Open law : technology in service of the rule of law

As law librarians we have ready access to the full range of legal materials - from free sources and powerful commercial legal databases, from medieval times to the modern day. We can have the entirety of primary law (and the secondary materials needed to decipher it) at our fingertips within seconds. For those without such access- which is the majority of the general public - what are their options? How do those who do not have access to the likes of Lexis and Westlaw, or even a library with printed legal materials, find legal information- and why is it important that they can? This article will consider these questions, covering the United Kingdom and the United States of America, with a particular focus on the issue of open law. First we will have a short historical overview of access to legal information; we will then turn to the reasons why wide and full access to legal information is important, and look at some examples of systems which aim at providing such access. Some of the issues with such systems are discussed, followed by a brief outline of an ideal open law system. We end with a look at the social and political elements needed to make the technology of open law systems work.</p

Southeastern Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting

The 2009 SEAALL Annual Meeting was held in Athens Georgia, April 16-18, 2009

OER and Perma.cc

Open access scholarship is just the beginning of all you can do with your repository. Open Information can provide a valuable service to your community by making law - the foundation of our society - more open and accessible. Open Educational Resources (OER) seek to ameliorate the issues caused by locked and copyrighted educational materials. The first part of this presentation will explain the meaning and use of OER and Legal Information as well as offer examples of how to create them. In recent years, Harvard Law School Library has undertaken ambitious, challenging projects to prevent link rot in legal scholarship and court opinions, to create an open alternative to traditional legal coursebooks and to digitize its collection of U.S. case law. The second part of this presentation will introduce conference participants to these projects and the law repositories they’re producing, and will explore ways that libraries can work together to do more

Southeastern Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting

The 2009 SEAALL Annual Meeting was held in Athens Georgia, April 16-18, 2009