Ideas for CPD activities

Tell us what CPD activities you would like.

Email: allaq.cpe@gmail.com or add a comment to this post.

What would you like training in?
What training can you offer?
Who would you like as a speaker?
what subject areas interest you?

Media 140 videos

ABC Fora TV is streaming a couple of sessions from the recent Media 140 Sydney conference.

Tweeting Question Time: www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2009/11/20/2748926.htm
Twitter and the Iranian Democracy Uprising: www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2009/11/20/2748957.htm

More information on what Media 140 is all about can be found at www.aroundtheworldin140days.com

Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal starts 1 Dec 2009

From 1 December 2009 a number of tribunals will amalgamate into the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT).

QCAT will hear a variety of matters including tenancy and building disputes, guardianship and discrimination matters as well as professional and vocational disciplinary matters.

For more information see http://www.tribunalsreview.qld.gov.au/

Queensland Industrial Gazette ceases publication

The last Queensland Industrial Gazette was issued on 23 October 2009.

The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission (QIRC) website is now the official publisher of decisions, awards, agreements, orders and other documents of the Industrial Court of Queensland (ICQ), the QIRC and the Industrial Registrar. Amendments to the Industrial Relations Act 1999 ensure that a document, decision etc. published on the QIRC website is admissible as evidence of the document in Court proceedings.[see s. 680 of the Act]

For a list of decisions from 23 October, see http://www.qirc.qld.gov.au/published/index.htm

The Industrial Gazette was also used by a number of agencies and organisations to publish important industrial notices - these will now be published in the Queensland Government Gazette.

A chance to win a $50 voucher - complete our 1–minute Member Survey

Your committee have commenced planning for the coming year, and to help us make it a memorable one, we'd like to hear from you

Completing our short Member Survey will give us information about your preferences and what really matters to you – and it gives you the chance to win a $50 Myer voucher!

• All members were sent the link to the survey via the ALLA-Qld list. Contact your Committee if you don't have it
  

CPE - Introduction to Repositories

Short on physical space in your Library? Perhaps creating a digital repository is the answer.

ALIA and QUT´s School of Information Technology are running a full day course on setting up repositories. Introduction to Repositories will introduce you to the key concepts, principles and skills involved in establishing and/or managing a successful repository.

For more information see the QUT Professional development courses website

Your new Committee

We held our Annual General Meeting on 30 Sept 2009

Your new Committee:

• President - Jeannine Goasdoue
• Vice President - Richard Vankoningsveld
• Secretary - Claudia Davies
• Treasurer - Deb Houlahan
• Member Services - Peta Dunbar
• CPE Co-ordinator - Helen Gambley
• Communications - Allison Jones
  

Lawbook/Thomsons - updated information on our problems

(1) Tagging across multiple pages - The online service has been deliberately designed so that you must tag each page (by actually selecting the "tag" option) before moving onto the next page. This is because it significantly increases the performance of the service, most particularly the searching capabilities. It is recommended that you set your preferences to show 100 results per page to minimise the impact of having to tag after selecting items on each page.
(2) Refine search functionality - We are still working on changing the "refine search" functionality so that it conducts an "AND" search rather than an "OR" search. I will let you know when this has been resolved.
(3) Navigation links not referring to certain publications under expected headings (eg Bankruptcy) - We are currently conducting the final testing stages of a new landing page for our online publications. This will have a much better look and feel and will resolve the navigation links issue that you raised.

(4) No indexes online - Another project is currently underway to re-introduce the index content, but in a way that will make finding similarly indexed content within a publication and across multiple publications much easier. This is still some time away from completion, but the project is well under way.

Thomsons/Lawbook - issues currently with them on our behalf

1. The search on The Laws of Australia is really not to be trusted. One of the bugs in the system appears to be when you do a search such as:

"deed covenant"@10 - in the free text search - results 10
and then refining the search using the word enforc* - results 3362

Thomson/Lawbook has responded to the search within a search issue with quite a good explanation, and the information that Thomsons were in fact working on a fix for it (but hadn’t let anyone know):

When you combine a phrase search (eg "deed covenant"@10) with another term (eg enforc*) and you don't enter "AND", it is conducting an "OR" search (which it shouldn't be) and is throwing up more results rather than less. This is in the process of being fixed - it appears that someone had in fact fed through your information to the technology team and they were working on a fix.

