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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHarvard Law Library Readies Trove of Decisions for Digital Age
Shelves of law books are an august symbol of legal practice, and no place, save the Library of Congress, can match the collection at Harvards Law School Library. Its trove includes nearly every state, federal, territorial and tribal judicial decision since colonial times a priceless potential resource for everyone from legal scholars to defense lawyers trying to challenge a criminal conviction.
Now, in a digital-age sacrifice intended to serve grand intentions, the Harvard librarians are slicing off the spines of all but the rarest volumes and feeding some 40 million pages through a high-speed scanner. They are taking this once unthinkable step to create a complete, searchable database of American case law that will be offered free on the Internet, allowing instant retrieval of vital records that usually must be paid for.
Improving access to justice is a priority, said Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School, explaining why Harvard has embarked on the project. We feel an obligation and an opportunity here to open up our resources to the public.
For many years now, bookcases of legal tomes in law offices have been mostly for show. Rather than spending days poring over book indexes and footnoted citations, as law clerks and associates did in earlier times, researchers find what they need on the Internet in minutes. But that nearly always comes at a price.
Though the primary documents are formally in the public domain, many are not put online in a convenient format, if at all. Many states even rely on commercial services to post court briefs and decisions, which then provide them to paying subscribers.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/us/harvard-law-library-sacrifices-a-trove-for-the-sake-of-a-free-database.html?_r=1
JimDandy
(7,318 posts)of our public legal decisions has been a real problem. The problem is worsened by the fact that many of our municipalities and states have contracted with private entities to put the bulk of our municipal codes and state laws behind internet walls. That makes it impossible to find case law using basic broadly available search engines.
Good for Harvard. I hope they stay accessible.
elleng
(131,005 posts)I'm OUTTA HERE!!!