THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

A periodic report from

THE NATIONAL DIGITAL LIBRARY PROGRAM

OCTOBER 1996 • NO. 12

Library Hosts Global

Legal Network Leaders

Project Directors from the three newest GLIN stations join Rubens Medina,

Law Librarian of Congress and Director General of GLIN. From left, Francisco Jose Paoli Bolio, Project Director, Federal District of Mexico; Dr. Medina;

Hyun-Koo Lee, Project Director, Republic of Korea; and Dan Chirita, Project

Director, Romania.

Global Legal Information Network

The annual Project Directors Meeting of

the Global Legal Information Network

(GLIN) was held at the Library of Congress Sept. 3–6, drawing participants from nearly

a dozen nations, some with their travel funded

by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, to discuss the progress they

have made in implementing GLIN in their countries. Continued on page 2; see GLIN

Continued on page 2, see Ameritech

Joint Ameritech/Library-sponsored Competition

Gains Momentum

As announced in the May 1996 issue, “The

Ameritech Foundation is making a $2 million

gift to establish the Library of Congress/

Ameritech National Digital Library Competition.”

This award program will enable U.S. libraries, archives, museums and historical societies to digitize their

collections of primary resources in United States history

for incorporation into the Library’s National Digital Library (NDL).

Since that announcement, the Library staff have been

preparing for the award competition, which has a Nov.

1, 1996, deadline. The staff’s first product was a brochure

that was distributed at the annual meeting of the American Library Association in early July, where Dr. Billington

announced the Ameritech gift in his address. The brochure advised potential applicants that in the first year

of the competition applications would be encouraged for

the digitization of primary materials illuminating U.S.

history and culture for the period 1850-1920. Such materials will complement and enhance many of those already

available in the National Digital Library or planned to be

mounted in the next five years.

In mid-August, detailed Guidelines and Application

Instructions were made available in printed form and for

downloading from the Library of Congress’s World Wide

Web (WWW) site (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/

award). Ameritech also posted the same information on

its Web site. Since that time, nearly 400 institutions have

requested (by e-mail, telephone, fax and U.S. mail) printed

copies of the guidelines, and 49,000 surfers have “hit” the

Library’s Web site, where they were able to download

the guidelines if they found them relevant to their
THE NATIONAL DIGITAL LIBRARY PROGRAM

2 OCTOBER 1996

GLIN, continued from page 1

Winners of the

Library/

Ameritech

competition will

have their

collections

placed in the

American

Memory collection, a popular

Web site.

GLIN is a database of the laws of 11 participating nations, with abstracts in English based

on a common legal thesaurus, accessible on the

Internet (in addition, about a dozen nations are

currently seeking membership). GLIN helps

fulfill the Law Library’s chief mission: providing foreign and comparative legal research to

Congress. The public may access abstracts of

legal texts from the GLIN homepage at

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/glin/glinhome.html/

According to Rubens Medina, Law Librarian and Director General of the GLIN project,

“The meetings were an opportunity for the

GLIN participants to share their success stories

—of which there were many. We are pleased

with the progress our members have made in

providing GLIN data to their users.”

The meetings also provided a forum for discussing such issues as computer security and

transmission of GLIN data via satellite, an effort for which the National Aeronautics and

Space Administration has been providing technical expertise to GLIN.

As they have in past meetings, representatives from each country presented reports on

their GLIN stations. This reporting session

highlighted issues common to many network

members as well as some unique concerns. A

delegate from Argentina, for example, reported

on her country’s attempts to publish its official

gazette (primary source of laws) electronically.

The debate over electronic publication of official sources of laws is continuing in other countries as well. On the other hand, Kuwait suggested that new forms of queries be considered

for searching the GLIN database because the

morphology and grammar of Arabic may require different search techniques.

Also participating in the meeting were representatives from GLIN partner institutions the

World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank

and NASA. The World Bank has financed the

participation of Mauritania, and Tunisia is

poised to join the network with the World

Bank’s support. Andrew Vorkink, assistant general counsel for legal reform at the World Bank,

gave remarks in which he expressed the World

Bank’s commitment to assist interested nations

in joining GLIN as part of its legal reform efforts. The Inter-American Development Bank is

supporting the participation of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay (the Mercosur, or

southern market, countries) as part of its commitment to integrate countries into international

legislative networks, and implement technologies that support legislative activities.

Continued on page 3

Ameritech, continued from page 1

Continued on page 3

concerns.

The guidelines enable institutions to prepare effective

applications by spelling out

in a systematic manner and

considerable detail the information that should be included. They prompt the applicant to describe

the collection that is to be digitized and discuss

its significance and utility for both education

and research in the history and culture of the

United States during the period 1850–1920.

Applicants are also advised to explain existing intellectual access to the collection (such as

catalog records, finding aids, or databases) and

the work that will be necessary to adapt these

resources to a networked environment. Because

of the Library’s commitment to preservation,

applicants are reminded that they need to show

that they will give appropriate attention to the

physical condition of the original materials

while they are being scanned and processed, as

well as into the future.

