vol. 15, no. 1
October 2000

Convenor: Marylin J. Raisch, International and Foreign Law Librarian, Bora Laskin Law Library, University of Toronto
Attending: Vicki Szymczak, Brooklyn Law School; Bobbi Weaver, California Western School of Law Library; Mila Rush, University of Minnesota Law School; Malo Bernal, Library of Congress; Lyonette Louis-Jacques, University of Chicago Law School.

The following items were prepared for the proposed agenda:

1. Partnering of institutions via shared electronic portal web sites and links; distance education; how or if this is enhancing access to resources;

2. Issues of archiving and preservation- new initiatives such as Hein Online and more
backfiles of primary and secondary sources.

Partnering and portals

In connection with distance education and web links, Marylin Raisch announced a conference to be held at the Bora Laskin Law Library of the University of Toronto February 22-24, 2001 entitled “Not a Box but a Window: Law Libraries and Legal Education in a Virtual World” (the conference web site is at http://www.law-lib.utoronto.ca/conferences/future/index.htm).  This conference would explore new roles and configurations for the virtual education and collections that may be the future of most forms of legal education. Vicki Szymczak described some of the presentations on this and related topics at the recent CALI conference.

With regard to archiving and preserving legal materials, Malo Bernal described some of the work of the Special Committee on Authentication and Preservation of Digital Information.  A program proposal for a panel of speakers, a town meeting, or some form of group discussion is being planned.  The problems of archiving and providing United States government information for GPO depositories is scheduled for a Hot Topic presentation at this meeting, and all agreed it would be interesting to hear about the issues by a “virtual” GPO library concept. Those present also agreed that AALL members should express concern because with only a very few exceptions, the commercial market is not focused on archiving.

The final charge for the group, assigned to the convenor, was to draft a goal statement for this interest group,  which would be submitted in compliance with the FCIL call for such statements so that its overall mission and strategic planning can be completed.

The proposed statement of Goals of the Electronic Issues Interest Group is as follows:

The principal goal of the Electronic Issues Interest Group is to explore and promote ways to disseminate, implement, and make effective use of, electronic legal information in the area of foreign, comparative, and international law. Specific steps towards this goal would include

1) Linking to the work of the Special Committee on Authentication and Preservation of Digital Information and to keep track of such initiatives throughout the Association which also have relevance to the use of electronic information in this subject area of international and foreign law;
2) Approaching publishers with questions about their practices with regard to the quality of electronic products in the international and foreign law area, its licensing, dissemination, and authentication.
3) Leading the way in identifying and prioritizing the important electronic materials that should be considered for archiving and seeing if and how the material can be preserved.
4) Connecting members of the FCIL-SIS to conferences and publications which particularly deal with updating information on products, sources, and creative uses of electronic formats, as, for example, in teaching specialized legal research.
5) Providing a forum for members to raise issues of concern regarding access to, and the reliability of, electronic forms of legal information for foreign, comparative and international law.

The Electronic Issues Interest Group will convene at the next annual meeting in July, 2001.