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Policy Options, a publication of the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy, is taking a closer look this month at Reviewing Canadian Copyright Policy as the Canadian government prepares for a mandatory legislative review of the Copyright Act that starts later this year.

 "Reforming the Copyright Act was a tough slog the last time around, a balancing act for policy-makers and legislators, who heard from wildly different perspectives on what would be best for consumers, creators, and the businesses that deal with original work. Five years have passed, and the time has come for the required review of the Act. Our contributors, writing from multiple vantage points, offer their analyses of the current state of the copyright regime in Canada, what should be changed, and what should be left alone."

One of the articles is Libraries and the copyright (balancing) act by Victoria Owen. Owen is the chair of the Canadian Federation of Library Associations’ Copyright Committee.

Options politiques,  la revue de l'Institut de recherche en politiques publiques basé à Montréal, publie une série d'articles intitulée Repenser la politique canadienne sur le droit d’auteur quelques mois avant que le gouvernement fédéral n'entame l'examen périodique obligatoire de la Loi sur le droit d'auteur.

"La dernière révision de la Loi sur le droit d’auteur n’a pas été de tout repos, imposant aux décideurs et aux législateurs de trouver le juste équilibre entre des avis très divergents sur les meilleurs intérêts des consommateurs, des créateurs et des entreprises touchés par l’épineuse question des œuvres originales. C’était il y a cinq ans, et revoici déjà le moment de réexaminer la Loi. Les collaborateurs d’Options politiques, qui soutiennent eux-mêmes différents points de vue, analysent le régime actuel du droit d’auteur, les dispositions qu’il faut conserver et les changements à mettre en œuvre."

Un des articles est Libraries and the copyright (balancing) act par Victoria Owen. Owen est la présidente du Comité sur le droit d’auteur de la Fédération canadienne des associations de bibliothèques.

As usual, members and friends of CALL have been busy on social media in recent weeks.

I describe friends as non-members of CALL who either follow us on the CALL listserv or who have attended a CALL event.

Here are a few examples:

• Jennifer Walker (Carleton County Law Association) wrote on the Robeside Assistance blog about Federated Searching on WestlawNext Canada
• Susannah Tredwell (DLA Piper (Canada) LLP) blogged on the VALL (Vancouver Association of Law Libraries) website about a survey relating to GALLOP, the Government and Legislative Libraries Online Publications portal created a few years ago by the Association of Parliamentary Libraries in Canada. 
• She also blogged about University of Alberta Copyright Librarian Amanda Wakaruk’s petition to the House of Commons to fix Crown copyright
• Elim Wong (UBC) -‏ @UBCLawLib - retweeted an item about the digitization of British Columbia Sessional papers  
• Colin Lachance (CEO of Compass) -‏ @ColinLachance - tweeted a link to a CBA National article about Compass, his new Canadian legal research platform that took over Maritime Law Book and formed an alliance with vLex, a Barcelona and Miami-based legal publisher and California-based Justia
• Alan Kilpatrick (Law Society of Saskatchewan) wrote on the Legal Sourcery blog about the Saskatchewan Access to Legal Information Project (SALI), “a new partnership among urban, rural, and remote libraries, justice industry stakeholders, and community organizations, working to advance access to justice for Saskatchewan residents”.
• He also wrote about A Primer to Legislative Research Across the Provinces and Territories, a Canada-wide legislative research primer published recently by VALL
• Sarah Sutherland‏ (CanLII) - @parallaxinfo -  tweeted a link to David Whelan’s article Gatekeeper to a Thousand Gates that wonders whether libraries license too many things, and whether the experience stops library users from using them. She also published an article on Slaw.ca entitled Quantifying the Value of Legal Information
• Notre ami Luc Marceau (UQAM) - @bibjurUQAM - a tweeté un lien au site de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec où l’on peut trouver un nouveau guide sur l'évolution du Code civil du Québec depuis 1865: “On y trouve les principales modifications législatives qui y ont été apportées. Pour chacune d'entre elles, le cheminement législatif détaillé est présenté, de même que les documents s'y rapportant (projets de loi (bills), débats parlementaires, lois sanctionnées, mémoires soumis en commission parlementaire, etc.).”
• Il a également tweeté un lien à un article dans La Presse La justice sur des roulettes qui traite d’une initiative montréalaise d’accès à la justice qui utilise un “cabinet mobile [qui] va se promener cet été à Montréal pour offrir des consultations d’avocats et de notaires gratuites – et confidentielles.”

The website Librarianship.ca has compiled a list of Competencies for Information Professionals developed by associations and other professional bodies.

