All Our Tips
Providing Library Services From Home
Many people have spent the last three months working from home. While most librarians had experience providing services to clients who were working remotely, it was a different situation when it came to being the ones who were working remotely. When you’re used to working in a physical library, moving to providing services entirely online presents a challenge, since a number of resources are still not available online.
I am sure that there are many people who can make helpful additions to this list, but this is what worked for us during the shift to providing all library services digitally:
- Prepare. When it started to look likely that we would be moving to working from home, my department did a run through to confirm what we could access from home. For example, some of our resources require IP authentication, so we made sure that our home IP addresses were added to the list of approved IP addresses.
- Talk to your IT department. IT deals with remote users every day and they can provide solutions that you would not have thought of (or can do it faster and more effectively than you would have). For example, my IT department forwarded my work phone to my cell phone so I didn’t need to worry about updating people about how to reach me. (One downside to this: getting a phone call at 6:45 in the morning from a vendor who had forgotten that BC is in a different time zone.)
- Talk to your vendors about what they can do to help. For example, some of our vendors have temporarily provided electronic copies of materials that we own in print but not electronically. (This was very much appreciated.)
- Look at what can be digitized or is already available online. We were in the middle of a digitization project at the point where we moved to work from home. While there were a number of things that we could not digitize for legal or practical reasons, it was helpful having those items that we had already digitized easily available.
- Take print items home. We took home some of the key books that weren’t available electronically so we could consult them as needed. (Others had already been liberated.)
- Make sure your catalogue reflects what is available online. We’ve also added links in our catalogue to materials housed elsewhere (for example in the Government of Canada Publications database).
- Have multiple entry points for materials to make it as easy as possible for users to find them (e.g. we have links on our intranet and in our catalogue and, in some cases, in quick start guides.)
- Talk to your colleagues at other institutions. Librarians and information professionals in the legal industry are always willing to suggest solutions and resources that you might not have thought of.
Pitch a Book to CanLII
CanLII wants to know:
Have you ever imagined seeing a publication with *YOUR NAME* on *YOUR AREA OF EXPERTISE* on the cover?
If so, they’d like to know all about it – and could help make that dream a reality.
CanLII recently launched a house publishing program that “aims to create content that strategically meets the needs of the researchers who use CanLII.”
Specifically, CanLII seeks (1) legal texts on core areas of law, (2) shorter pieces that answer particular questions, and (3) practice manuals for particular areas of law.
If your idea falls outside those three types, the CanLII Authors program is another great way to publish your work.
Head to the CanLII blog for all the details, then start brainstorming that book proposal!
Definitions: A Drafting Point
Two lawyers at my firm asked which formulation I preferred:
“Notice” has the meaning ascribed to it in Section 9.1.
“Notice” has the meaning ascribed in Section 9.1.
“Notice” has the meaning ascribed thereto in Section 9.1.
Being a dangerous radical, I opted for the second one. It’s the simplest.
Thereto is to be avoided at all costs, and to it in the first possibility really doesn’t add anything.
The more senior of the two lawyers made a good point, though.
Opposing counsel will probably want to add the to it, so leaving it out would only occasion more of a mark-up and more work for you. Sometimes it is better to give people what they expect, rather than what you know is better drafting.
Another possibility would be to say assigned instead of ascribed (and the more senior lawyer sent a neat chart depicting the gradual decline of ascribed since 1800, from Google Books).
Other possibilities:
“Notice” has the meaning given to it in Section 9.1.
“Notice” has the meaning given it in Section 9.1. [But North Americans tend not to use give this way: Give it me would strike them as alien, and it is (while perfectly normal in the UK).]
“Notice” is defined in Section 9.1.
“Notice”, as defined in section 9.1, …
Or just say Notice (with an upper-case N) and assume your reader can Control+F to find section 9.1.
The point is that there lots of ways to express something, some better (and plainer) than others.
Go with what you think your audience will want – unless you can clearly show why your rendition is superior.
Thanks to Zale Skolnik and Neill Kalvin for the question!
Curbside Pick-Up
Who would have thought, back in January, that we’d be doing quite so much of this?
It feels like shopping in Bulgaria in the mid 1970s, lining up for the remaining 40-watt bulb on the shelf.
If you live in the United Kingdom or other parts of the Commonwealth, you would be doing it at the kerbside.
The form curb is usual in North America in describing the raised edge of a sidewalk, walkway or paved area.
Both versions are seen in early eighteenth-century examples (sometimes kirb).
Curb actually makes more sense, given that the word comes from the French courbe and Latin curvus, meaning ‘curved’.
Why the K, then?
The Oxford English Dictionary points to the word kennel by way of comparison, which also comes from a C-word: canis, which is Latin for ‘dog’.
In mediaeval French, a canaille was a pack of dogs and a chenil or kenil the enclosure or structure one put them in. But, spelling being flexible in the Middle Ages, the word also appeared as chienaille or kienaille.
For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, British English went with kennel and, after a flirtation with curb, kerb.
