More than 50 librarians and lawyers attended the Spring International Program on Legal Research that was held at the Library of Congress on March 4. With a theme of "Documents and Technological Resources on International Law," the program was sponsored by the District of Columbia Library Association (DCLA) in collaboration with the Special Library Association's D.C. Chapter; Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C.; American Society of International Law; and the Federal and Armed Forces Libraries Round Table of the American Library Association. Financial support came from corporate cosponsors West Group/Westlaw and ISI.
Patrick Daillier of the University of Paris and Law Librarian of Congress Rubens Medina - Andrea Morris Gruhl
Law Librarian of Congress Rubens Medina spoke on "Legal Information in an International/Global Context." He discussed the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), which was initiated by the Library in 1992. The Library provides legal, technical, administrative and network support for GLIN, and the Law Library contributes the laws of the United States and many other Spanish, Portuguese and French- speaking nations that are not yet participating in GLIN.
Medina explained that participation in GLIN is open to any government or jurisdictional authority. Currently, 15 jurisdictions participate in GLIN (Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Kuwait, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Romania, South Korea, Taiwan, Tunisia, Ukraine, United States, and Uruguay) and two international organizations, (MERCOSUR, a trade federation in South America, and the United Nations).
The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank are other important GLIN partners that have helped recruit and support country membership. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has also provided GLIN with some important technical advice and assistance.
When complete, the Law Librarian stated, GLIN will include the full range of legal information such as statutes, regulations, codes, treaties, legislative records and judicial decisions, as well as opinions, scholarly sources, and commentaries–all provided in digital format by member nations for inclusion in GLIN. Full texts in the original language are accessible through an English-language summary.
According to Medina, the Law Library of Congress made several important contributions by launching GLIN. It provided the basic conceptual framework that reflects its conviction that representative governments have the duty to disseminate laws to their citizens. It also offered a technological prototype comprising readily available hardware and software that is capable of capturing and preserving the format and content of the original statutory and regulatory instruments. Finally, the Law Library developed a set of guiding principles that set forth the rights and obligations of contributing member nations and established the basic cooperative character of the network.
The second speaker was Patrick Daillier, professor of law at the University of Paris and director of its Center for International Law. In his presentation titled "Electronic Tools and Documentation in International and European Community Law," he spoke of the need to build bridges between librarians, professors and legal researchers. Daillier believes this is important, not only for technical and financial reasons, but also to complement their differing professional skills and methodologies.
According to Daillier, Europeans have specific needs requiring intensive links between government databases and those of universities. European technological developments in digitization and in artificial intelligence software have special challenges due to linguistic, financial and technical reasons. For example, the European Union has 11 official languages, and individual countries generally cannot communicate multinationally using a common language. Quick, understandable access to all kinds of European law requires harmonization of laws by countries in the union. Few viable databases, the parochialism of the data, incompatible hardware and software platforms, and limitations of keyword searches are some impediments to wide use of documentary resources.
He also pointed out that establishing quality control of digital resources (e.g., integrity, authenticity, originality and confidentiality of data) poses more challenges than it does with paper-based information.
Daillier noted that one of the most rapidly expanding areas of international law is copyright law, which has a major impact on the kinds of information that may be available for free on the Internet and which may be available for a fee or on a limited basis. According to Daillier, paying for access to computerized legal regulations runs counter to European tradition.
"The free access to official information via electronic databases is the modern way of coming to city hall to read the official journal," he said. He concluded by demonstrating his forthcoming French CD-ROM "Thucydide," which is an annotated bibliography of international legal literature from the past 150 years with electronic links and bibliographic references. Its Help file provides key words in French, English and Spanish.
