Legal Research

Comparison of English Reports sources

By Shaunna Mireau

There is an excellent article over at the Stream comparing the electronic sources of the English Reports. Just like Drew Jackson, I love it when someone asks me for a case I know is one of the weird citations that are incorporated into the E.R.’s. I always feel like a superstar, which helps balance the “I have no idea what I’m doing” moments.

We have talked about the HeinOnline and CommonLII sources of this data on Slaw.

The usefulness of these, and other digitized collections of aging print, hit home for me this week. I was looking for some old (1800’s) ministerial orders, and thanks to some excellent assistance from the staff at the Alberta Legislature Library, found them. Unfortunately, the collection was extremely fragile and the material was unable to be copied. The only option for collecting the data for research use was to take a photograph of each page. Perfectly reasonable, given the fragile nature of the resource; somewhat impractical for my purposes. Is your organization prepared for this type of scenario? Do you have a ready source of a high resolution camera for quick retrieval of fragile material?

Thankfully, I did not need to retrieve the items in the end. I have learned that it is a good idea to have a plan for this scenario. My print collection of English Reports is “read in library – do not photocopy”. They are still on the shelf because they are beautiful, and fortunately not too fragile – yet.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on February 04, 2010 (boomark / email).