Reference: Archived Legal Materials from Official Gazettes Now Available Through Law.gov
From a Guest Post by Janice Hyde, director of the Global Legal Collection Directorate at the Law Library of Congress, on the In Custodia Legis Blog:
The Law Library of Congress has always relied on primary sources of law wherever possible to respond to requests from the U.S. Congress and its other patrons. For foreign countries, the fundamental source of law is generally the official gazette and the Law Library has amassed a voluminous collection of gazettes since acquiring its first one, from Mexico, in the mid-nineteenth century. Although many countries now make their official gazettes available online, making use of these sources over the years has proved challenging since many of them lack indexes.
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Recognizing the value of such information to legal researchers, the Law Library is now providing access through the Law Library’s Guide to Law Online to many of these older legal materials as well as additional laws from gazettes provided by other countries that are in the public domain.
The archived information includes English language summaries of laws, regulations, and related legal instruments that in turn link to the full-text PDFs that are in the official language(s) of the country. Legal items from the gazettes of the following countries are now available under the “Legislative” sources list for each jurisdiction: Brazil, Canada, Democratic Republic of Congo, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Mexico, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Taiwan, Tunisia, and United States.
Learn More About the Project (Including Its History) in the Complete In Custodia Legis Blog Post
See Also: Global Legal Collection Highlights
See Also: Global Legal Monitor From Law Library of Congress
Filed under: Libraries, News, Patrons and Users
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.