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 platform Google spreadsheet and formspreadsheet

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 disclaimers  Almost 50% have copyright assertions  Paper 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….

Contact Info: Erika V. Wayne