Glenn Reitz, GLIN Legal Analyst for the U.S., delivers the U.S. status report at the annual GLIN Directors' Meeting. Other panelists include (from left) Rubens Medina, Law Librarian of Congress; Carmen Garcia Mendieta and Eduardo Ghuisolfi of GLIN.Uruguay; Dan Chirita of GLIN.Romania; and Bin-Chung Huang of GLIN.Taiwan. - Willie Swinson
Seventeen nations sent representatives to Washington this year for the annual meeting of the directors of the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) in September, making it the largest conference to date. GLIN country and organizational members attended from Ecuador, Guatemala, Republic of Korea, Kuwait, MERCOSUR (the "southern market" trade federation comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay), Mexico, the Organization of American States, Romania, Taiwan, Uruguay, the United Nations and the United States.
Representatives from Albania, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru, potential members of GLIN, also attended. During the meeting, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras joined the network of participating nations by formally signing the GLIN Charter. Representatives from GLIN's partner institutions, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also attended.
At the opening session, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington expressed appreciation to the attendees for their commitment to sharing law and legal information resources, particularly during such troubled times. He praised collaborative ventures such as GLIN and noted that they are "the key to managing our digital future."
In recalling the tragic events of one year ago, Law Librarian of Congress and GLIN Executive Council Chair Rubens Medina noted that the large attendance was a "testament to the effort we have embarked upon together." Those assembled have chosen, "to work together to further the rule of law through peaceful cooperation for the exchange of legal information," he said.
As in past years, members provided status reports on their GLIN team efforts, and several new and potential GLIN members reported on their activities to launch GLIN in their respective areas. Delegations from the legislatures of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama reported on the support being provided by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) under its GLIN-Americas initiative.
Guillermo Castillo, GLIN-Americas coordinator in the Information Technology for Development Division of the IDB, described the bank's GLIN-Americas initiative. Launched at the Summit of the Americas in 2001, the plan calls for three subregional components: in the first phase, Central American parliaments will be incorporated into the network; the Caribbean legislatures will be the focus of the second phase; and in the final phase, the legislatures of the Andean countries will be linked.
Eduardo Ghuisolfi, GLIN technical specialist for GLIN.Uruguay and GLIN.MERCOSUR, gave an overview of the first IDB initiative, incorporating the Central American parliaments into the network. The IDB provided each country with the equipment needed to establish and run a GLIN station and designated GLIN team members to attend one of two training sessions held in the region in May and June of this year. Ghuisolfi provided technical training for one of those sessions, and his colleague from Uruguay, Graciela Berriel, provided training for the legal analysts, augmented by additional training by Rubens Medina, Nick Kozura and Janice Hyde from the Law Library. The experience was a successful collaborative, regional approach to GLIN training, Ghuisolfi said.
Among the status reports given by different countries, one of the more successful operations described was that of the GLIN.Taiwan team. Its director, Bin-Chung Huang, was able to report that Taiwan's analysis and transmissions of laws to the GLIN database is being kept current. The GLIN.Taiwan report also outlined plans for incorporating retrospective material into the database, which will eventually include material from 1948 to the present. In recognition of its compliance with GLIN standards of contributing high-quality official texts, and maintaining currency and completeness, Taiwan was presented with the GLIN Model Station award for 2002.
GLIN directors from several countries, including Ecuador, Guatemala, Korea, Romania, and the United States, described their efforts to maintain the currency of the data they transmit to GLIN. Carmen Garcia Mendieta, director of GLIN.Uruguay, reported that over the past year they put special emphasis on "completeness," explaining that they have begun to add such materials as circulars of the Central Bank to the GLIN database. Both Ecuador and Kuwait noted their efforts to partner with other institutions or nations. In Ecuador, the GLIN station is located in a non-governmental agency, and its president and GLIN director, Jaime Nogales Torres, reached agreements with several agencies of the government of Ecuador to provide them legal research and reference support through GLIN.
At a recent meeting of the Arab League, participating nations were encouraged to join GLIN by representatives of GLIN.Kuwait, who later met with high-level officials in Egypt to persuade them to join the network.
The uniqueness of the GLIN database was underscored by Garcia Mendieta, who, in addition to heading the Uruguay team, also serves as the GLIN Director for GLIN.MERCOSUR. Garcia Mendieta noted that no other body or organization has a database of MERCOSUR instruments, which makes the material in GLIN especially important.
Expanding the types of legal information that can be added to the database has been a priority for the Law Library. It has been working with the Library's Information Technology Service (ITS) over the past year to develop a new input capability that will enable GLIN members to begin to contribute court decisions to the database as well as statutes and regulations. Ana Rosa Chavarria of the Supreme Court of Nicaragua informed the audience that the GLIN legal analyst at the Supreme Court is sending summaries of court decisions by e-mail to GLIN.Central for review until the GLIN system has the capability to accept this new category of legal information.
Several GLIN members offered ideas to enhance the system and the network. Lakhsara Mint Die, who works for a German corporation in Mauritania and is striving to revive GLIN in Mauritania, suggested changes in layout and language use, inclusion of other language thesauri, and the adoption of more culturally appropriate color and design.
Roberto Muñoz, GLIN director in Guatemala, requested a way to include laws of indigenous peoples in GLIN. Finally, the Korean GLIN team asked that the network expand to incorporate more Asian countries.
The second day of GLIN meetings focused on basic business issues such as the establishment of committees. Expansion of GLIN membership was determined to be a primary responsibility of the newly established membership committee. A technical committee was also formed to consider and refine member proposals for GLIN system upgrades/changes and to monitor developments in the information technology industry, among other things.
The final day of formal meetings opened with a Law Library presentation delivered by Nick Kozura, GLIN project manager. He discussed Law Library plans to undertake a major technical upgrade of GLIN and encouraged GLIN Members to submit their suggestions to the technical committee for consideration. In reviewing the activities of the past year, he reported on the continuing efforts of Law Library staffers who input summaries and scanned texts of laws for 16 Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, as well as the beginning of a retrospective effort to scan (from microfilm) and link full texts of laws to their corresponding summaries in GLIN covering the time period of 1975-1997.
Other presentations on the final day included a report on the GLIN thesaurus; a review of the European Union's approach to legislative information systems, which are confronted with many of the same information technology and communication issues as GLIN; and commentary by a World Bank attorney who urged that GLIN members consider serving as the source for reliable legal information to be delivered through the bank's "Global Gateway."
Finally, using images of interconnected galaxies and the planet Mars, Susan Hoban, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, spoke about the common interests shared by NASA and GLIN, such as information security, network reliability and educational technologies. She suggested that these shared interests can be realized through the implementation of the 2001 Memorandum of Understanding between NASA and the Library of Congress.
