A quick reminder of the free Quicklaw training session taking place today, Wednesday, May 30th, from 1:00 to 2:00 PM in the CCLA Library! There is still room in the session, so feel free to stop by and sit on the session if you happen to be in the Courthouse. All are welcome!

As always, the session is in the CCLA Library, located in Room 2004 on the main floor of the Ottawa Courthouse, at 161 Elgin Street. Just send me a quick email if you have any questions. Please feel free to bring your lunch; I’ll have some iced tea and snacks laid out as well. Hope to see you there!

Thanks to everyone who came out to the CCLA Library’s Westlaw training session earlier this month, and to Josée Provost for teaching us about the useful tools on Westlaw, along with some techniques for making research faster and more effective. If you missed the session, there is still another learning opportunity happening at the library later this month. Join us next week on Wednesday, March 30th from 1:00 to 2:00 PM for a session with Ron Jones on LexisNexis Quicklaw. Send me a quick email if you’re interested in attending, or feel free to stop by the library if you happen to be in the Courthouse that day.

A few people inquired about training and learning materials that might assist them in lieu of attending the session, so I thought I’d share links to some great free online resources offered by both Quicklaw and Westlaw.

To access Westlaw Canada support materials, including quick reference cards, guides, learning tutorials, and frequently asked questions, check out the Learning & Support section of Westlaw’s website by clicking here. Personally, my favourite features on Westlaw are its Keyciting for cases and legislation and the incredibly useful Canadian Encyclopedic Digest, so I suggest reading about those features in the training guide, or asking me about them the next time you’re in the library.

For Quicklaw support materials, including training demos, quick reference guides, training manuals, and cheat sheets, check out the Training Materials section of the LexisNexis site by clicking here. The training demos are particularly helpful and well done in this section, and I suggest checking out the demos entitled Advanced Terms and Connectors and Noting Up the Law if you aren’t already confident using these features.

As always, please feel free to get in touch with me or any of the other library staff if you have questions about these databases or any other resources in the library.

Hope to see you at the Quicklaw session next week on Wednesday, March 30th, from 1:00 to 2:00 PM. The session will be held in the CCLA Library, located in Room 2004 on the main floor of the Ottawa Courthouse, at 161 Elgin Street. Please feel free to bring your lunch; iced tea and snacks will be served!

*Update: All the passes have been claimed – thanks for participating!*

The CCLA library has eight passes for two to give away for the advance screening of the new movie “The Lincoln Lawyer.”  The show time is tomorrow night (Wednesday March 16th) at 7:00 pm at the South Keys Cinemas.  “The Lincoln Lawyer” is based on a novel by Michael Connelly, and stars Matthew McConaughey in the title role.  You can read up on it here, here, or here.

If you want to win the passes, be one of the first eight people to email jwalker@ccla-abcc.ca with the answer to this lawyer-y question (we know you love law-themed movies and books!):

Name the Matthew McConaughey film where he plays another lawyer – a defence lawyer in rural Mississippi.

Passes will be available for pick-up at the CCLA library, as well as some other “The Lincoln Lawyer” promo goodies, so please be able to retrieve the passes by tomorrow at 5:00.

As law librarians, Jen and I spend a lot of time thinking about legal resources – we’re constantly locating useful research materials for people, sourcing new books and electronic resources for the library’s collection, and thinking about instructional resources that we can create to assist you in doing your research. It’s only natural, then, for us to be a part of the CCLA’s Website Content Development Committee, which helps to source content and resources to be posted on the CCLA Website.

Of course, not just any resource can be posted online due to copyright (otherwise, we might just have a field day scanning legal textbooks and magazines for your viewing pleasure). Luckily for us, though, there is a lot of free and useful legal information available on the web these days, including blogs, research sites, not-for-profit and government databases, and scholarly legal journals and magazines.

Jen and I try to keep in the know by following local blogs, sharing resources with other librarians, and keeping track of the legal community on Twitter, but we’re sure that there must be great blogs and resources out there that we’re missing out on. That’s why we’d love to hear about your favourite legal website, blog, or online resource. If there’s something out there that you find useful or interesting, please drop us a line and let us know about it! Send us an email, message us on Twitter, or leave a comment below.

The library will have reduced hours over the next few weeks.  Here’s our schedule for the holiday season:

Monday, December 20 – Thursday, December 23 – 8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Thursday, December 24 – 8:30 am – 12:00 pm
Monday, December 27 – CLOSED
Tuesday, December 28 – CLOSED
Wednesday, December 29 – Thursday, December 30 – 8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Friday, December 31 – 8:30 am – 12:00 pm
Monday January 3 – CLOSED

If you’re a CCLA member, you will still be able to access the library during those times when it is closed.

We’ll be back to our regular schedule on Tuesday, January 4, 2011.