The list breaks down into many categories, including:   

• Academic Librarianship
• Archives
• Assessment
• Collections Management
• Data Management
• Government Librarianship  
• Information / Document / Records Management
• Law Librarianship
• Library Technicians  
• Metadata and Cataloguing
• Reference and Information Services
• Scholarly Communications  

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries in recent years has prepared two documents on what it calls Professional Development Pathways:

• Implementing CALL/ACBD Professional Development Pathways:
  "The Canadian Association of Law Libraries, through the Professional Development Committee, will make best efforts to provide a broad array of professional development opportunities that are designed to build members’ knowledge and skill in the following areas:
  • Collection Development, Cataloguing, Metadata and Information Organization
  • Information Technology 
  • Instruction 
  • Knowledge Management 
  • Leadership, Management and Professionalism 
  • Reference and Research Services 
  • Substantive Law"
• CALL/ACBD Professional Development Pathways (list of competencies)

Here are just a few examples of what members and friends of CALL have been up to in recent days on social media.

I describe friends as non-members of CALL who either follow us on the CALL listserv or who have attended a CALL event.

• If you want to read what people were tweeting about the recent CALL 2017 conference in Ottawa, you can click on the #callacbd2017 hashtag.
• Stéphanie Pham-Dang (Université de Montréal) @Steph_Pham_Dang tweeted a link to the pre-print of the article Journal publishers’ Big Deals: Are they worth it? in her institution's repository
• Notre ami Luc Marceau (UQAM) @bibjurUQAM a tweeté un lien à un article sur les classes inversées ("flipped classroom") Utiliser les techniques de la classe inversée pour enrichir les initiations à Zotero
• Jennifer McNenly (Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP) @mcnenlyj  tweeted a link to an article written by David Whelan (Law Society of Upper Canada) on One law librarian's approach, tips to negotiations, for new librarians 
• Melanie Hodges Neufeld (Law Society of Saskatchewan) wrote about mental health week in a series of recent blog posts (link to the latest one)
• Svetlana Kochkina (McGill) @McGillLawLibrar tweeted about Indigenous Canada, a MOOC that explores Indigenous histories and contemporary issues in Canada    
• Kim Nayyer (UVic) @kimnayyer and Kristin Hodgins (Justice BC) @kristinhodgins were tweeting the other day about organizing a panel at next year's CALL conference on failure and leadership

Members of CALL and friends of the association are busy as ever tweeting, blogging and posting on Facebook.

Here are a few examples of what they have been thinking about in the past few days.

• Mandy Ostick (Norton Rose Fulbright) tweeted about the Slaw.ca article Professional Development Galore! dealing with continuing education opportunities (hello CALL 2017 conference!)
• Sarah Sutherland (CanLII) tweeted about the Globe and Mail article Statscan to phase in changes to crime-reporting protocols in wake of Unfounded investigation
  
• Svetlana Kochkina (McGill) posted a link on Facebook to a report written by the Law Library of Congress in Washington on the Decriminalization of Narcotics
• Megan Siu (Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta) tweeted about the New Librarians Symposium being held at Ryerson University in Toronto  on June 22, 2017
• Jennifer Walker (Carleton Country Law Association) blogged about divorce Canadian style pre-1968 (many divorces before that year were granted by private acts of the Parliament of Canada which were then printed in the annual statutes for all to see)
• Colin Lachance, the legal tech entrepreneur and former CEO of CanLII who has presented many times at CALL conferences, tweeted a link to Mobile and Web-Based Legal Apps: Opportunities, Risks and Information Gaps, a forthcoming paper by 3 University of Ottawa profs
• Stéphanie Pham-Dang (Université de Montréal), who will be attending the CALL 2017 conference as a first-timer if I am correct, tweeted a link to the Special issue of the Review of Constitutional Studies on the Crown in the 21st Century
• Luc Marceau who follows us on the CALL-L listserv (UQAM) tweeted a link to an article in that Montreal university's official publication that deals with the fallout from the 2016 Supreme Court of Canada Jordan decision on trial delays
• And since I am here, I must as well toot my own horn and link to an article on my blog: Internet Archive Wins Webby Lifetime Achievement Award

A few weeks ago, I asked CALL members & friends of CALL who blog, Facebook and/or tweet if the website could reuse or mention what you were up to.

You have been busy this week. Here are a few examples of what's online:

• Sarah Sutherland (CanLII) tweeted a link to The Legal Profession’s Resistance To Evidence In Addressing Access To Justice

• Jennifer McNenly (Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP) tweeted a link to Why do one third of Knowledge Managers have no KM skills?

• Luc Marceau who follows us on the CALL-L listserv (UQAM) tweeted a link to the super cool new website of Québec's National Assembly
• Julie Nadalini (Farris LLP) highlighted the CALL/ACBD New Professionals SIG - Early Career Advice Survey 2017 on the VALL blog
• Svetlana Kochkina (McGill) wrote a Facebook post about the seven McGill Law students and alumni who have been drafted to clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2018 with a link to the article
• Louis Mirando (Osgoode) asks on Slaw.ca Would a Ryerson Law School Need a Law Library?   

