Contract Clauses & Negotiating with Electronic Publishers

David Whelan recently posted an interesting query to CALL-L subscribers with respect to contract clauses and publishers. Citing a contract negotiation session he watched in the Virtual Component of the recent SLA conference, someone asked about "the types of clauses that libraries frequently get removed from, or that they have successfully added to, contracts with electronic publishers."

David subsequently turned a similar question back to CALL-L subscribers, and whether they had gotten a clause removed, edited to their needs, or added a new clause to a contract with any online legal publisher. And, if so, whether they would share that clause.

The summary document David's produced is great. Among the suggested clause changes, additions, or removals are the following:

• keep the termination notice period as short as you are comfortable with
• remove indemnity clauses in government contracts since library cannot commit government to these
• eliminate specific number of terminals ("users") if license is restricted to a physical space so as not to limit access points to library hardware
• amended termination clauses
• amended user ceilings
• amended usage levels
• amended copyright limitations

David invites readers to contact him with more additions or suggestions. It's fun to imagine this list growing.

[note: the above document is linked to with David's permision...]

Happy Social Media Day

Today, June 30, is Social Media Day! So declared by the SM website Mashable who've founded this first annual celebration of social media, citing "more than 600+ meetups in 93 countries today with thousands of attendees."

Here in B.C.'s capital Victoria, it's official: Mayor Dean Fortin formally proclaimed June 30, 2010 Social Media Day in the City of Victoria, following upon the petition of local Social Media Day organizer Paul Holmes:


Paul notes that it is fitting that Victoria be the first city in the world to proclaim the day - Victoria was also the first city in Canada to form a Social Media Club chapter.

Hat tip to Vancouver's Knowlton Thomas of TechVibes for the heads-up.

Neutral Citation to be Added to Ontario Reports

From the "it's about time" category... News for researchers of Ontario law: The Law Society of Upper Canada issued a notice to the profession in today's mailing indicating that the neutral citation will be added to all cases reported in the Ontario Reports.

As of July 9, researchers can look for the neutral citation as part of the headnote to each decision.

Update: Realized the announcement is behind a password wall. Dan Pinnington was nice enough to relay a screen capture:

Bravo to Simon Fodden and Why Slaw is better than ever!

Ever since the redesign of Slaw.ca which incorporated a significant bump in volume for the now daily columns, I find myself reengaged as a reader.

The content split between the more formal columns and the informal blog posts seem to compliment each other extremely well. To the point where, I'm waiting for: A) break-out topic post that highlights a solitary issue within one of the columns, or B) a critical rant directly against a current columnist's contribution. The side-by-side arrangement of these two page elements also creates a contrast effect [columns -> blogs -> comments & sharing], and was well thought out.

The other aspect that has me energized is Slaw's comments. The quality & quantity of discussion has never been better in my opinion, and the diversity of perspectives gained from our new writers is the biggest driving factor. As a bit of an insider tip, if you're following Slaw on RSS without the comments included, you're missing half the fun.

Credit for both the new design and drive for author expansion are due on one man's shoulders - and from the title of this post, I think you can guess who.

This all is my long winded way to say 'bravo' to Simon Fodden, who continues to be the visionary of our founding foursome. While Connie, Simon C. and myself are all splitting our Slaw commitment with other interests, Simon continues to devote significant time - to our platform, distribution channels, author recruiting, content quality, and anything else he can get his fingers on! :)

Perhaps most important, Simon continues to imagine. It's a quality that I greatly admire; always have with Simon. And I know Slaw is better for it.

Quickscribe Manual Updates for May 2010

Two of Quickscribe's Manuals were updated in May: the BC Fire Safety Legislation Manual and the BC Real Estate Legislation Manual. And as always, daily updates to BC legislation are available at www.bclegislation.ca.

Quickscribe Giving Away Fully Consolidated BC Rules

BC lawyers and law librarians looking for a fully consolidated version of the new BC Rules that include amendments from the May 5th Order in Council can check out a new (free) offer from Quickscribe Services. As I detailed over on Slaw.ca:

Quickscribe will open up full access to its online legislation database and allow any member of the public to view the updated rules at no charge. Full instructions on how to do so are available here. Users will be able to print all or part of these documents on demand (including PDFs for internal firm circulation); and full free access will continue to be available through to July 1st.

If you haven't done so in the past, the 30-day window is also an excellent chance to test drive the Quickscribe platform. And full marks to Mike Pasta and his team for producing the consolidation so quickly.