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DALL Resolution Endorses Enactment of UELMA in Texas

By Dallas Association of Law Librarians

Once again, DALL's executive board formally adopted a resolution to support adoption of UELMA in Texas!

What is UELMA?
The Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act ("UELMA") seeks to ensure that online official state legal material -- namely constitutions, session laws, codified laws, and regulations are unaltered, preserved, and permanently available to the public. UELMA offers an outcomes-based approach leaving it to the individual state enacting UELMA to decide how best to ensure the requirements of the statute are met.

This concept may already be familiar to some as the federal government has taken steps to ensure that federal government documents are authenticated. When accessing documents provided by the GPO, such as those available on Govinfo, the words "Authenticated U.S. Government Information" appear on the first page, and the certification provided by the Superintendent of Documents can be examined.

UELMA was drafted by the Uniform Law Commission and has wide support from the law community, including support by the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Bar Association, and many other regional and local law library associations.

For more information concerning UELMA visit AALL's website:  https://www.aallnet.org/advocacy/government-relations/state-issues/uelma-resources/

You may also wish to visit the Uniform Law Commission's website concerning UELMA. It features a helpful status map so you can identify where other states are in their process of enacting UELMA. According to the map, 20 states have adopted UELMA:
https://perma.cc/NCE7-VC8J

A bill for the passage of UELMA in Texas was filed in our current legislative session. You can see the bill here:
https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=86R&Bill=HB402

To assist in UELMA's passage, contact your Texas State Senator and State Representative and urge their support of UELMA in the next legislative session visit (or if you live in another state get in touch with your senator and representative):
https://wrm.capitol.texas.gov/home

Full post as published by Lex Scripta on March 07, 2019 (boomark / email).