The project team also appended to the guidelines, technical notes summarizing the Library’s

experience with a variety of formats in imple-
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

OCTOBER 1996 3

Ameritech, continued from page 2

If participation in GLIN is successful for the

Mercosur countries, the Inter-American Development Bank intends to extend its support to

other countries in Latin America as well.

In opening remarks, Milton Halem, chief of

the Earth and Space Data and Computing Division at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

in Maryland discussed the continuing, collaborative efforts between NASA and the Library

of Congress. He made reference to the Memorandum of

Understanding that was

signed by the two agencies

this spring in which NASA

will apply its technology concepts to a global information

system, namely GLIN.

Later in the meeting representatives from NASA provided information on technical options for the

future design of the network, including a distributed architecture in which some or all of

the database resides on regional servers instead

of a central server, at the Library, as it does currently.

Participants in the meeting were treated to

a tour of Goddard Space Flight Center. Prior

to the tour, the use of satellite links to access

the GLIN database was demonstrated. NASA

and the Library have been exploring the potential use of satellite links for countries that

do not have adequate land lines to link to the

Internet.

Maintaining the authenticity and integrity

of the legal texts found in GLIN is of paramount

importance. This issue was addressed in a session on computer security. Barbara Guttman,

computer security specialist at the National

Institute of Standards and Technology discussed some currently available

security technologies such as

digital watermarks and electronic

signatures. Mary Levering, associate register for National Copyright Programs, U.S. Office of

Copyright, discussed some legal

issues related to the application

of this technology. For example,

the Copyright Office has determined that electronic signatures are legal.

Dr. Medina led the discussion about expanding the content of legal information to be included in the database. Although the GLIN

database began with statutes and regulations,

it is designed to accommodate the full range of

legal information such as constitutions, jurisprudence, parliamentary debates and legal articles and commentaries. Dr. Medina encourGLIN, continued from page 2

Continued on page 4

Dr. Rubens

Medina, Law

Librarian, was

asked to be

Director General

of the Global

Legal Information

Network. “We are

pleased with the

progress our

members have

made in providing

GLIN data to

their users,” he

said.

GLOBAL LEGAL

INFORMATION

NETWORK

menting the American Memory pilot project of

1990–1994. They provided references to articles

and examples on the Web site that further delineate the issues relating to the creation of and

access to digital reproductions.

Independent reviewers external to the Library will evaluate the applications in a threephase process. A panel that will meet in January will review them for the historical significance of the collection’s content; a second panel

meeting in February will evaluate for their bibliographic, technical and administrative viability those proposals that are most highly recommended by the first panel. Evaluators for these

two phases will be convened by the Division of

Preservation and Access of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The third phase

of the review will consist of a panel convened

by Deanna Marcum, President of the Commission on Preservation and Access and of the

Council of Library Resources. This panel will

make a final selection, and the awardees will

be announced by Dr. Billington on March 31,

1997.

—Barbara Paulson

 Program Officer,

Library of Congress/Ameritech
THE NATIONAL DIGITAL LIBRARY PROGRAM

4 OCTOBER 1996

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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COMPETITION GAINS

MOMENTUM

. . . . . . . . .PAGE 1

INSIDE

GLOBAL LEGAL

INFORMATION

NETWORK LEADERS

MEET IN WASHINGTON; GAIN NEW

MEMBERS

. . . . . . . . .PAGE 1

aged Project Directors to consider the establishment of associate GLIN stations at institutions

other than the legislature, such as ministries of

Justice and law schools, to capture this related

material.

A resolution affirming the central role of the

Library in developing, administering and recruiting new partners for GLIN was proposed

and Dr. Medina was asked to serve as director

general of the GLIN network. In this role, he

will continue to promote and recruit membership in GLIN, develop the training program

that the Law Library provides to GLIN teams

from member nations, and direct research and

development efforts.

On the final day of the meeting, the

Lithuanian GLIN station, under its project director, Ausra Petraitiene, was given the GLIN

Model Station Award for its exemplary performance and pioneering work in the network.

The Lithuanian GLIN station was the first fully

operational station in the network. Shortly after its team was trained in April 1995, they established a stable routine of transmitting legal

material to the database. Regular transmission

of legal material is critical to maintain the GLIN

standards of currency and completeness of the

file. In spite of the loss of the original GLIN legal analyst, a new team member was trained,

and Lithuanian contributions to the database

were uninterrupted.

In addition to the award ceremony, three new

project directors, from South Korea, the Federal District of Mexico and Romania signed the

GLIN Guiding Principles, which spells out the

noncommercial, cooperative character of the

network.

This year’s meeting was the largest to date.

As the number of countries contributing to the

database grows, its value to members increases.

Created to support the research needs of Congress, it benefits from GLIN’s expanding membership and content.

—Janice Hyde

Law Library

GLIN, continued from page 3