6 May 2005
In a major new development it has been announced that thousands of core legal judgements will be digitised and made freely and openly available on the Internet.
In a move expected to greatly improve accessibility to legal judgements, the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute) announced the initiative known as the Open Law project.
According to the JISC access to case reports and legislation is central to the teaching of law and the development of legal skills, therefore Open Law will focus on the core needs of staff and students on law courses at all levels.
It will include around 200 of the most cited judgments in each of the core areas of the law course syllabus. In total it is expected that the project will digitise a total over 40,000 pages.
Up until now the restriction of certain materials to reference libraries and their cost have meant that the availability of key materials to many law departments has been problematic.
Hailing the project, Lorraine Estelle, JISC collections manager, said the project was "the most important development for the provision of online resources in the area of law".© DeHavilland Information Services plc
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