national inventory of primary* legal materials (the view from the law library)
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National Inventory of Primary* Legal Materials
(the view from the law library)
What is the National Inventory?
Packing list that describes, details and catalogs where one can find the laws of our federal and state systems
Primary materials Plus
Law.gov Workshop at Stanford Law School (January 2010)
Informal task force of NOCALL members formed at the Law.gov event
Mission: create a prototype of primary legal materials inventory for CALIFORNIA resources
Simple platformGoogle spreadsheet and form
Important Fields
• Copyright assertion and language• Disclaimers• Official Status• Price information (or merely noting that there
were costs)
What we’ve seen along the way…
• Almost 540 municipalities and counties in California…nearly 80% have outsourced their codes to four commercial publishers
• Almost all free online, YET:Over 40% claim to be unofficial & have disclaimersAlmost 50% have copyright assertionsPaper versions of many of these codes are printed
by same publisher as online – not for free
Office of Attorney General of California
Challenges
• Finding volunteers• Keeping volunteers interested• Filling in *all* the blanks• Striving for consistency• Pricing content• Going forward: maintaining the content &
getting other chapters to do similar work
Speaking of….
