Law Via The Internet Conference 2012

Former Supreme Court Librarian (and before that, Director of the Law Library at DePaul University) Judith Gaskell reports on the Law Via The Internet Conference 2012 on SLAW.  From her post:

I have been retired for one year, but still continue to work on one of my favorite causes – access to legal information as a basic societal right. Many years ago, when I was a documents librarian, the rallying cry of law librarians was “Documents to the People.” Now we have a much less catchy, but more accurate American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) policy statement that “Federal, state and local authorities must ensure government legal information is permanently available to the public at low or no cost, in an easily accessible and professionally maintained environment.” This policy does not preclude print documents, but does reflect the reality of our digital age, where members of the public expect information to be free and fast.

The rest of the post describes the different issue tracks that were presented at the conference.  It’s well worth a read.  [MG]