By NATALIE GAWDIAK
When the directors and partners of the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) gathered for their eighth annual meeting in the Library of Congress on the morning of Sept. 11, they and their hosts had no idea what a day it would be.
The meeting included 11 GLIN members, from Ecuador, Guatemala, Kuwait, MERCOSUR (an organizing of representatives from Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Argentina), Mexico, Paraguay, Romania, Taiwan, United Nations, United States and Uruguay. Also present were two potential GLIN members who came from Belize and Mauritania as observers. These participants were joined on the sixth floor of the Library's Madison building by representatives from institutions that support GLIN, such as the World Bank, Coudert Brothers, McKee Nelson LLP and Caplin & Drysdale.
The meeting opened with Rubens Medina welcoming the participants and reminding them all of the unique requirements of legal information and the standards that GLIN has been designed to meet, such as authenticity of sources, currency and completeness. He exhorted the members to do their best to adhere to these standards and to make their GLIN stations into service providers for their legislators and government officials in order to gain long-term support from their institutions. He ended his remarks by observing that GLIN is going through a transitional phase, from a loosely organized group interested in exchanging legal information to a more formal organization with a more solid foundation for the future.
Donald Scott, Deputy Librarian of Congress, welcomed the participants to the meeting. Noting that GLIN is a tool that provides information that may promote the rule of law, he asked that they spread information about GLIN to others in their countries and to potential sponsors to help the GLIN network expand.
During the subsequent reporting session of the GLIN directors, word arrived regarding terrorist attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. The conference was quickly disbanded, and the participants were asked to return to their hotels. The next day, however, the GLIN meeting resumed, on schedule. As the meeting resumed, Law Librarian Rubens Medina thanked the GLIN members for returning and noted that the work done by GLIN members is precisely the kind of effort needed to help global peace and understanding.
Going forward as planned, the GLIN meeting gave members an opportunity to report on highlights of the past year. The two newest GLIN member nations, Ecuador and Taiwan, reported for the first time. The GLIN station in Ecuador has been established by a nongovernmental organization, the Center for Civil Society (CESC), which provides training to local authorities to develop new leadership for Ecuador. Jaime Nogales, President of CESC, the first nongovernmental organization to participate in GLIN, described the team's efforts to provide GLIN access to several government organizations in Ecuador, including its Congress, Constitutional Court and National Elections Committee. GLIN Director of Taiwan Bin-Chung Huang noted that the Legislative Yuan (Taiwan's legislative body) has established a GLIN Steering Committee comprising officials from most major departments of the legislature and convened by the Secretary General. The existence of such a committee is encouraging, as high-level support for GLIN is important for its long-term success.
Stella Chenu, Paraguay's GLIN director, described how she uses GLIN to provide comparative legal information to Paraguay's legislators. Romania and Uruguay GLIN directors told of their efforts to incorporate retrospective laws into the database, and Romania, Kuwait and Uruguay said they were interested in serving as GLIN regional centers to provide training and data storage and retrieval capabilities.
One of GLIN's partners, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was unable to attend, but sent a letter outlining the IDB's commitment to the "GLIN-Americas" initiative, which includes support for a hemispheric network of legislative information that would expand GLIN membership to include all IDB member countries in the Western Hemisphere by the end of 2003. The new initiative calls for three subregional components: the Central American parliaments will be incorporated in the network beginning later this year; the Caribbean legislatures will be the focus of efforts beginning early in 2002; and, starting late in 2002, the legislatures of the Andean countries will be linked to GLIN, in a significant expansion of the network.
Hans Wabnitz of the World Bank, another GLIN partner institution, described the bank's creation of a Global Development Gateway that serves as a portal on the Internet for information, including legal information, about World Bank member countries. Mr. Wabnitz recommended that GLIN members consider acting as the providers of legal information for the Bank's Gateway.
The meeting also focused on organizational issues as Rubens Medina reported on the establishment in July 2001 of a GLIN Foundation, an organization created to support the GLIN network and help manage and administer some of its functions. He introduced interim Board of Trustee members Tedson Meyers of Coudert Brothers, Milton Cerny of Caplin & Drysdale and Gwyneth Hambley of McKee Nelson LLP and recommended some projects that he hoped the foundation might support over the next year. GLIN members are expected to elect a new Board of Trustees by the end of the year.
After more than three years of discussions, GLIN members adopted a new charter that essentially formalizes the relationship among GLIN partners and establishes procedures for such things as creating committees and electing an Executive Council. Before members signed the new charter, Mr. Medina described the new organizational structure and the responsibilities of the Executive Council, and Margaret Williams, of the Library's Office of the General Counsel, surveyed licensing issues related to the GLIN database. Ms. Williams assured GLIN members that they retain ownership of their information and she outlined the many options they will have should they choose to license their information. Based on nominations received from GLIN members, a nominating committee was appointed to develop a slate of candidates for the Executive Council. The day ended as GLIN directors signed the new charter, signaling its formal adoption.
Eduardo Ghuisolfi of the GLIN team in Uruguay described their preparation and implementation of a technical training course for other GLIN members in the region, based on the GLIN training provided by the Law Library of Congress. That GLIN members are beginning to perform some of the functions that have so far been the responsibility of the Law Library reflects the group's growing sophistication.
The GLIN director from Romania, Dan Chirita, described the work of the Parliamentary Assemblies of the Black Sea Economic Cooperative to create a legal information system that they call SELI (System for the Exchange of Legal and Normative Documents). Of interest to GLIN members is that SELI has adopted GLIN standards for the exchange of legal information. The Parliamentary Assembies nations will contribute full texts of legal instruments to SELI that will be accessible through English-language summaries and a multilingual thesaurus.
Glenn Reitze, GLIN thesaurus administrator, noted the long-range goal of being able to search GLIN in any language, and described how we can begin to "map" foreign-language terms to terms in the central GLIN thesaurus as a step toward this goal.
In closing, Mr. Medina reiterated his request that members make maintenance of currency of the GLIN database the highest priority for 2001-2002. He stressed the need to include all relevant legal material and to seek out sources other than official gazettes where legal instruments such as regulations might be published. He also urged that GLIN members prepare basic information about their nations' legal systems to be included in GLIN as an aid to legal researchers.
At a closing event in Madison Hall, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington noted that the gathering represented the positive side of what is happening in the world today: the spread of the rule of law, the growth of transparency, "and above all, the use of new technology to bring people closer together."
The evening's guest speaker was Richard Douglas, general counsel for the minority, Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Douglas praised the work of the Law Library in support of the Foreign Relations Committee and told those assembled that they should know that their contributions to GLIN do not go "into some black hole," but that the information is really used to inform members of the U.S. Congress.
Ms. Gawdiak is a writer-editor in the Law Library.