Law Reform E-Publishing

“The Alberta Law Reform Institute (ALRI) will be moving to full electronic publication of its reports in 2015.” My perspective: like every other piece of born and solely digital legal information, law librarians will figure out how to make these important materials permanently available. Nothing to see here folks…unless institutional law libraries (government ministries, courts, academic law libraries) are not supported. Surely that wouldn’t be allowed to happen in a democratic country and among a group that values information and precedent as much as the legal industry.

I will stop being facetious and get to the [other] point about law reform e-publishing. If you can do more reform by doing less physical publishing, that just makes sense. Which Canadian law reform bodies are solely e-publishing? Solely being the key word…Alberta and Saskatchewan. From a survey of websites and library catalogues, most law reform bodies publish the full text of their materials on their websites and also make some available in print.

Having used old law reform publications for legal research projects, I ask the universe to please ensure that they remain permanently available in whatever format makes them accessible for tomorrows researchers and achievable in todays economy.

On a completely different topic, ALRI has a survey open . The survey closes March 1st and to topic of the survey is valuation dates under Alberta’s Matrimonial Property Act.

Season’s Greetings Slawyers!