Policy Programs To Die For

Elizabeth LeDoux Advocacy/Communications Assistant AALL Washington Affairs Office

The AALL policy committees – the Government Relations Committee (GRC), the Copyright Committee and Access to Electronic Legal Information Committee (AELIC) – have arranged a cavalcade of government dignitaries and straight-up VIPs to wow you with tantalizing, provocative programs discussing national and state information policy issues like you’ve never seen before.

We kick off the week at the GRC’s Annual Legislative and Regulatory Update ((A-5) Sunday, 1:30-2:45 p.m. EMCC-Room 217/218) by awarding the 2007 PAGI Award to Cathy Hartman for her work on the CyberCemetery and to John Joergensen for the Rutgers-Camden Law School Library Digital Project. We then welcome as our guest speaker Marybeth Peters, U.S. Register of Copyrights, to update us on the Copyright Office. Later in the week, Ms. Peters will join a panel of distinguished librarians and Peter Givler from the Association of American University Presses, to give a full report on the Section 108 Study Group (Copyright Exemptions for Libraries in the Digital Age: Report of the Section 108 Study Group (G-1) Tuesday, 9:00 – 10:30 a.m. EMCC-Room 206/207).

Later in the day on Sunday, the GRC has invited the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AO) - who manages PACER, the electronic docketing system for the federal judiciary - to discuss the system’s policies and procedures. Ted Willmann and Wendell Skidgel from the AO will reveal plans for PACER and allow users to ask lots of questions at Rising to the Challenge: Finding and Preserving Federal Judicial Information on PACER (B-5) Sunday, 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. EMCC-Room 220/221.

Famous for saying “the [digital information] train has left the [government documents] station”, the Access to Electronic Legal Information Committee (AELIC) is pleased to welcome Judge Herbert B. Dixon, Jr., Associate Justice, Superior Court of D.C, and Co-chair of the ABA Judicial Division’s Committee on Court Technology. Judge Dixon will discuss the impact of electronic records on the court and share his perspective on the impact of the AALL’s State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources and the Authentication Summit hosted by AALL in April 2007. AELIC’s Survey on Authentication of Government Information: A Year Later and Still Challenging (E-1) Monday, 10:30 – 11:30 a.m. EMCC-Room 215/216.
. At the Town Meeting on Monday, Dr. Kenneth Thibodeau, Director, and Daryll Prescott, Assistant Director, will update us on NARA's Electronic Records Archives Program. Michael L. Wash, GPO's Chief Technical Officer, and Acting Superintendent of Documents Richard G. Davis will discuss progress with the Future Digital System (FDsys) and GPO Access at Meeting the Challenges of E-life Cycle Management – A Town Meeting with NARA and the Government Printing Office (F-2) Monday, 2:00 – 3:15 p.m. EMCC-Room 208/209.

Last on our list but first in our hearts, 2007 PAGI Award winner Cathy Hartman, Assistant Dean of Libraries, Information Technology Services, at the University of North Texas Center for Digital Knowledge, and founder of the CyberCemetery, will talk about concrete steps law librarians can take to capture and preserve online government resources at Turning Challenges into Opportunities: How Law Libraries Can Capture and Preserve Government Web Resources (H-4) Tuesday, 10:45 – 11:45 a.m. EMCC-Room 217/218.

And here you were thinking information policy was all about hounding certain agency administrators to reopen closed EPA libraries – which it is, and Congress has now demanded they must. But it is a whole lot more, too. Join us while national policy is shaped right here in New Orleans, right now at AALL.