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‘Free the Law’ will provide open access to all | Harvard Gazette

Now this is exciting. This should help with the 224 613 Project. That's the ordeal I have been interested in since February of 1976 of getting more practical information for survivors/victims of crimes accessible through libraries. That does include access to various Court cases if these have bearing on the legal matters involved which they often do.

“Libraries were founded as an engine for the democratization of knowledge, and the digitization of Harvard Law School’s collection of U.S. case law is a tremendous step forward in making legal information open and easily accessible to the public,” said Jonathan Zittrain, the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School and vice dean for library and information resources.

“The materials in the library’s collection tell a story that goes back to the founding of America, and we’re proud to preserve and share that story,” said Zittrain, who also holds appointments as professor of computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

from article.

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Victim Services Directory

Now if we can just get something like the Florida Victim Services Directory linked to Florida public and law libraries! Something I have been pushing on-and-off since 2000. Other states have similar resources which need to be accessible from their states' public and law libraries as well. Something I also did from 2000 or so forward.

I hope some TOTVers will get involved with this. So much work needs to be done. And I have often felt like one voice in the wilderness while trying to get FL public and law libraries make this what seems a very easy and inexpensive fix of highlighting rights and services available to victims/survivors in various local communities.

Gary Corsair of the Villages Daily Sun back in 2007 (Memorial Day) had done an article about my efforts to get the Villages' area libraries linked to the Florida Victim Services Directory. This is part of my 224 613 Project and a Rape Crisis Counselor in Ft. Myers had e-mailed me in 1999 that this was something she would like to see in libraries. The print version but the Florida Attorney General's Office had also e-mailed or perhaps snailed me that a electronic version of this Directory would be the more practical thing for libraries to have and would be easier to keep up-to-date.

Hats off though to the Harvard Law Library for their "Free the Law" Project which looks very labor intensive.

I worked on the WESTLAW Cataloging Project in 1987-1991 or so while at the University of Minnesota Law Library but it had a lot of very flawed marketing and other components like how quickly WESTLAW changes. Harvard's old US and State caselaw does not change.