FCIL Newsletter / October 1995

REPORTS FROM PITTSBURGH: WORKING GROUPS

Teaching Foreign and International Legal Research

by Christine Corcos
Case Western Reserve Law School Library

The FCIL Working Group on Teaching Foreign and International Legal Research met during the Pittsburgh conference to discuss two issues: 1) foreign, international, and comparative legal materials available through the Internet and their use in classroom teaching; and 2) the librarian exchange program.

Discussion of the use of the Internet centered on the shift from gophers to the World Wide Web and the necessity for adequate equipment and congenial surroundings for introducing this resource. Many law schools still do not have electronic classrooms, so teaching about the Internet and demonstrations of the WWW are often one on one. We talked about ways to convert the faculty to use of the Internet, and thus to convince them that more equipment is needed in libraries and classrooms. We agreed that one of the best ways is to find electronic resources of interest in various faculties and give them demonstrations and assistance in using those resources. Faculty members convinced of the usefulness of electronic resources can be powerful allies.

We discussed materials that can easily be recommended to students, such as the lists of electronic resources put together by Erik Heels, Mary Jensen, and Lyonette Louis-Jacques, and the possibility of loading pathfinders and other materials on various web servers. The syllabi of foreign, international, and comparative legal research courses submitted to Ken Rudolf some years ago, have been prepared for loading and will be loaded on the CWRU Law School webserver.

Telle Zoller (University of Wisconsin) reviewed the librarian exchange program and discussed the necessity for publicizing it. She handed out promotional materials and urged everyone attending to mention it to interested librarians, students, and faculty visiting our law schools as well as our own faculty, librarians, and students. She is happy to forward copies of the materials to any interested person.

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