Let us support your end-of-term prep with our syllabus service and the latest law library news impacting your teaching and research. Also, learn about HeinOnline's AI features, students' access to AI tools in Westlaw, Justice Laws' new look, and more in this month's Digital Services Dispatch.
Syllabus Service due December 3
The Law Library is pleased to provide copyright clearance for Winter 2025 courses through our Syllabus Service. This service supports law faculty and staff in making course readings accessible to students while ensuring compliance with Canadian copyright legislation and the University of Toronto’s licensing agreements and policies.
To participate, please email your syllabus to law.infoexpress@utoronto.ca by Wednesday, December 3, 2025. Submissions will be reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis.
Thank you to all who have already submitted their syllabus for review.
Open Access Week & Edward Elgar Publishing
International Open Access Week was October 20-26, 2025. Open Access Week offers the academic and research community a chance to explore the benefits of open access, exchange insights with peers, and promote wider participation in making open access a standard practice in scholarly communication.
As part of sharing content with a global audience, Edward Elgar Publishing offers a wide selection of open access titles, including individual law book chapters and scholarly articles.
You can browse open access law titles on the Elgar Online site.
Check out our latest list of print and digital books available at the library.
Extended Library Hours
Reminder that our Fall Extended Hours run from November 17 - December 17, 2025.
- Monday - Friday: 8:45 am – Midnight
- Weekend: 10:00 am – 10:00 pm
Regular Hours resume on January 5, 2026.
Recent Faculty Scholarship
Published in The Supreme Court Law Review, Professor Catherine Valcke critically examines the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1981 Ron Engineering decision.
Catherine Valcke, “Is Ron Engineering Good Law in Quebec?”, (2025) 7 SCLR (3d) 75.
Read the article on Lexis+ Canada.
If you have published a book, chapter, or article recently, please let us know so we can feature it in our next issue of InfoEXPRESS Extra!
Rise and shine: Study room improvements
We are piloting new lamps and desk risers in the group study rooms to create more comfortable study environments for our students. Lamps are dimmable with adjustable warm and cool temperature light options. Portable and adjustable desk risers convert study tables to a standing workspace.
For the first round of this project, students can vote for their favourite items using the attached survey QR codes. More changes to come in the winter term!
We encourage faculty to remind students that they can also borrow our focus-aids, including earmuffs, book stands, and light-sensitivity glasses, to improve their studying experience in the library.
Digital Services Dispatch
Don’t get snowed under by all the website changes this season! Read on for the latest updates to HeinOnline, Westlaw, and more.
New! HeinOnline AI Summaries
HeinOnline recently launched their new AI Summaries feature, run on an in-house AI model.
Not all articles have an AI summary just yet. If a summary is available for an article, it will appear in three places: Search results, article downloads, and reader interface.
When you run a keyword search, the AI summary will appear in the tab under each search result. In downloaded articles, AI summaries appear after the HeinOnline cover page and before the full text of the article.
Users can access the AI summary from the toolbar while reading the article within the HeinOnline database. Clicking the “sparkles” button will pull up the AI summary associated with the article, which can be copied and pasted into another document.
To see AI Summaries in action, watch HeinOnline’s 2-minute video explaining the new feature and where it appears on the platform. To learn more about HeinOnline’s AI model, visit their AI Infrastructure: Security & Trust Statement.
At this time, the AI Summaries feature cannot be turned off or hidden by default for all U of T users. We know that AI isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but HeinOnline has assured us that they are open to user feedback. If you have any questions or concerns about the new AI feature, please email alexandra.kwan@utoronto.ca.
New! Student access to AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw
Canadian law school faculty, staff and their students now have access to AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Edge Canada and Search & Summarize on Practical Law Canada. AI-Assisted Research page will now appear as the default landing screen in Westlaw unless users adjust individual account settings.
In their November 14 announcement, Thomson Reuters Canada is offering on-demand product training and live training webinars to support the roll-out to law student users.
Law faculty members who are seeking a custom training session or are experiencing difficulties with accessing new AI features can email our Digital Services Librarian with questions and concerns.
A fresh look for Justice Laws
On November 5, Canada’s Department of Justice launched the new Justice Laws website interface to “enhance usability, accessibility, and consistency across government platforms”.
Notable changes include a simplified homepage, a lighter colour scheme, and removal of the left-side menu. Overall structure and links to the legislation itself remain unchanged. For a list of changes between the old and new site, visit the Table of Concordance.
Justice Laws continues to be the official source of Canadian federal legislation.
Nevo, an Israeli law database – Trial coming soon
We will be trialing the Nevo database for 2 weeks. Please look out for an email once the trial goes live.
Nevo is a major Israeli law database with commentary and primary law in Hebrew. For more information about the platform, please view the overview videos (videos are only available in Hebrew).
Changes to Global Regulation database
Global-Regulation recently completed its migration to the new AI-powered platform, Regnet.
In the new Regnet platform, the access method to this database has changed for U of T users. Previously, U of T users could access the tool through our library catalogue and authenticate with their UTORid. As a result of the migration, the old link is no longer active, and users must create an individual user account prior to accessing the platform and its content.
We are currently investigating another way for users to access the resource. In the meantime, if you wish to create an account to access the platform, please contact alexandra.kwan@utoronto.ca for instructions.
Wrap up
If you have questions or comments about our library’s e-Resources and databases, please email our Digital Services Librarian at alexandra.kwan@utoronto.ca.