Tag Archives: legal information

In an interview in the Connecticut Law Tribune, Darcy Kirk, associate dean for library and technology and professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, addresses some of the potential dangers of digital-only legal information.

• Are There Drawbacks to Law Libraries Going Digital?, By Thomas B. Scheffey, The Connecticut Law Tribune, (reprinted at Law.com) February 18, 2009.

She outlines a number of concerns:

• A concern that the information won't be permanently available as technology changes. "If the government agency or court doesn't plan before the current format goes out of use, we could lose the ability to access those publications."
• A concern that a government agency or a court, publishing online, might decide on its own what to delete. "Then, all of a sudden you don't have it online and you don't have it in print, either."
• A concern about the Google Book project because "Google is a for-profit entity. We're not. Google is interested in things that might ultimately make them some money."

These are not exactly problems of digital vs. paper; they are issues of control. When government agencies, courts, and the private sector insist on controlling what is online and what is not, libraries have no control over what is available. The simple solution is for libraries to build their own digital collections. This allows libraries to treat the information as a community resource and empowers the library to manage that information as a community resource and maintain that resource to match the needs of the community. Continue reading →

Continue Reading →

Free public access to legal information has a long history going back to the earliest days of the Web. John Wonderlich describes some of the background in Legal Information as a Global Movement (Open House Project, May 27th, 2008), which also includes 3 videos about the movement. This is excellent, informative, and inspiring! Tom Bruce describes still more of the history here. Continue reading →

Continue Reading →

While there is an abundance of state legal resources (laws, regulations, court opinions, etc), in most cases they can't be used in courts of law or for other legal purposes because its the print version that is considered "legally official." The American Association of Law Libraries has just released this new 50 state report outlining the status of online legal materials: State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources This report was released in conjunction with the National Summit on Authentication of Digital Information, which AALL held April 20-21 in Chicago. According to AALL, The 50 delegates who participated in this event were a distinguished group of individuals: judges, state government officials, attorneys, and leaders of AALL and of other organizations, such as the American Bar Association. They were invited because of their interest and expertise in some aspect of legal/government information. Proceedings from the summit will shortly be posted to the AALL web site. Continue reading →

Continue Reading →