Foreign Law Research Group (Flare)

FOREIGN LAW RESEARCH GROUP (FLARE)

Minutes of the Meeting held Tuesday June 19th 2007 at the British Library, St Pancras 13:00 - !6:00

Present: J. Winterton (JW) (Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library) L. Young (LY) (Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library); E. Wells (EW) representing R. Bird (RB) (Bodleian Law Library); P. Clinch (PC) (Cardiff University Library); J. Grimshaw (JG) (British Library), I. Wollner (IW) (British Library), D. Wills (DW) (Squire Law Library), S. Spells (SS) (SOAS)

1Apologies for Absence

R. Bird, represented by Elizabeth Wells

2Minutes of Previous Meeting (February 7th 2007)

Minutes were agreed as correct

3Matters Arising

None

4Institutional Situational Updates

Partners gave brief reports on developments at their institutions.

5Distributed National Collection of Foreign Legal Gazettes

5.1Deposit of Material at the BL

IW reported that she had checked BL holdings of the East European gazettes duplicated at IALS and found that the gaps in the runs were small except in the case of Poland. As the task of substituting IALS bound volumes for the loose parts held by BL was very labour intensive, and extra clerical assistance was being sought. In the meantime, LY agreed to confirm the completeness of the IALS bound sets and the linear meterage of the material being offered.

ACTION: LY/JG/IW

It was noted that the Trust Deed governing the deposit of IALS material at the BL would need to be updated to cover the new titles. JW proposed drafting a letter to form an additional protocol to the existing Trust Deed. JG undertook to consult with Jude England on the way forward.
ACTION: JG

JW stated that, due in part to space constraints and the low use of the material, IALS would rely on the BL to keep the national collection of historic printed legal gazettes and on free online sources for current access. Older material would be transferred to the BL in stages.

5.2Hein Digitisation Project

EW reported that RB had written to Brian Jablonski at Hein, but had not received any reply. JW offered to confer with Hein representatives at the upcoming American Association of Law Librarians’ Conference.
ACTION: JW

6Web Site Development

Links to useful articles on the law of various jurisdictions have been updated.

7Coverage of Central and East European Law

It emerged from the discussion that the collecting policies of higher education institutions such as Cambridge, Oxford and University College London are driven by local academic research interests which change over time. This makes it very difficult for them to contribute in practice to the development of a national collection, as they cannot undertake to collect consistently and over time, materials for any given jurisdiction.

However, IW confirmed that BL currently covers legal gazettes for all East European countries. Coverage of court reports is patchy, but could be improved and gaps filled. The BL also has access to Russian legal journals and primary sources through its subscriptions to online databases.

JW said that IALS was in a position to complement BL holdings by consistently collecting codes and legal journals from East European jurisdictions.

It was agreed that:

BL and IALS would work together to produce joint collection descriptions with pointers to free internet sites based on the FLARE gazettes union list and Intute.
ACTION: LY/IW

The Squire Law Library would make a written commitment in principle to building its collections in given jurisdictions, provided that funding was available
ACTION: DW

8DEVELOPMENT OF A WEB INDEX TO TREATIES

JW reported that he had bid to the Vice-Chancellor’s Development Fund for money for the development of the Web Index to Treaties and for the update of the FLaG database, but awards had not been announced.

9UPDATE OF FLaG DATABASE

JW informed the Group that IALS would fund the update of the FLaG database in financial year 2007/08, regardless of the outcome of the bid to the Vice-Chancellor’s Development Fund. PC would complete the work over six months and would devote one day per week to the project. PC and JW undertook to agree a timetable and report to the next Group meeting
ACTION: PC/JW

10CURL/BL COLLABORATIVE COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT OFFICER

A seminar is to be arranged by CURL. RB will attend and report developments to the Group.

11ANY OTHER BUSINESS

None

12Date of Next Meeting

31st October 2007 at the BritishLibrary StPancrasBuilding at 13:00.

J.M. Grimshaw

June 25th 2007