News

2010 Family Law Conference Papers

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by Katie Tribe

Just a note to inform you that Amanda recently uploaded all the papers from the CCLA’s 19th Annual Institute of Family Law Conference to our Conference Paper Database. Have you checked out the database yet? It contains digital copies of conference papers and materials from the CCLA’s four cornerstone conferences: Civil Litigation, Criminal Law, Family Law, and Solicitors. The papers go as far back as 2001. An awesome thing about the database (other than offering free, downloadable papers, of course!) is that it contains complete and detailed records, and is user-friendly and searchable. This means that you can locate a paper by conference, year, title, author, or subject. No more leafing through multiple giant binders to find the paper you need! Conference materials are also amazing resources when researching a unique, emerging, or very specific topic.

On a related note, in case you haven’t heard, the CCLA recently announced that law students and paralegals can now become members of the CCLA! Check out the announcement here. This news is very relevant to the Conference Paper Database since it is accessible to CCLA members only; to search the database and download the papers, you must log in using your membership log-in name and ID. If you are a member and aren’t sure about your log-in name or ID, please get in touch with us! We can help you out. If you’d like to become a lawyer, student, or paralegal member of the CCLA, you can join right on our website.

We hope you’ll take some time to check out the Conference Paper Database! You can find it here, under the Library tab on the website.

CCLA Library Tours for Students

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By Jennifer Walker

Every summer, we like to invite all the new Summer and Articling students in Ottawa to the CCLA library for a tour. We try to let all the firms and sole practitioners know, so they can set that up, but if you’re a student and are reading this, please feel free to book yourself for a tour! Our tours last about 15 to 20 minutes, and of course, are right here in the library at Courthouse at 161 Elgin Street.

This year, we have some really exciting news for students that we’re pleased to share: we now have a “Student” membership category! Previously, students were not eligible to be members, and so could not take advantage of any of the member perks. This new category will let students have all the benefits other members do, including the after-hours access to the CCLA Library, but for a pretty great reduced price. Without membership, access to the library will be limited to our normal business hours – Monday to Friday, 8:30 am to 5:00 pm.

We have scheduled tours for the following times – if you would like to schedule your students, or yourself, for a tour, please RSVP by email to Katie Tribe.

May
Thursday, May 6, 2010 – 10:30 am
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 10:30 am
Monday, May 17, 2010 – 10:30am, 2:00 pm
Thursday, May 20, 2010 – 10:30 am, 2:00 pm
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 – 10:30 am, 2:00 pm

June
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 – 10:30 am
Wednesday, June 9, 2010 – 10:30 am

August
Tuesday, August 24, 2010 – 10:30 am
Thursday, August 26, 2010 – 10:30 am
Tuesday, August 31, 2010 – 10:30 am

September
Thursday, September 2, 2010 – 10:30 am
Wednesday, September 8, 2010 – 10:30 am, 2:00 pm
Friday, September 10, 2010 – 10:30 am, 2:00 pm
Monday, September 13, 2010 – 10:30 am, 2:00 pm
Wednesday, September 15, 2010 – 10:30 am, 2:00 pm
Friday, September 17, 2010 – 10:30 am, 2:00 pm
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 – 10:30 am
Wednesday, September 29, 2010 – 2:00 pm

If none of these sessions will work, just let Katie know – we can always schedule another tour time!

Free Access to Westlaw Canada

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by Katie Tribe

Jennifer, Amanda, and I are extremely pleased to announce that Westlaw Canada is now available in the CCLA Library! Pop by the library and sit down at any of the computers to check out this awesome (and free!) new resource. Westlaw is a powerful online legal database for locating case law, legislation, journals, articles, and commentary; it also contains a number of research tools that make finding these materials simple and easy.

We’ve scheduled a couple of training sessions to introduce you to Westlaw and help you learn to use it effectively. Lawyers, students, and legal support staff are all welcome to attend these free sessions, where a Westlaw specialist will walk us through the database and its tools. We’d love to see you in the library on the following days:

Thursday, April 15th, 2010 from 12:00 to 1:00 PM
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 from 12:00 to 1:00 PM

As usual, the sessions take place right in the library over the lunch hour, and you are more than welcome to bring your lunch! The CCLA Library is located in room 2004 of the Ottawa Courthouse at 161 Elgin Street. Just email your Reference Librarian, Katie Tribe, (that’s me!) at ktribe@ccla-abcc.ca if you’d like to RSVP.

Here are just a few of Westlaw`s tools that we think you’ll find useful…

Use the Canadian Abridgment and Westlaw’s KeyCite feature to note up cases and legislation. Information includes case history and positive and negative treatments, along with references to cases and secondary sources that may have referenced the case, statute, section, or rule you are researching. Once you’ve noted up a case, search your results for key terms that are relevant to your issue. We think Westlaw’s ability to search the text of the materials found through a note up is pretty awesome.

Westlaw’s online version of the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest allows you to browse or search legal topics to find commentary and discussions of leading case law. While we still have the CED in print format, we find point and click browsing much easier than leafing through the set of giant print volumes. The online version is also updated much more quickly than its print counterpart.

Sources such as the Canadian Index to Legal Literature, Words and Phrases Judicially Defined, and a number of law reports and journals are also available on Westlaw, making finding commentary and secondary sources quick and easy. Search by title, author, publication, or key terms to find the information you need.

As a general rule, l try to remember that no source is ever complete; the more sources consulted, the more accurate research will be. We’re thrilled that this new resource will help to make your research at the CCLA Library more complete. Our online resource collection now includes free and unlimited access to Quicklaw, O’Brien’s Forms and Precedents, Criminal Spectrum, DivorceMate, and now Westlaw, with hopefully more to come!

New Site, New Blog

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By Jennifer Walker

When I first joined the CCLA in July 2007, the organization was already in the midst of a website redesign project. Our old website was, to put it bluntly, severely outdated. As a librarian, I was asked to weigh-in on what the library side of the new site should look like. Fresh from library school with big ideas and notions of what libraries should be doing, I immediately requested a blog. What was going to go on this blog? I didn’t know, but was quite sure we should have one regardless. In the two intervening years, the entire website redesign project has itself been redesigned, including the contents for the library section. The blog, however, stayed on my “Must” list, and so here we are, with our very first posting on our beautifully relaunched website.

Do we now have a focus for the blog? We sure do. Going forward, Katie Tribe (our excellent reference librarian) and I will be sharing all manner of library news here – new books, missing books, library training sessions, library-related notes of interest, closures and hours changes, staffing news, and anything else we think you’d care to know about. If you’re interested in keeping up with new posts, add us to your feed reader using the RSS icon, or follow us on Twitter, where our new posts will be directed once they go live. While we do not currently have reader comment functionality, please send any feedback or questions to us directly.