In the (hopefully very) short term the way to get around this is to combine the search (eg search for "deed covenant"@10 AND enforc* in the free text search box). This will give the correct results.

I will let you know when the searching functionality has been fixed and deployed online.



2. The subject navigation links along the left side of the screen no longer refer to the new commentary publication of that subject e.g. under Bankruptcy the Commentary does not appear when the javascript + sign is opened – this makes it quite difficult to browse (you can do it individually within the actually commentary document itself, but this is not so useful)


Thomson/Lawbook response (10/4/08) Thanks for passing these on. I'm looking into them and will get back to you when I have some more information.



BF: In my opinion returning the online indexes to the looseleaf services (which both CCH & LNAU have had the good sense retain online) would resolve most of the problems which relate to the inherent flaws of all search engines - (1. language is too variable so you miss something important or 2. the language has too many meanings so you get too many off the point hits). I have written to Thomsons more than once about this, but have not had any considered response from them. The idea they have is that the new commentaries will over-ride the need for an actual Index, although the commentary structure doesn’t particularly do this for fairly obvious reasons. Indexes will re-direct you from many different points, back to the legal issue. Browsing and searching are never as targeted. Thomsons print publications still have indexes; I use the Index to The laws of Australia quite often as a really useful way of getting to the legal point I want to read about. It’s much faster than messing around with their offputting interface (and the constant chance of faux results).




3. It isn’t possible to gather a list of 'hit' documents across many pages of a particular search results without losing the marked hits from the pages before. So on every page once you’ve selected the items you want you have to print out those hits before moving on. Saving them doesn’t really work as they usually only save as html pages and look like rubbish without the ‘complete files’ folder which accompanies them – and how do you email that?

Thomson/Lawbook response (I've put this up as a problem before) I have now logged calls to have the tagging issues fixed and will keep you updated on their progress. I apologise for the fact that these problems have not been remedied before now.



4. There are major discrepancies in subject headings within the ALJI.

Thomson/Lawbook response (9/4/08) : I have contacted the team responsible for ALJI and have asked them to contact you in regards to the subject heading discrepancies. If you don't hear from them within the week, feel free to let me know and I can chase it up again.

*****

So if anyone finds that any of these issues have been remedied can you email me - regards Barbara

lawbookpublishing.com - where are the titles now?

Building Law Queensland and the Annotated Security of Payment Act are both being published by Thomson Legal and Regulatory Limited

The online Building and Construction Industries Payment Act is available through the RICS website at: http://www.ricsdrs.com.au/6-sopguide.php

The Annotated Subcontractors' Charges Act is handled by Stephen Pyman himself.
stephen.pyman@holdingredlich.com.au

Presidian is publishing Boge's Annotated Land Act and Queensland State Lands Handbook but Chris Boge has update material available here http://www.queenslandstatelands.info/

That's all for now folks, but please email me if you have further and better particulars... Barbara

Help, I think I've got search-engine fatigue..

