Today’s Tip: Dig Deep

By deep, I mean the deep or invisible web.  According to Marcus Zillman, there are somewhere in the vicinity of 1 trillion plus pages of information out there on the world wide web that search engines might not see.

Marcus was kind enough to update his annual article at LLRX.com, Deep Web Research 2012.

This report and guide is designed to give you the resources you need to better understand the history of the deep web research, as well as various classified resources that allow you to search through the currently available web to find those key sources of information nuggets only found by understanding how to search the “deep web”.

Though there are some familiar sites in this excellent resources list, Google Scholar for example, there are many sites, vendors and sources of information that may be new to you.

One new to me was the Open Knowledge Foundation.  Visit their projects page to have a look.

Susan Van Dyke wrote at Slaw on How to Avoid Resource-Draining One-Off Marketing Activities. She inspired this post with one of her ideas:

• Review your current orphans and if you’re not getting any results after a good effort of at least a couple of years, see about dropping some of these, especially if you can’t make a reasonable business case to support it.

Susan was speaking about marketing events, but this advice could apply to many things – library services, database content, use of website features, technology solutions, margarine vs. butter.

For legal research, I believe it is important to pay extra attention to orphan results.  Think of a set of case law research results. If everything seems to be pointing in one direction but there is jurisprudence that goes the another way, a legal researcher must investigate that ‘orphan result’ further.  Note it up – has the odd case been followed, commented on, blogged about, referenced by anyone in the media; is it the newest decision by date heard or by judgment date; is it the only result from a particular jurisdiction; is the decider commonly a dissenter; was there legislative change that affected the situation.

Today’s Tip: follow up on orphan results

Do you have any orphan result stories? Share in the comments or suggest a related research tip

Today’s Tip”: Look far afield.

When looking for articles from a medical journal I was reminded about the excellent service offered by the National Library of Australia. Their coordinates are:

Document Supply Service
National Library of Australia
Canberra ACT 2600
Enquiry Hotline: 1800 235 627
http://www.nla.gov.au/document-supply-services/contact

A recent fee for service item was sent to me with unbelieveably excellent turn around time which saved a one hour trip to the off site storage facility of my local University library.  Their catalogue linked web request form and credit card payment process is well thought out and very efficient. Weighed against my hourly rate, the client saved 50% on the cost of this necessary item, and my internal client got the document faster than if I had physically retrieved it.

Don’t be afraid to look far as well as near.

Most search engines have the capacity for searching a phrase: internet engines, ebook search tools, services like Westlaw Canada, LexisNexis Quicklaw, Maritime Law Books National Reporter System, CCH Online, and legal information institutes etc.

Today’s Tip: use the phrase search.

It is much more efficient for a first database (and I use this term very broadly) look to use a narrow search and then expand to if you need to “catch everything”.

Test this out by looking at results for:

constructive trust

and then do it again for

“constructive trust”

Happy New Year.

Thanks to Simon Chester among others, we know that the Supreme Court of Canada intends to release it’s judgment in the National Securities Regulator Reference on December 22 at 9:45 EST. You will most likely find it first here or maybe here.

Today’s Tip is to use your calendar to diarize important watches.

Why your electronic calendar rather than an RSS feed or other automated technology to send you what you are waiting for? I have a few reasons for using this method:

• Your calendar can be set to send you a beeping reminder
• You most likely open your email in-box as soon as you start your workday, which means your calendar is front and centre as well
• You can see if you have a conflict for when something is due to arrive and can delegate it
• Calendar appointments have room for plenty of notes about what you need to do when something arrives
• If you use a smart phone, your calendar is likely always in your pocket

I usually set my appointments for things like this to be one minute long.

Sometimes new law requires very broad compliance.  It might be easy to dismiss an act like the one proclaimed in force on December 8, 2011 titled “An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service” as applying to Internet Service Providers only, but it might apply to you as well. 

Today’s Tip is about identifying who in your organization to inform about a newly proclaimed law.

The  says:

Order fixing December 8, 2011 as the day on which an ACT RESPECTING THE MANDATORY REPORTING OF INTERNET CHILD PORNOGRAPHY BY PERSONS WHO PROVIDE AN INTERNET SERVICE, chapter 4 of the Statutes of Canada 2011, COMES INTO FORCE.

To identfy who to alert, first read the act (or the Summary page). In this case, go to the Annual Statutes page at the Justice Canada Laws site and link to the act by chapter number.

