Hat tip to the Law Librarian Blog for synthesizing the report to this:

At least for the foreseeable future, the consensus is that a hybrid model which balances both electronic and print resources is the best solution from the standpoint of those engaged in research and scholarship.

Not a huge surprise that keeping paper is more expensive.

Cheers, Shaunna

Check it out at http://www.pacer.gov/

PACER is the US Public Access to Courts Electronic Records.  Searching is available for account holders and the cost of documents is 8 cents a page.

On August 31, 2009 I posted a note about a problem with the LawSource Cases template citation search box.  The 'Find' box did not require punctuation (CLR) but the Cases template did (C.L.R.)  As of this past weekend Carswell has added a line beneath the Citation box that reads: Exact punctuation required.  This should help users understand how to correctly input searches to secure correct results. 

Thanks goes out to Carol Morgan and everyone at Carswell who put this on the 'to do list', monitored it and let us know when it was fixed.

Josette McEachern

I was speaking to a friend in an academic library a couple of weeks ago and she mentioned her library recently signed a contract with a publisher? jobber? to provide patron driven acquisitions.  Maybe this is old news for you academic librarians but it's the first time I had heard the term.  The vendor catalogue is linked into the library catalogue. When students search the library catalogue they may also retrieve hits for electronic books the library does NOT own.  If the students wants that ebook, they simply download it.  The first download of a specific title is FREE.  If the ebook is downloaded a second time, the library account is debited. They are contracted to spend a specific amount and I don't know  who owns the book -- the student or the library.  But the concept is intriguing.

Then I read on the Quill & Quire blog about a very cool print-on-demand copier called the Espesso Book Machine. It retails for $125,000 U.S. Very affordable. I see no reason why every Law Society library in Canada couldn't acquire one at some point.  Several university libraries already have one, including the University of Alberta.