I think I’m suffering from SEF. I’ve now been trained, upskilled, put on publishers focus groups, retrained and re-educated in dos-based legal research databases, the subsequent cd versions & now their online counterparts for the past 15 years and counting. And in turn I’ve trained clients, helped upgrade their skills, taken their concerns back and forth to publishers, and helped retrain them in all the things I’ve been retrained in. Like me they’ve mastered dos commands, keyboard control commands, boolean operators, folio grammar, field searching and the refinements of using butterworths, lexis, lawbook, westlaw, austlii, comlaw, timebase, capitol monitor, OQPC, QLI etc etc etc. We’ve all reminded ourselves daily of the variations from one database to another of truncators and proximity operators . We’ve considered cartwheels; we’ve dreamed of federated searching that actually works. We’ve collectively taken on board the concepts of keywords, subject headings, synonym, taxonomies, and folksonomies. And still, in almost every case the results they (and I) continue to get can be inconsistent, not on point or buried in unhelpful hitlists which don’t make sense until every single record is opened and read anyway. And that’s without even going into the mysteries of downloading or printing (have Thomson software developers ever tried creating a useful document from the results of any complicated research in their own databases?). I’m not knocking the wonderful availability of online materials. But wandering daily in Database-land has grown more, not less, wearisome over the course of time. Every ‘advance’ advocated to us by publishers carries with it some mysterious regression. It also means that our hapless clients must also start all over again when all they want to be able to do is find the area of law that's on point for them and keep doing the same thing when they need to read it again. What I’d like to do is to make video clips of some of our real life lawyers researching their way through CCH or Lawbook or LexisNexis. Then I'd post the results on YouTube. That would be at least as funny as March of the Librarians (not very).

Publishers Liaison Update March 2007

PUBLISHERS LIAISON UPDATE MARCH 2007

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Systematics - Quantum online - current only to mid 2005 - contacted 23/01/2007 - by email

RESPONSE - from Kylie Peterson - We are currently reviewing this situation with the content provider and I will come back to you as soon as I have further information about the future of the service. There has been no policy decision at this stage to discontinue the service and we are hopeful that we will indeed be able to return the product to its former level of currency.

OUTCOME : without any further response from Systematics BF emailed again 6/3/07 - nothing further yet

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lawbookpublishing.com.au - Annotated Land Title Act - updates are infrequent, publication often lacks currency; there have been comments from members of the list that other titles from this Publisher are not updated often enough and that errors remain uncorrected from one issue to the next - contacted 22/02/07 - by phone

RESPONSE - publisher Devi Alberti reports that the Annotated Land Title Act is updated 2 x per year and that the scale of payment for each update is charged out at about 65c per page. His advice was that the last update was published 30/6/2006 and the next will be approximately 1/7/2007. A year for this publication is is a financial year. He has also requested that the ALLG(Q) approach him in writing and not by phone.

OUTCOME : the Committee is considering writing to this publisher to outline our problems with looseleaf titles which have very long intervals between updates.

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Comlaw - ongoing problems with the interface, slowness of response time and inconsistent results ; responses harvested from the Queensland list were emailed 19/2/07 to National Publishers Liaison representativel Petal Kinder

OUTCOME : no response as yet

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Thomsons - loss of visible online indexes - TLA and other services; these are available in the print versions, are a valuable resource for online users & we would like to have them; BF emailed as personal request 24/2/07 but received no reply; further emailed a list of responses from the Queensland list 18/3/07

OUTCOME : BF to meet with Thomsons representatives Wed 28/3/07 (updated on original info)

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LexisNexis AU - Queensland Planning and Environment Reports online but no pdf version available : BF rang Printacular (the publisher in Moorooka) to see if there might be an impediment at their end 14/03/07 - left message

OUTCOME : no response as yet

NLS 2006

On December 1 and 2 2006 hundreds of new Librarians converged on the John Niland Scientia building in Sydney to participate in ALIA’s New Librarians Symposium (NLS). This is the fourth event of its kind to be held in Australia. The theme pathways and possibilities matched the event’s purpose to facilitate lively debate amongst new Librarians on what we should be saying about our profession. Some delegates took this a step further by presenting their first conference paper.

Papers were presented on a variety of topics of interest to new and not so new Librarians. Many of the papers and presentations can be viewed on the Symposium’s website.

There was a strong presence from the Law Library field with the ALLG NSW Division staffing a stall in the Trade Exhibition. Aspiring Law Librarians were able to listen to the advice of Vanessa O’Meara and Melanie Adams in the session “So you want to be a Law Librarian?” Lisa Paul presented a very interesting paper on her involvement as an Academic Law Librarian in the review of undergraduate law curriculum at Griffith Law School and how this has benefited her in her career.

