An exciting new forum now exists for discussion of foreign law collection development through the newsly created FCIL Foreign Collection Development blog (http://foreignlawcollections.blogspot.com/). Newer FCIL librarians can learn from the wisdom of experienced FCIL librarians who collect foreign titles, and the blog can serve as a medium for discussions of current titles in this unique area of collection development. As always, there are philosophical debates about which trends should be followed for collection development in foreign law, and our AALL interest group hopes to facilitate open discussions about foreign law collection development in this digital era. In addition, the blog should serve as a forum for exchange of bibliographic information for new titles, and the postings will include the cost of new online/print titles. Ideally, the discussions, postings, and archives should help everyone make better decisions for foreign collection development and provide helpful guidance for budgeting foreign legal purchases.

The inception of the blog arose through an ad hoc meeting at the 2005 AALL Annual Meeting in San Antonio for collectors of foreign law in US academic institutions, which was led by Dan Wade. Based on the discussions at that meeting, everyone decided that it would be beneficial to post new major acquisitions and information on newly published journals in an archivable electronic format, such as a blog. Further, it was thought that this information might be especially helpful for specialists in foreign collection development and not of general interest to all of the subscribers of Int-Law. Therefore, the group decided that a blog should be created for specialists in this field of law librarianship and should also be available to those who want to ask questions about foreign collection development through a subscription to the blog for posting. In consultation with several selectors, including Lyonette Louis-Jacques from the University of Chicago, I developed the blog where selectors can announce major new publications and new foreign and international law journals. We ask that you include the following information in your posts and comments to the blog when you refer to a foreign or international title: 1) Journal or book title; 2) Publisher; 3) Cost for print and/or electronic source, if available; 4) English translation, if available; 5) URL for the publisher; and 6) Any other bibliographic information. That way, others can easily locate the titles and more effectively comment on appropriateness and cost-effective collection development policies. Dan Wade of the Yale University Law Library is our current moderator for the blog and hopes to add entries each week to facilitate discussions on new foreign legal titles.

As noted above, the blog is now implemented and is readable at http://foreignlawcollections.blogspot.com/. In order to ensure that all comments are from those who are interested in foreign collection development, the blog was created as a closed forum, which requires registration for posting and making comments to the blog. If you want to register to become a member of the blog and post comments or new entries, please contact me at h-kuehl@law.northwestern.edu and I will quickly add you to the member list, which allows you access to create posts and comment on posts through Blogger. If you use an aggregator, you can subscribe to our blog's site feed URL at http://foreignlawcollections.blogspot.com/atom.xml . We will have weekly messages to stimulate discussion, but we can become even more successful in archiving this bibliographic material for foreign collection development through your posts and comments from FCIL members. So, we encourage all of the experts to contribute to this information exchange and, if you are a newer member and have a foreign legal collection development question, do not hesitate to use the blog as a forum to ask questions and seek the advice of your more experience FCIL colleagues.