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Foreign Official Gazettes Task Force Report (1998)
24 July 1998
TO: Karen Fung, Chair, CAMP
FR: Ruby Bell-Gam (UCLA)
RE: CRL Foreign Official Gazettes Task Force
As you had requested, I attended the meeting of the CRL
Foreign Official Gazettes (FOG) Task Force, which took place
last week Wednesday, July 15, in Anaheim, CA. The following
is my summary of the meeting proceedings. The official minutes
will be prepared and distributed by Patricia Finney, CRL
Staff Liaison to the Task Force.
SUMMARY
Robert Buckwalter, Chair of the Task Force and Associate
Librarian for Collection Services at the Harvard University
Law School Library, presided over the meeting. Other institutions
represented at the meeting were CRL, Law Library of Congress,
Los Angeles County Law Library, University of Michigan Law
Library, and the University of California - Berkeley Law
Library.
Finney explained her reason for seeking representation
from area studies projects, such as CAMP. The area microform
projects have significant collections of foreign official
gazettes, which are relevant to the purpose of the Task
Force. CAMP is especially important since its collection
of these publications is the largest of all the area projects.
Finney commended CAMP for its expedient decision in appointing
a Southern California local as temporary representative
to the meeting. CAMP will decide later how to handle its
representation on the Task Force. The ALA Government Documents
Round Table (GODORT) is considering sending a representative
in the future.
Marie-Louise Bernal (LC Law) distributed handouts on GLIN,
the Global Legal Information Network which is developed
and housed at LC. Unlike other LC network systems, GLIN
has Internet-based input, update and retrieval, thus allowing
its members worldwide to input and update their records
in real time. The database contains records of statutes,
regulations and related material from countries in the Americas,
Europe, Asia and Africa, including Egypt, Mauritania and
Tunisia. A proposed pilot project will seek to convert full-text
microfilm documents into electronic format for inclusion
in the database. The original film will be retained indefinitely
for preservation. Eventually, GLIN may be a distributed
network, with sections residing on remote servers worldwide.
Internet access is at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/law/GLINv1/GLIN.html
Thomas Reynolds (UC Berkeley, Law) reported on European
interest in the Foreign Official Gazettes project. There
has been great interest at the Swiss Institute for Comparative
Law, though recent personnel changes seem to have slowed
down the process somewhat. The Institute's collection strengths
are in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. They have substantial
material on Kenya as well. The British Institute for Advanced
Legal Studies seems willing to do its part in a cooperative
arrangement. Germany's Max Plank Institute now shows little
interest.
Finney reported that NYPL, which recently dropped out of
a long-term preservation microfilming agreement with LC,
has been depositing its foreign official gazettes to CRL.
CRL accepts only microfilm that it does not already own,
and only hard copy that does not duplicate its collection
or other microfilm collections. So far, the transfer of
material has progressed alphabetically through the letter
M, and the reconciliation of bibliographic files through
S (South Africa). The issue of transferring negative masters
to CRL has not been resolved. CRL hopes to receive the masters
eventually and arrange for their housing at an off-site
location.
In the bibliographic control area, Finney personally compares
CRL holdings records against the items received, making
note of specific title changes, as opposed to the gloss
"title varies," which many databases use. CRL
is also careful to not include material that is not strictly
official gazette, even though some countries would identify
any legislative publication as a gazette.
CRL is only interested in retrospective collecting in this
project, with a cut-off date of 1995. However, CRL has so
far provided support at Task Force meetings for the discussion
of prospective collecting. The group discussed whether or
not it should continue to deal with prospective collecting
issues, as well as seek funding for such collections. It
was agreed that it may not be necessary to collect for all
countries, nor to collect all parts of specific titles.
However, prospective collecting is certainly important.
It was noted that the UN Library has some relevant material,
and is hoped to be a possible future partner of the project.
Discussion of the location for the next meeting resulted
in two possibilities, i.e.,
(1) January in New Orleans, during the summit on archiving
of digital media, and
(2) July in Washington, DC.
Respectfully submitted,
Ruby Bell-Gam
African Studies & Development Studies Bibliographer
UCLA University Research Library
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