Five university libraries in Ontario (at the University of Ottawa, the University of Western Ontario, Queen's, University of Toronto, and McMaster) are participating in the Keep@Downsview partnership, which is a shared last print copy repository project:

"The project, called Keep@Downsview, aims to consolidate and rationalize low-use print materials held by the partner libraries and ensure long-term preservation of these important scholarly materials in Ontario, while still providing access via document delivery and ILL. In doing so, each of the partner institutions demonstrates its commitment to the stewardship of print collections for future generations while repurposing valuable space on campus. This paper describes the background, rationale, challenges, and lessons learned for this unique Canadian project that leveraged funding from the province of Ontario, the University of Toronto‘s high density preservation facility at Downsview, and the commitment of all partners to preserve the scholarly record in Ontario (...)

"(...) the five libraries also quickly established the goals of the project and agreed to four key principles:

• The project strives to save costs while maintaining access to a principal research collection by sharing in the responsibility of storing and maintaining one shared preservation print copy at the Downsview facility.
• The project includes both journals and monographs.
• All materials in Downsview are low-demand materials, as determined by the participating institutions.
• All institutions share ownership of the materials they transfer. "

[Original article published in Serials Review. An open access version was made available on the Western University institutional repository]

There has been some discussion (but maybe less action) in relation to the idea of a "last print copy repository" in the specific case of legal materials, as can be seen in these two Slaw.ca articles written in recent years by CALL/ACBD members:

• Where Will Old, Expensive, or Unexpected Legal Information Come From When Libraries All Downsize Together? Sarah Sutherland, December 12, 2013
• Preservation Week: Pass It On! , Louis Mirando, April 28, 2015 

This appears to be a frequent question asked by CALL members on the CALL-L listserv.

The SOQUIJ blog has a post about that very topic today. It describes the Translated decisions service of SOQUIJ, the Société québécoise d'information juridique, the Crown corporation in charge of publishing Québec court and tribunal decisions.

These are unofficial English translations of selected judgments of the Court of Appeal of Quebec, the Superior Court of Quebec, the Court of Quebec, the Human Rights Tribunal, and the Professions Tribunal.

Some rulings are chosen for their "pan-Canadian" value, in other words for their importance in areas of law that are relevant anywhere in Canada such as criminal or bankruptcy law.

Others that deal with purely provincial matters are selected if they apply legal principles similar to those from the common law tradition. And then there are translations of judgments that attracted media attention even if the issues raised have little equivalent outside of civil law.

Further reading:

Louis-Jacques, Lyonette "How to Find Cases in English Translation, Revisited" Slaw, January 23, 2015.

Tjaden, Ted "Finding English Translations of French Language Court Decisions in Canada" Slaw, March 2, 2011

CALL member Sarah Sutherland wrote a few days ago on Slaw.ca about the many contributions Canadian law librarians have made over the years to the creation of some of our most important legal research tools.

In particular, she reminds readers of how law librarians (through CALL) pretty much saved the Canadian Abridgment, a commercial product.

They were also instrumental in the founding of the Index to Canadian Legal Literature, another commercial product.

But in the context of the multiplication of new publishing platforms for legal information (e.g. CanLII Connects, scholarly blogs) and questions about access to justice, Sutherland does ask about

"the wisdom of CALL members contributing free labour to a commercial product that is not available to many of the people who most need access to legal information (...)"

And, as she writes, could it be that what makes us really awesome at our jobs may actually hinder the development and flourishing of new platforms?:

"As part of their professional ethos, law librarians (and to some degree librarians generally) have looked to certain markers of authority and quality in information sources that these sources may not have: famous authors, bibliographic access points such as indexes and tables of contents, authoritative publishers, and professional editing. This may lead them to undermine these new sources that have so much potential to make the Canadian legal information landscape more accessible."

Sutherland mentions such products or projects as Clicklaw Wikibooks (Courthouse Library of British Columbia) and Osgoode Digital Commons (Osgoode Law School Library) as examples of valuable new contributions to the dissemination of legal information.

According to Sutherland, it should not be one or the other (expensive online subscription databases that lock out "average" citizens vs. free online resources for the masses).

Of course, the big question is: where will the money come from for new sustainable publishing endeavours that are high quality, accessible and cheap?

Gary Rodrigues, who has extensive senior level experience in the Canadian legal information publishing, offers one intriguing suggestion in the comments section below Sutherland's article.

A signed copy of the following letter from CALL/ACBD President Connie Crosby has been sent today to The Honourable Judy M. Foote, Minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada, with a copy to Deputy Minister Marie Lemay and selected other stakeholders, urging them to take care before eliminating the print version of the Statutes of Canada. An offer of feedback and guidance from our members has also been extended.