WORKING GROUP ON COLLABORATIVE COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT OF FOREIGN LEGAL MATERIALS
Wednesday 10thth January 2002, 14.00-17.00
Meeting Room 2, Conference Centre, British Library St Pancras Building
Present: Jules Winterton (JW), Lesley Young (LY), Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library; Jennie Grimshaw (JG) and Janet Zmroczek (JZ), British Library.
Apologies: Andrew Smith, British Library. It was noted that Jennifer Jones had retired from the IALS Library.
1Audit of Foreign Legal Gazettes
Western Europe
JG has visited the foreign official gazettes collection in Building 24 at Boston Spa and has checked the runs for completeness and physical condition. She reported that: the physical condition of the paper was deteriorating for material published later than 1850 due to the use of chemical wood pulp and that, in general, material had not been bound from ca.1978. Loose parts were wrapped in acid free paper securely tied with tape. She had noted gaps in holdings of more than one year; it was not feasible to untie the packets to look for individual missing issues.
Unfortunately further investigations in the catalogues had brought more candidates for inclusion in the list to light and JG would need to make a further visit to Boston Spa in February for more shelf checking. The Cyprus Gazette had been referred to the Modern Greek specialist as it was in many parts and entirely in the Greek language. A supplementary list of German gazettes had been produced covering the pre-World War II and immediate post-war periods. These would need a condition check at the shelf.
JG had also discussed the Working Group's plans for the collaborative purchase of microform versions and/or preservation filming of long runs of foreign official gazettes with Deborah Novotny, Head of Preservation at the BL and had secured her sympathetic interest. We would need to prepare bids for any preservation filming to be undertaken by the BL in time for the next corporate planning round in November 2002.
Action: JG
Eastern Europe
JZ had been unable to visit Building 24 as planned to check the East European material due to ill health. She would reschedule her trip for March/April and would identify four countries as candidates for microform acquisition.
Action: JZ
Next Steps
The meeting agreed to take Spain Portugal, Italy and Belgium as initial candidates for acquisition of microform surrogates on the basis of the length of the runs and their physical state.
It was agreed that the next steps should involve establishing costs and availability of film for purchase by:
- LY contacting Norman Ross Publishing Inc to ask for their sales list. They claim to have microform versions of historical gazettes from 140 countries for sale, but with emphasis on Latin America and the Caribbean. They also acts as agents for other microform publishers.
- LY contacting the Library of Congress and New York Public Library to enquire what microforms they have for sale.
- LY making enquiries within countries as to whether their national gazette had been filmed.
- JZ approaching Norman Ross Inc and Eastview to establish the availability of microforms for purchase for Slavonic countries.
Action: LY/JZ
LY reported that her enquiries at CRL had revealed that although they had created an archive of foreign official gazettes for the US and would lend issues, they neither sold film nor filmed material which they held on paper.
In case of no microform being found for purchase for any of the countries, JG will establish the per-page cost of filming at the BL.
Action: JG
Post-filming
JW confirmed that the IALS would be prepared to deselect their printed runs and rely on the microform versions. For countries where they acquire commercially published versions of legislation, eg Italy, they would be happy to rely on BL to hold the microform. They would hold the microform versions themselves if there was no commercially published series.
BL would need to decide in the light of storage and preservation costs, and the antiquarian value of the originals, whether to withdraw the paper copies and rely on the film.
2Research Guides
One of the Hungarian language specialists at the BL has agreed to a meeting with JW to discuss writing a guide for Hungary. Unfortunately, in the interim, LLRX.com has mounted a Hungary guide on its web site. JW to determine if it is justifiable for us to produce an alternative.
Action: JW
JW is awaiting a reply from LLRX as to what other guides they have commissioned. He will chase.
Action: JW
JZ reported that a leading specialist at the Law Library of Congress is still interested in writing guides and is qualified to cover the Ukraine, Belarus or Russian sources in Russian. JW will contact him as soon as possible.
Action: JW
JW will contact the author of the chapter on Portugal in Information Sources in Law, 2nd ed, and enquire if they would be interested in producing an updated version for the web site.
Action: JW
JZ is continuing to investigate the availability of an author to cover law of the Czech Republic through the Parliamentary Library in Prague.
Action: JZ
3DSC/IALS Holdings Rationalisation
JW reported that he had completed checking the list of currently received DSC low use foreign law titles against IALS holdings. 308 out of a total of 548 were also held by IALS. There is scope for reduction of the overlap and referral of document supply requests to IALS. JW will send the checked list to AS and a way forward will be agreed at the next meeting.
Action: JW
4Training Course
The date (February 21st 2002), programme and promotional flyer had all been finalised. The flyer would be distributed via appropriate mailing lists held by IALS and legal discussion lists from Monday January 14th 2002. JZ offered to circulate the Slavonic and East European Librarians Group.
Action: JZ/JW
It was agreed that the Slavonic Section at the BL would be allowed three free places and SPIS two. Staff attending should complete and return an application form. More free places might be offered later if external take-up was low.
Action: JG/JZ
JW offered to ask Simmonds and Hill (Publishers of English translations of Central and East European legal texts) to display their books at the event. JZ will contact large US-based suppliers of Russian and Polish legal materials and enquire if they would like to exhibit.
Action: JW/JZ
JW agreed to chair the event and to ask speakers to provide copies of their papers for the web site.
Action: JW
5Project Web Site
No progress had been made on developing a project web site due to diversion of BL resources to managing the relaunch of its site following a complete redesign. The new site is still locked and the STB web editor does not have access. It was agreed, however, that he should be asked to begin work on designing a project home page and that the minutes, gazettes lists and training course papers should be mounted.
Action: JG
JZ had edited the minutes of the 10th October meeting and they were now ready for loading. She would continue to work on the minutes of earlier meetings.
Action: JZ
The question of choosing a suitable name for the project was deferred again.
6 BL/IALS Concordat
JW reported that he had entered into discussions with Mike Crump (MC), BL Director of Collection Development, about a formal written agreement between the institutions. MC had produced a draft for discussion, which was tabled at the meeting. The group agreed that:
- The agreement should be for longer than the proposed three years as it involved sharing collections.
- No attempt should be made to completely align the collection development policies of the two institutions. Some overlap would need to continue to enable them to fulfil their respective functions.
- IALS cannot accommodate reader referrals from the BL as they do not have the reference support available to deal with people untrained in law, and referrals of legal practitioners for free admission could undermine their subscription services. The preferred option would be to arrange the supply of stock items.
- Contact and liaison should be kept as much as possible at the operational level.
7 AOB
None
8 Date of Next Meeting
18th April 2002, 2.00pm, British Library St Pancras Building.
Jennie Grimshaw
January 15th 2002.