Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2009

Source Publication

Vol. 34 No. 4 Canadian Law Library Review 182

Abstract

CanLII, the free virtual law library for Canada, has its roots in three separate developments. The first was the launch of the Legal Information Institute movement, with Cornell and Australia as the first models of these efforts. Second, in Canada, LexUM (Centre for Research at the Universit6 de Montreal's Faculty of Law) had a long history of supporting open access to law since it started publishing the case law of the Supreme Court of Canada. Third, the Director of the Law Society of Upper Canada at the time was advocating to the National Virtual Library Group of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada that there was a need to make legal information affordable for legal practitioners due to the escalating and uncontrollable cost of legal publications and services and the copyright restrictions being litigated by the commercial publishers.

French Abstract

CanLlI, la bibliotheque juridique virtuelle gratuite pour le Canada, s'est diveloppe de fa~on significative quant son contenu et sa presentation au cours de ces neuf dernieres ann~es. Cet article passe en revue et analyse ces d~veloppements et les resultats obtenus lors d'un sondage men6 aupres des avocats et des biblioth~caires qui utilisent cette base de donnes. Les rsultats du sondage indiquent que plusieurs ripondants utilisent CanLlI comme premiere source d'information pour obtenir de l'information juridique et trouvent le site tres convivial.

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