Review the duties the act prescribes. This act contains broad duties to preserve data, notify police, and notify the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, to name a few.

See to whom the duties apply to by reviewing the definitions.  This act very broadly defines providing Internet Service VERY broadly and this could affect clients like public libraries, academic institutions, coffee shops, municipalities, airport authorities – anyone who provides unlocked wifi.  The duties apply to any person, and person  means an individual, a corporation, a partnership or an unincorporated association or organization.

Look at the regulations if published. Note that regulations under this act “Internet Child Pornography Reporting Regulations” will be published in the December 21, 2011 Canada Gazette Part II.

These steps should help you decide who to inform within your organization.

Following on last week’s theme, Today’s Tip is about judicial consideration of statutes.

CanLII: Navigate to the act that you are interested in and click the Noteup Tab.  This tool allows for a judicial consideration search for the whole act, or for a particular section.

CanLII very correctly offers this warning:

Results are highly sensitive to the manner in which citations to a specific section are formatted in the texts by their authors. Some of them are not currently recognized by CanLII.

This feature does not currently support subsections or other subdivisions of a section. Therefore you may search for a section number such as 43 or 231.7, but not for subdivisions such as 43(2) or 231.7(4)(f).

LexisNexis Quicklaw: Use the Noteup with QuickCite box on the main page to go directly to the noteup page for a section of an act.  This works best if you are noting up a current section, and when you have the citation entered exactly.  You can also navigate to a section of an act and clik the citator symbol or the Noteup with QuickCITE link.

Westlaw Canada: Use the Find/KeyCite a Document section from the main LawSource page, select the KeyCite radio button and enter the legislation title, section and jurisdiction.  This will find every noteup of that section of the named act, current and historical, but remember section numbers change over time.  Manslaughter in one RSC criminal code could be assault in the next.

As John Hedley commented about cases, it is also a good idea to follow noteups with a proximity search to identify full text decisions that may have been missed by the citation services.  I use this search:

Name [within 2] of [within 2] Act [within 10] section# (only the number)

Happy considering.

Today’s Tip idea comes from Corey McDonald, Paralegal with Justice Canada in Edmonton.

Cory mentioned yesterday that it would be helpful to know the different steps for doing the same task in LexisNexis Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada and CanLII.  I chose to write about Noting Up. Here are the steps for each system for noting up a case to see if it has been judicially considered

CanLII – click on the “search decisions citing this decision” link.

LexisNexis Quicklaw – click on the citator symbol or the “noteup with QuickCITE” link at the top of the decision or go directly to a noteup record with a citation of a case from the Noteup with QuickCITE search box on the main page

Westlaw Canada – click on the citations symbol or choose the Related Info tab when viewing a case then the ‘citing references’ link or go directly to a noteup using the Keycite radio button under Find by citation from the main page

The Alberta Law Libraries has a Research Guide on this topic too.

Plenty of innovation is happening around real-time search. Simon Fodden told us about Google adding real-time search in August 2010, Connie Crosby has blogged about the importance of real time news and information, and I have shared a tip about Social Mention.

Today’s Tip: Check out Topsy.

Topsy is marketed as a social intelligence tool.

Our fast-indexing technology ingests massive amounts of authored content from the world’s largest social networks and our live-ranking software applies influence algorithms to social data, identifying the most important content seconds after it has been posted to the social web. We produce a variety of metrics calculated from census-based social data sets, enabling businesses to interpret social signal in ways that are meaningful to each business segment’s needs, with high degrees of precision and in realtime.

One nice thing about Topsy is the integration of Google+ and search.   Test it out.  You might find something that you otherwise wouldn’t.

Sometimes we learn so many ways to find information that we forget one or two.

Today’s Tip is to look for the Useful Things.

Here you’ll find a collection of resources hosted on or developed by Slaw, all designed to make your legal work on the internet just that little bit easier. Some of the resources have a page on Slaw all their own, while others are described and made available on this page. The table of contents immediately below will direct you to the proper place.

Please let us know via the Contact link in the main menu if something is amiss or doesn’t work the way it should. And let us know, too, if there are useful things you’d like to see here that we haven’t yet come up with.

Useful Things exist in many places, though the collection at Slaw.ca is particularly handy.  Do you have any Useful Things to share?

• Nicholas on Software Tools for Editing
• Jamie on Software Tools for Editing
• Steve Coughlan on ‘I Hope This E-Mail Finds You Well’
• Lyn on Womxn
• Celia Chandler on Gross Negligence

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