FOREIGN LAW RESEARCH GROUP (FLARE)
Minutes of the Meeting held Wednesday Nov. 2nd, 2005 at the British Library, St Pancras 13.00 – 16.00
Present: S.Spells (SS) (SOAS), J.Vickery (JV) (British Library), L.Young (LY) (Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library), David Wills (DW) (Squire Law Library), R. Bird (Bodleian Law Library; P. Clinch (PC) (Cardiff University Library), I. Wollner (IW) (British Library), J. M. Grimshaw (JG) (British Library).
1 Apologies for absence and Introductions
Jules Winterton was unable to attend; Ruth Bird chaired the meeting in his place.
Ildiko Wollner, who will be representing BL Slavonic and East European Collections in place of J. Zmroczek was welcomed by the Group.
2 Minutes of Previous Meeting and Matters Arising
The minutes of the meeting of June 30th were agreed by email in advance of the meeting. All relevant issues were covered by agenda items.
3 Institutional Situation Updates
3.1 All partners gave a brief summary of developments in their institutions that might impact on the work of the group and that had occurred since the last meeting.
3.2 NELLCO Membership
The IALS and the Squire Law Library have signed up for two years trial membership of NELLCO.
4 Foreign Official Gazettes
4.1 Distributed National Collection
JG reported that back runs of the Gazzetta Ufficiale della Reppublica Italiana and the Moniteur Belge had been transferred from the IALS to the British Library in August. Work on integrating the deposited material into the BL stock was proceeding and should be completed by Spring 2006.
ACTION: JG
RB reported that a proposal had been presented to appropriate OULS staff recommending the transfer of incomplete runs of gazettes held in the government documents collections to the BL. She was awaiting a response.
ACTION: RB
DW reported that he had held preliminary discussions with Bill Noblett, Official Publications Librarian at Cambridge University Library, about transferring backruns to the BL. JG agreed to contact Mr Noblett directly to progress the matter.
ACTION: JG
4.2 Extension of FLARE Union List
No progress had been made with plans to extend the coverage of the FLARE Union List of official gazettes to include Oxbridge holdings as the IALS Information Systems Manager had been working full time on the SAS catalogue integration project. Now this was complete, LY would begin discussions with him.
ACTION: LY
4.3 Official Gazette of Turkey
JG reported that Dr Waley, the Turkish Collections curator, had investigated and establish that the BL holds the gazette from 1949-1980, virtually complete. JG undertook to discuss reinstating the order with Dr Waley.
ACTION: JG
5 SCONUL Focus Article and web Site Launch
5.1 SCONUL Focus Article
LY and JG had prepared a draft for submission to BL and IALS senior management for approval. They hoped to meet the copy deadline of November 30th for inclusion in the next issue of SCONUL Focus.
ACTION: JG/LY
5.2 Web Site Launch
It was agreed that a launch date would be chosen at the next meeting of the Group in February 2006.
In advance of the launch the Group agreed to ask the IALS Information Systems Manager if he could provide usage statistics. LY and RB confirmed that the site was heavily promoted to researchers and students at the IALS and Oxford Law Library. LY and JG reported using the gazettes union list regularly for enquiry work.
ACTION: LY
6 Coverage of Central and East European Law
No progress had been made on obtaining a report on current collecting strengths of FLARE partners from the Access version of the FLaG database due to the IALS Information System’s manager’s time being fully committed to the SAS catalogue integration project over the Summer. LY would now take this forward.
ACTION: LY
DW reported that the Squire law Library could not improve its coverage without additional funding.
RB reported that the Bodleian Law Library would continue to collect material for jurisdictions already covered. It is reviewing its collecting policies in the light of increased availability of foreign legal materials on the Internet.
JG/IW reported that the BL collected primary source materials (gazettes, codes, etc) for most East European jurisdictions as part of its official publications collections. It expected to continue to collect such materials because of their relevance to social policy research. It has not generally collected case law.
7 BL DSC/IALS Journals Deduplication
LY reported that following completion of its review of its collection of US law journals, the IALS has identified:
· A set of low value titles for cancellation
· A set of core academic journals which it would continue to take in hard copy
· A set of titles which it would take in electronic form only, cancelling the hard copy as and when the electronic became available.
LY and JV agreed to discuss a way forward for reducing overlap with DSC outside of the meeting. Any cancellations of DSC titles would need to be agreed by July 2006 and would be effective from 2007.
ACTION: JV/LY
8 AOB
The Group discussed the poor coverage of Arabic law at national level. SS indicated that SOAS intended to improve its coverage of this area.
9 Date of Next Meeting
Next meeting to be held on Wednesday February 22nd 2006, 13:00, at the British Library St Pancras building
J.M. Grimshaw
Nov 8th 2005