FCIL Newsletter, October 1998
v. 13, no. 1

The East European working group was held on Tuesday, July 14, 1998. The eleven attendees represented a wide range of interest and expertise in the subject matter. Some members had a personal interest, others had a professional interest but lacked institutional support for collection development in this area, and others had intensive institutional collection development interest. In attendance were Malo Bernal, Mary Strouse, Jim Licke, Xinh Luu, Maria Smolka-Day, Michael Estle, Bill McCloy, Marta Kiszely, Dan Wade, Margareta Horiba and Tracy Thompson.

The group developed four goals for the coming year:

• 1. Develop a program to examine the modes of dissemination of government information in East European and other non-U.S. governments. Mary Strouse (Howard U.) will pursue this idea. We hope to tap the resources of CEELI (Central and East European Law Initiative) in D.C for this program next year.
• 2. Compile a list of English-language sources of Constitutional Court decisions, as well as other primary and secondary legal materials. This would be an on-going project to which we would add sources as we come across them in our day-to-day work.
• 3. Compile a list of contact persons in various institutions, both here and abroad, who have shown a willingness to assist librarians in the acquisition of East European legal materials. The idea is not simply to create a list of those who are in official positions of responsibility for this kind of support, but rather a list of people known to us through our own experience to be helpful, knowledgeable and willing to assist in this manner.
• 4. Disseminate the information that we gather in #2 and #3 above via the FCIL website. In this regard the group intends to contact Anne Burnett to discuss the feasibility of space on the FCIL website for working groups to convey information.

In addition to these goals, the group discussed the possibility of using working group time slots for specialized programming in future years. Such programs could include invited speakers, and would be open to the Association at large, but would focus on an area of specific interest to the working group. We also shared information regarding relevant Web sites, vendors and other potential sources for acquiring East European materials.

Anyone with an interest in East European sources is encouraged to attend next year's working group. If you have comments or questions about the group or its goals, please contact tracy.thompson@yale.edu.

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