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Historical Legal Materials Increasingly Accessible Online
By Steve Anderson
There are two primary services that libraries strive to offer users. First, libraries create collections of resources--books or databases--and preserve them as best as possible for future generations and the historical record (and legal precedent). Second, libraries promote access to these resources, through reference assistance, document delivery, subject-oriented cataloging and digitization projects, for example. In this light, information resources might best be seen as tools, kept in the toolshed of librarianship. On some occasions, databases offer the most appropriate access to research; they serve as one type of tool, a hammer, for instance. Other times, print resources are the most efficient tools--when online resources are unavailable or unreliable. Perhaps the print materials act as the nail in the toolkit. Both hammers and nails and books and databases are necessary for the efficient completion of a task.
Both tools have their advantages and disadvantages. Online tools seldom can be preserved at this point because of copyright and licensing restrictions. Aside from public domain, government-created materials, there is little way right now that online resources can be preserved reliably for our children's children. Books, while easily preserved, are only available to one reader at a time--and this reader may need to travel far for that book.
Over the last few years, libraries and database vendors have begun to offer the best of both worlds for a small subset of legal materials. Historical legal treatises in the public domain (primarily those published before 1923) are now very much available online--and also retained in print at libraries for preservation purposes. Of course, some of these databases are only available by subscription and at many law libraries, including the State Law Library. Legal treatises available through Google Books are easy to find by anyone--at least for now and hopefully for as long as Google exists. For those who prefer to browse a book and for preservation or authentication purposes, libraries continue to serve a core function.
The State Law Library recently evaluated approximately 250 of its treatises in print to see how available they were online. Of these, about 70 were available via Gale's Making of Modern Law database. Nearly another 50 could be found on HeinOnline, although there was some overlap. Both of these resources are available in the Library and on the Maryland Judiciary Network via the Library’s CourtNet page. Interestingly, just about half of all of these Library holdings are available in Google Books, a result of a partnership between Google and large academic libraries. There existed significant duplication with the other two databases, however.
Gale's scanned treatises are already linked from the Library's catalog in order to streamline access. Library staff will be creating similar catalog links for treatises found in the HeinOnline and Google Books databases. In this way, researchers using the Library's catalog can choose either the print version or one from a database. Users outside the Library, of course, will have ready access to titles in Google Books. With the database overlap, however, a substantial number of works, approximately 70, continue to be available only in print. While databases have improved accessibility significantly, many texts, especially those related to Maryland law interestingly enough, are only offline. Nevertheless, it is evident that great strides are being made in terms of online accessibility, even as this Library and many others continue to preserve the print record.
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