Yale Law Library - Reference Blog : Open Access

Lawyers Open Their File Cabinets for a Web Resource

ct286 — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:24:00 GMT

By ANNE EISENBERG, New York Times

Published: April 27, 2008.

Services are appearing on the Web that may make it easier for consumers to do their own preliminary homework on legal issues before seeking professional help. Read more here.

House Hearing on Executive Branch Electronic Communications Preservation

ct286 — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:31:00 GMT

The House Oversight and Government Reform’s Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives held a hearing yesterday to address the Electronic Communications Preservation Act (H.R. 5811), sponsored by Chairman of the Committee Henry Waxman (D-CA-30), Chairman of the Subcommittee Wm. Lacy Clay (D-MO-1), and Rep. Paul Hodes (D-NH-2). The bill directs the Archivist of the United States to establish standards for the capture, management, retrieval, and preservation of White House e-mails and other electronic communications. The Committee’s Press Release, summary of the bill, and full text of the bill is available here. Transcripts from the hearing are posted here.

Under the Federal Records Act, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is responsible for assisting Federal agencies in maintaining adequate and proper documentation of federal records. Given the increased use of electronic communications, federal agencies are potentially creating (and discarding) messages that have the status of federal records. According to a new report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), when GAO reviewed the e-mail management practices of four senior agencies officials they found that, although the agencies’ e-mail records management policies addressed the regulatory requirements, these requirements were not always met for the senior officials.

Open Access to Research

Tom Boone — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:01:00 GMT

It is an exciting time for researchers who are rich with intellectual curiosity, but short on cash.

The FY2008 omnibus appropriations bill contained a provision to establish a new policy directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide the public with free online access to findings from its funded research. Beginning on April 7, 2008, every scientist who publishes the results of research funded by an NIH grant in a peer-reviewed journal is required to deposit a digital copy of the article in PubMed Central the online digital library maintained by the NIH. The public will be able to access these articles through PubMed Central for free!

Open access to the law has also been in the spotlight recently. Earlier this month, Creative Commons and Public.Resource.Org announced the first release of a case law available for download by developers. The release covers all U.S. Supreme Court decisions and all Court of Appeals decisions from 1950 forward. The case law was provided by Fastcase, Inc. which recently announced its new Public Library of Law.

In addition to this exciting news, PACER is now available at no-fee at sixteen libraries, thanks to a joint pilot project by the Government Printing Office and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

Finally, Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences recently approved a plan to give the University a worldwide license to make each faculty member's scholarly articles available in a free repository and to exercise the copyright in the articles, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit.

Wall Street Journal continues charging for website

Tom Boone — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:55:00 GMT

Despite early promising comments from new owner Rupert Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal announced last week that it will continue to charge users to access the majority of information contained on the newspaper's website. There is however a positive spin to the announcement:

Mr. Murdoch made his latest comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in answering a question. "We are going to greatly expand and improve the free part of The Wall Street Journal online, but there will still be a strong offering" for subscribers, he said. "The really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive."

The Journal's decision bucks a recent trend of print publications, such the New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly, who have removed subscription barriers and made a large portion of their archives freely available online.

Free case law database announced

Tom Boone — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:39:00 GMT

Public.Resource.org and FastCase recently announced plans to create a free database of federal caselaw accessible to anyone via the internet. The database will include all U.S. Supreme Court cases since 1754 and all U.S. Court of Appeals cases since 1950, and new cases will be added as they are published.

No word yet when the database will be released, but snapshots of the archive will be made available in early 2008.

[Press Release] 1.8 million pages of federal case law to become freely available