Laying the Foundations for Law Library Co-operation around the world

Abstract

In October 2002 I was lucky enough to spend three stimulating days at the New York University Law School Library participating in the annual Legal Information Transfer Network workshop. The Legal Information Transfer Network (ITN) is funded by a generous grant from The Starr Foundation (established in 1955 by insurance entrepreneur Cornelius Van der Starr) and is headed by the dynamic Director of the NYU Law School Library, Professor Kathie Price. ITN aims to establish a global network of prestigious law libraries which ultimately can offer a 24/7 virtual reference service, both to its own partner libraries in the developed world and to academic legal communities in less developed countries. Previous annual workshops in such cities as Lausanne in Switzerland have given senior librarians from ITN partner libraries the opportunity to meet and make progress on issues such as providing a global virtual reference desk, sharing database access across the libraries, developing interactive legal research guides, and creating imaginative training programmes for local law librarians in China and Southern Africa (http://www.law.nyu.edu/library/itn). Between workshops the exchange of ideas is continued by email discussion. Currently the list of law library partners includes New York University, Washington University in Seattle, Toronto University in Canada, IALS Library in the UK, the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, Tilburg University in the Netherlands, Konstanz University in Germany, Cape Town University in South Africa, Melbourne University in Australia, Yerevan State University in Armenia, and Tsinghua University in China.