Legal Research

The LCO: a toe in the water of interactive communication

By Patricia Hughes

So I was thinking about what to write about: with the posts on the Martin Luther King Jr. collection made open to the public (by the way, when did he become MLK? something else I missed, obviously), the Inauguration today and hearing Oscar Peterson’s Hymn to Freedom (to be played at the Inauguration), it was tempting to add my musings to the millions of words written and spoken about how these are all interconnected, why it took someone with Obama’s background rather than the descendant of slaves to get things this far, or about the significance of transitions in democratic systems and why sometimes ritual matters (the personifications of the old and new regimes riding in a car together to the Inauguration not being the least important of these). Lots of fun, really meaningful topics.

Instead, I’ll update my comments on the LCO and technology. We have two new consultation papers coming out around the end of the month and we’re experimenting with two ways of encouraging responses from a broader group of participants.

For the one, in family law, we’re making available a comment form to be emailed to the LCO that only the LCO will see. We hope this will make it easier for people who have something to say, but don’t want or have the resources to prepare a “formal” written submissions. Not really interactive, actually a bit static, but a bit more accessible.

For the other, our second consultation paper in our older adults project, we’re trying a different method. This will be in effect a blog, a page where people can comment and see each other’s comments. It will be set up so that it can capture developments in the project. I’m aware that this is an older adults project, and this approach might not attract as much use by the project’s “target group” as another project might, but who knows? look at all the “older adults” on Slaw! And, of course, all the non-older adults who might be interested in the project for one reason or another.

We’re in the process of developing a new website that will include interactive elements and social media (not that we’re jumping headfirst into the pool of same) and these tiny steps will allow us to see how they work.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 20, 2009 (boomark / email).