We can highly recommend NLS as an opportunity to learn, develop your networks and have fun! We’d encourage the ALLG to continue to support this event in the future. Keep your eyes peeled for the next issue of the ALLG (Q) Newsletter, out next week for a full report on NLS2006.

-Sally Manser & Kirsten Harte

Update on Copyright Seminar

Hi Everyone, Moyra has clarified some of the information I posted yesterday.
Cheers
Helen

Dear ALLG members
I would like to clarify an item in Helen's report of the talk I gave last Thursday.
The existing Fair dealing exceptions are unchanged - in fact a new category has been added
Fair dealing now applies to
1. Research and study
2. Criticism or review
3. Reporting the news
4. Giving of professional advice
AND
5. Parody and satire
Two or more articles from the same journal issue may be reproduced if they are for the same course of study or the same research (Cf the original requirement that they be on the same subject)
A library may request another library
(a) to provide copies for a client for any of the above purposes
(b) for inclusion in the library's collection
If the request it for (b) it is not clear that more than one article may be copied (since it is not for the same course of research or study)
Please don't hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any further queries.
Moyra McAllister
ALIA Copyright Adviser
Mob: 0409 463 663
copyright@alia.org.au

Copyright Update

Hi Everyone
Richard and I attended a Copyright Seminar last Thursday at lunch time which was put on by ALIA Quorum. Moyra McAllister is the copyright adviser for ALIA. It was very good. Moyra went through some very basic points about what copyright is etc, but also covered some of the sections of the recent amendments to the Copyright Act. This is just an excerpt of what she covered and suggested.

The fair dealing provisions still exist but they are only for research or study - and that means course/study. The fair dealing provisions no longer apply to libraries copying for other libraries.

Moyra pointed out the definition does not say that the Library has to be open to the public - just that you have to be willing to supply ILL.

There are special case exceptions for libraries s200AB - but they are not really certain what "certain purposes" they are yet!

She suggests at a minimum we need to be listed on the Australian Libraries Gateway, need to list the subject areas we specialise and our willingness to provide ILL. CAL has also been recommending to people that our library catalogues need to online. She said that this is not correct and we don't have to do that. We do however, have to be part of the Interlibrary loan network - and we would have to do better than the ALLG Union Serials list. Something like GratisNet would be worthwhile.

There is also a Corporate Libraries Licence from CAL which she also thinks would be a good idea to get.

Our changing clients

Following on from the Talkfest on Wednesday, I came across a bibliography (courtesy of the ALIA Newgrads elist) on next generation librarianship that looked very interesting.

Lots of stuff about younger client groups, and as a contrast the "memo to baby boomer" article about teaching the boomers to let go seemed worth a read.

Membership Directory

The January 2007 edition of the ALLG(Q) Membership Directory is now available. If you did not receive the email with the directory attached but would like a copy of the directory, please let me know and I'll onf0rward to you.

Sandy

Information Online 2007

Darling Harbour

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David Claudia & Marie

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Beth Crawter

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Queuing for the internet at Information Online 2007

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Lunch time

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Richard, Claudia & Claire

Richard Claudia & Barbara

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Afternoon tea

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It was a really excellent conference - come to our Talkfest and find out why

Major Mike Mori addresses Queensland lawyers

Our roving reporter Barbara Flowers has filed this extremely informative report of Major Mori's update on David Hicks, organised by the Australian Lawyers Alliance and held at the Brisbane Convention Centre on Friday 3rd November:

Major Mike Mori attracted quite a crowd at the Convention Centre, in spite of the Friday lunch time slot, slightly less than enough time to scramble across the Victoria Bridge and then be back at work for Friday arvo's surprises. One interesting fact about Major Mori is that he was a Criminal Lawyer. This became evident from his persuasive presentation of the David Hicks facts, summarised with a flourish and delivered with the theatre and passion of the good barrister that he clearly is. Another interesting fact is that he volunteered for the role of David Hicks' lawyer, and was not appointed by the Department of Defense, in spite of the assertion otherwise in his Wikipedia entry. This sheds some light on the curious contrast between his haircut and his legal stance. The other things I discovered about him is that his nickname is Dan and he has served in the US Marine Corps since 1983.

