Minutes FLARE (meeting 27) 14th November 14th 2012
FLARE Minutes : 14th Nov 2012, Panizzi Rm British Library, 13:00 – 15:00
Present: J. Winterton (JW), Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library, L. Young,
(LY), Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library, P. Clinch (PC), emeritus Cardiff
University Law Library, Ruth Bird (RB) Bodleian Law Library, Jennie Grimshaw (JG),
Ildi Wollner (IW), Jon Sims (JS) British Library.
1 Introductions and Apologies for Absence
Apologies: David Wills (DW) Squire Law Library
2 Minutes and matters arising
Draft minutes of the previous meeting (30th May 2012) including tracked changes were read. Tracked changes were agreed. No further changes were made. JS agreed to email minutes for FLARE website to Steve Whittle, less any non-actionable minutes of institutional news reports.
2.1 Issues relating to the FLAG database “rebuild” (items 4.2 and 4.4 of the previous minutes) were reported by JW and PC discussed. (See item 5 below.)
2.2 Various other completed actions were noted.
2.3 JW and LY will continue to liaise over the Venezuela Gazette
3 Institutional News Reports
News from FLARE group institutions was discussed.
4 Sarah Spells
JW reported that he and JS had attended Sarah’s funeral.
A tribute is planned for a forthcoming edition of Legal Information Management ( LIM 12(4)? ). FLARE were also in favour of a suggestion to contribute to the repair costs and commemorative inscription for a suitable book in need of conservation. A modest figure was mentioned as the likely repair cost. JS and JG will investigate the British Library’s Adopt a Book scheme and try to identify a suitable comparative law title in need of conservation. Law of India, China, and Islamic law might also be suitable.
Actions: JG, JS
Loyita Worley will be overseeing editorial on the new BIALL Handbook of Legal Information Management. Gerry Power is acting as temporary law librarian at SOAS.
5 FLaG database rebuild
In matters arising from and discussion of item 4 of the previous minutes
(30th May 2012):
5.1 PC reported that a fifty page document to support knowledge transfer had been completed (4.4).
5.2 Funding. RB reiterated the promise of funding reminding that Bodleian can be invoiced when FLARE is ready to move. The following actions were agreed: JW will forward PC’s original project scoping document to JG. JG will draft and forward to JW an appropriate outline document for JW application for BL funding. JW will complete and submit this to BL. (4.2)
Actions: JW, JG
5.3 Staffing and Logistics. JW will speak to relevant staff. PC pointed out that his new home location may provide a convenient staging post for Scotland.
Actions: JW
6 National Collection Development: harnessing the volunteers
Given the popularity of BIALL foreign, comparative and international law (FCIL) events at IALS, and drawing on the US model of regional interest subgroups of the FCIL special interest section of the American Association of Law Libraries, FLARE supported RB’s suggestion of exploring possibilities for the creation of similar groups in the UK. RB agreed to draw up a document for presentation to BIALL. The document would outline possible parameters including collaborative collection engagement beyond FLARE, production of guides and sharing of FCIL knowledge, and would seek expressions of interest in such a structure.
Action: RB
7 Archiving and curating the free legal web
Referring to the growing body of apparently credible free online secondary resource, recent discussion about curating the legal web (LIM (12(3) p163 and the Justice Wide Open conference), the boundaries of existing projects that curate free legal web content, emerging national and BL policy (e.g. open access, web archiving and content development), access to priced commentary and rising self represented litigation, JS asked the following: whether a forum existed for looking holistically at curating the free legal; whether FLARE should expand its remit and create a sub group to consider the issue, and if not FLARE then who.
No existing forum was known of. JW noted that IALS had rescued the Intute law project and incorporated with Eagle-i, and that Richard Suskind had ….. RB noted that FLARE was not able to expand its remit beyond its existing workload. RB also mentioned that while this was a BL issue various other existing projects might be worth considering: Law Library of Congress’ GLIN, WORLDLII, LinexLegal and Fitzroy Legal Services. The latter with regard to guiding self represented litigants.
The possibility for BL to submit nominated web sites to metadata-generating text analysis and document harvesting for the digital library was noted. (These are nascent BL projects associated with implementing forthcoming e-legal deposit regulations and domain crawl web archiving.) JS intended to explore the literature relating to the question in more depth and pointed out that any prioritisation of the issue in the forthcoming BL content strategy for Law would be likely to impact heavily on the existing socio-legal agenda.
8 Date of next meeting
February 6th 2013
JS (20.11.12)