The verb meaning ‘to restrain’ is universally spelt curb.
Face Mask
Never write or say this.
It is just a mask. There is no other kind but that worn on the face (except figuratively).
Face mask is as silly as foot shoe or head hat.
As these twenty different senses of mask that are listed in the Oxford English Dictionary will attest:
- face-covering
- image of a face worn by an actor
- representation of a human or animal head
- grotesque representation of a face worn at carnivals etc.
- facial expression concealing emotion, giving false impression
- human face resembling a mask
- protective covering for the face
- surgical dressing for the face
- medical device placed over the mouth and nose
- gauze or fibre covering for mouth and nose
- gas mask
- swimmer or diver’s watertight shield for the eyes
- face disguised by cosmetics
- cosmetic preparation for the face
- likeness of someone’s face in clay or wax, especially from a mould
- stylised representation of a face
- face, head or skinned head of a fox or other animal
- mouth of a dragonfly larva
- marking on the face of an animal
- blotchy discoloration on the face of pregnant woman
Please do wear a mask, but refer to it properly.
Online Whiteboard for Collaboration
With everyone working from home, I have been looking for better tools to collaborate with my team. I recently found one that is super cool – Miro.
Miro enables users to map out a workflow, brainstorm new ideas or develop a business strategy on a shared online whiteboard. To create a board, you can start with a blank canvas or use a template, such as ones for flowcharts, mind maps, or kanban frameworks.
Once in the whiteboard, it is easy to edit by clicking and dragging boxes, arrows or other shapes, or creating your own sketches with a drawing pencil. You can even add “sticky notes” if you want the traditional feel of a mapping/brainstorming exercise.
To collaborate, you simply invite your team to Miro. There is no need to share the whiteboard via Zoom during your meeting.
Being a budget-conscious entrepreneur, I am still using the free version of Miro. Paid versions look to have even more features.
Lesha Van Der Bij (@LVanDerBij) is CEO & Founder of Optimize Legal – keeping law firms and businesses up-to-date on changes to the law.
Master Research Tools While Working Remotely
The Law Society of Saskatchewan has just launched a new series of video tutorials for remote research resources – perfect for a time when more people than ever are working away from their office or usual workspace.
The series has four videos with more on the way. The first batch covers:
- Canadian Encyclopedic Digest (CED)
- Irwin Law: Essentials of Canadian Law – Online!
- Finding Irwin Law Books on Des Libris
- O’Brien’s Internet: Online Encyclopedia of Forms
The videos are aimed at Law Society members in that province, but will be of interest to legal professionals across the country who have access to these resources through their employer, courthouse library or law society.
Finding Government of Canada Publications
One of the challenges of the last few months has been accessing materials that my library does not own. With the majority of libraries being closed, we have not been able to borrow these materials from the usual suspects.
When looking for government publications, one useful source is the Government of Canada Publications website which includes a catalogue of over 502,000 publications and which provides online access to more than 381,000 government publications.
The website offers an advanced search feature which allows you to limit your search by such criteria as department, language, and publication date. The collection includes PDFs of older publications that have been digitized; for example, the 1930 publication “Poultry house construction, with general and detailed plans” is available for your reading pleasure.
— Susannah Tredwell
Glean Wisdom From Women Leading in Law
Erin Cowling’s wonderful interview series, Women Leading in Law, is back up and running after a bit of a break.
In response to the difficult times we’re in, Cowling notes, “I don’t know about you but I need some good news right about now. And I believe there’s nothing better than reading positive stories about women kicking butt in law“.
In her series (at 45 interviews and counting!), Cowling asks women lawyers working in a wide variety of roles and practice areas a standard set of six questions:
- Tell me a little about your practice or business.
- Why did you go to law school?
- How did you get to where you are today? Design? Chance? Both?
- What is your most significant achievement? What are you proud of?
- What are some key challenges, and more importantly, opportunities for women in law?
- What advice would you give a woman starting her legal career?
The responses are fascinating and unexpected and contain excellent advice. Spending some time reading them is almost guaranteed to inspire you!
Pandemic Versus Epidemic: What’s the Diff?
Coverage, essentially.
You’ll need a little ancient Greek here.
The –demic suffix comes from demos, which means ‘the people’, ‘the community’. Demos is the root of democracy (‘rule by the people’).
The epi- bit comes from the Greek for ‘upon’, ‘at’, ‘close to’. Think of the epicentre of an earthquake.
Pan-, on the other hand, means ‘universal’. Pandemonium is total confusion or chaos; pantheism is the belief that the divine is present everywhere in the universe.
An epidemic is a disease that touches a fairly localised group; a pandemic reaches far beyond the local.
One would therefore say There was an epidemic of meningitis among high-school students in the downtown core, but The world was severely affected by the Spanish flu, AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics.
The earliest use of pandemic appears to be 1666 (a year of plague in London); epidemic goes back further – to 1603 in its current form, to the late fifteenth century as epidemy.
