Last time we had a look at the Irwin Law Essentials collection which is now available on vLex, and continuing with our tips for the new database, today we’ll be having a peek at the MLB (Maritime Law Book) Topics and how they can help your research.

If you’ve ever taken any legal research training sessions from us, you’re probably aware that we are very much fans of skipping keyword searching altogether. It’s messy, ugly, and for the most part you get dumped on with a load of garbage.

Ok perhaps I’m exaggerating, but instead of wasting time picking through thousands of cases, we very much advocate for whatever publications or shortcuts you can use to cut down your research time. MLB topics are one of those shortcuts: they group similar cases by topics, so if you find a case that is relevant, you can click on the topic you’re interested in and find similar cases really quickly. You can also browse the topics, as we’ll see below.

From the homepage of vLex, select “Browse” from the sidebar. From there, navigate to “MLB Topics” in top menu. You’ll see a list of alphabetical topics you can now either search or peruse through.

Clicking on any one of these topics will bring up a listing of all the specific topics under that heading. For example, Contracts:

From here you can click through to any topics that interest you to find links to cases that are under that topic.

Similarly, if you are looking at a case on vLex, at the top of the case all the MLB topics will be listed so you can select your issue and find similar cases on that point of law. At the top of each case it will look something like this:

Clicking on any one of those magnifying glass will search that classification and bring up a list of cases on the topic. So skip the keyword case searching and browse through the MLB topics instead!

 

As you may have heard or seen in-library, we now have access to the vLex Canada database! We’ll be showcasing some tips over the next couple of weeks to help you get some idea as to the uses and functionality of this new database.

First up: the Irwin Law Essentials Collection!

You might be familiar with these books in print; they are extremely popular in our library and can usually be distinguished at a glance by their characteristic maroon colour. Some of the most well-known titles include: The Law of Evidence by Paciocco and Stuesser, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms by Sharpe and Roach, and Child Support Guidelines in Canada by Payne and Payne. Fortunately, they are now also available in electronic format on vLex Canada!

To access them, simply log in to vLex and click on “Browse” in the sidebar. Under “Books and Journals”, you will then find a link to Irwin Law: The Essentials of Canadian Law. From there, you can see all of the titles currently available on the platform, as can be seen in the screenshot below:

Once you click on a title, it will bring you through to a table of contents where you can browse to find what you need. You can then click through to individual sections and chapters to view the text.

At any time, you can click into the search bar at the top of the screen. If you only want to search the subsection of the content you are viewing, click on the option for “Advanced Search”, as it appears, and that will only search the particular section. You can see an example of this below.

Stay tuned for more vLex tips, and in the meantime, come to the library and play around with it yourself! With an account you will then have 24 hour access from anywhere!

 

This is a great new tip we learned about in WestlawNext Canada, from our amazing local trainer Josée Provost.

If you’re anything like us, you love the Canadian Abridgment for quickly and easily finding cases on a specific topic. To make your case law research even easier, you can now filter search results from a note-up in Westlaw by Adbridgment topic. Here’s an example below.

Through noting-up section 13 of the Employment Standards Act, 2000, I’m told there are 190 cases that cite this section. On the left hand side of the screen are your filtering options. Tucked in second from the bottom is “Abridgment Topics.”

If you click on “Select” a box will open up showing you a list of topics from within the Abridgment that have this cases included. You can also search for a topic (if there is nothing, you’ll be told there are no hits).

You can select as many topics as you would like. For this example, I’ll select “Contracts”…

And I have limited the 190 citing cases down to just 3 that have to do with contracts.

This feature is really neat, and I know will come in handy to many people during their case law research. If you’d like to learn more about WestlawNext Canada, we do have a free lunch time training session at the library scheduled for November 22. You can RSVP for this session here.

Here’s a cool new feature we just learned about in our library’s WestlawNext Canada subscription.

Black’s Law Dictionary, the most well-known legal dictionary on the market, is now tucked away (but free to use in our library) under the “International” tab.

From the home screen, you will want to select the “International” tab:

 

From there, you can find a link out to the Black’s Law Dictionary underneath the Westlaw US document titles:

This will open a new screen and log you into the American version of Westlaw’s interface for the Black’s dictionary. There is a dedicated search screen for this title, so you will only be searching within the dictionary itself – not the other American content on Westlaw.

Et voilà, your results list!

 

If you have WestlawNext at your office, see if this is included in your LawSource package (but of course, be mindful of what charges might be incurred for this search first). As always, any Westlaw work you do at the library is free of charge.

This question has come up a few times now at the library, usually stated something like this:

I’m looking for a case that I can’t find. The citation is 1 CRC 461. Help!!

The citation “CRC” refers to a dusty, but clearly still useful, law report series titled Canadian Railway Cases. While this was published originally by Canada Law Book, it still hasn’t made its way in its entirety onto WestlawNext Canada. It seems that if the case was also reported in another law report series, it will be available on the electronic services (most likely), but if the case only appeared in the CRCs, it will probably be just available in the print version for now.

The series ran from 1902 to 1939, and we are fortunate to still have this set in our collection. So, if during your research you find you need a case with that citation and you can’t find it on any of the online services, we’re only a quick email away, and we’d be happy to send it over for you!

 

 

This is an update to the Lexis Advance Quicklaw database that we are super excited for. If you’re a Quicklaw user, check this out:

Advanced search forms are now available on Lexis Advance Quicklaw. If you like being able to search for cases, legislation, or other materials using highly detailed search forms that allow you to search for documents with specific pieces of information, this is for you.

From the home screen…

 

You will find the quick link to the advanced search forms above and to the right of the search bar. Click on this to get to this screen:

Continue reading →

We in the library are busy working away on a cool new project (details soon!), and a tonne of reference questions (we love hearing from you!), so this post is brief, but important!

Save the Date! Our 6th annual HeadStart Ottawa: Legal Research for Articling & LPP Students will be happening on Friday, August 18, 2017!

This half-day session on legal research has been getting new articling and LPP students ready for the year ahead since 2012, and we’re thrilled to bring it back again for 2017. The session will be held, as always, at the Ottawa Courthouse, and will give students a chance to meet us librarians, learn about the resources they have at our library, and get a great refresher on legal research.

We’ll be announcing all the details, as well as how to register, over the summer, so stay tuned for that!

There’s a been a great new featured rolled out in WestlawNext Canada!

“Federated searching” is one of those fancy terms that I think librarians might use but isn’t necessarily clear to other people. What’s meant by federated searching is the ability to search for something across multiple platforms, instead of just one. In this case, you would be searching within WestlawNext, but it’s also searching in their ProView platform, which is where a lot of looseleaf titles are kept (and we talked about here and here). Your results will now show relevant hits from the WestlawNext database and hits from the ProView platform.

Here’s an example:

In this example, I’m running a simple search for wrongful dismissal within the same paragraph as pregnancy. I’m doing this from the homepage of WestlawNext Canada.

 

 

This brings back a results screen, where the default is to give you an overview of what WestlawNext has. You can see in the larger pane on the right hand side that your results are broken down into the categories for you to quickly glance at and get a sense of what is there, such as “Cases and Decisions” and “Canadian Encyclopedic Digest.”

 

The new category that’s been added to these search results is “eLooseleafs on ProView.” You can see that on the left side pane (and it would also be in the right side pane like above if you scroll down further). If you click on that heading in the left pane, it will bring up a full list of what hits come back from eLooseleafs on the ProView platform. If we don’t have a subscription to that title, it will say “Out of Plan” at the very far right. If we do have a subscription, however, you can click on the title and go straight to that book.

Continue reading →