Legal Research

U.S. Law Librarians Wish List for Obama

By Michel-Adrien Sheppard

The Law Librarian Blog reminded readers today of the public policy statement that the American Association of Law Libraries submitted to the Obama-Biden Transition Team on December 23, 2008.

The policy wish list covers issues relating to:

• public access to government information
• the management of the life cycle of public information
• the creation of a standard method for citing primary legal information in the public domain
• government agency cooperation with the U.S. Government Printing Office?s Federal Digital System that has the capacity to accept, authenticate and provide continuous public access to information from all three branches of government
• protection and promotion of fair use
• orphan works legislation that would allow libraries to digitize and make publicly available ?orphan works,? materials whose copyright owners cannot be found despite extensive and costly searches
• better privacy protection through an enhanced library exception in the Patriot Act

Cross-posted to Library Boy.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 21, 2009 (boomark / email).