He took us through a timeline of Hicks' incarceration, the bouts of solitary confinement, the history and legality of the Military Commissions and the various slowly grinding wheels of justice which culminated in two important US Supreme Court cases which affect the GITMO detainees:
In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld 542 U.S. 507 (2004) the Court ruled that detainees who are U.S. citizens must have the ability to challenge their detention before an impartial judge.

In Rasul v. Bush 542 U.S. 466 (2004) the Court ruled that U.S. courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.

The result of these two decisions has been the drafting and enactment of the Military Commissions Act 2006. Interestingly the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, wrote the rules of trial procedure for this new Act and it has clearly been drafted to overcome the legal issues raised by the Supreme Court in the two cases above. Under the MCA the normal rules of evidence are changed. The burden of proof is now on the defence to prove the prosecution’s evidence unreliable while at the same time not allowing knowledge of the way in which this evidence was obtained, or at times, even access to it. Another outcome has been the stripping of habeas, from the Commission’s trial process. (A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by someone objecting to his own or another's detention, and showing that the court ordering detention made a legal or factual error.) It creates a new crime of ‘conspiracy’, something the higher English courts have already rejected as a criminal offence. And it allows for retrospectivity, something the Australian Attorney-General has specifically stated as inappropriate to our own legal system, while accepting that it can apply to David Hicks within the US legal system.

There have also been amendments to the War Crimes Act (US Code Title 18, para 2441) an Act which covers combat offenses committed by people who are not active military personnel. The changes remove the offence of degrading a prisoner (is this a back door tolerance of torture?) and no longer requires the provision of a fair trial.
Mori then outlined the different levels of law which might apply to Hicks. Under Australian law there is no statute which Hicks has violated, according to the Australian government. Under US law as an Australian citizen he cannot be charged with aiding the enemy although he was picked up fighting against the US in Afghanistan. The US Congress itself has found that attacking soldiers is not an unlawful war offence, it’s what each side does to the other. Under International Law there are prohibitions regarding the means of attack, and prohibitions on particular conduct towards protected persons or objects, but was Hicks guilty of any of these things. Major Mori thinks not.

The future in some ways is going to be déjà vu all over again as much of the progress achieved in Rasul and Hamdan in testing the legality of the Guantanamo incarcerations will have to be re-litigated subsequent to the MCA. At the moment Mori sees another argument over jurisdiction, something that had been resolved in Rasul.

Of course there was a lot more legal discussion but it wouldn’t be possible to fit all of that into a short overview like this one. I’ve tried to pinpoint the important sign posts in Major Mori’s presentation. It was good to get a better insight into the nexus between politics, the media and the legal system, something we obviously see at close quarters in Queensland and Australia from time to time.

And here is one last interesting fact, this time about David Hicks. The famous photograph where he’s holding what looks like a rocket launcher on his shoulder, was actually taken in Albania, long before he went to Afghanistan. In the full picture he’s posing with a couple of grinning friends. It gives quite a different impression from the cropped version we’ve been shown, the one where it seems he’s firing a few rounds at the US Army right that minute.

ALLG (Q) Xmas Party

Get you're diaries out, and pencil in this important social event!

The ALLG(Q) Festive Christmas Cocktail Party has been booked for Thursday 7 December at the City Gardens Cafe, Brisbane City Botanical Gardens commencing at 5.30 pm.

Cost: $25 members, $40 non members. This includes:

• Pre-dinner savouries will be served at 6.00 pm
• Main course which is fork dish will be served buffet style at 7.30 pm
• Dessert will be then served at 8.20 pm

Champagne provided on arrival, courtesy of Softlink and there will be a cash bar available for drinks (more details to follow).

We need a minimum of 35 for this venue, so the more the merrier! More details on the venue are available from their website, www.citygardens.com.au

Please send an expression of interest in attending this Christmas party to Susan Stockwell by Friday 3 November 2006 if possible to make sure we will have sufficient numbers.