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The quotation above from St. Clair v. Johnny's Oyster & Shrimp, Inc., a 1999 US federal district court case, captures a perception of the trustworthiness of digital information that over ten years later is, in many instances, still uncomfortably close to reality. It raises two important questions with which governments providing online information and users of that information must grapple: Is digital government information reliable and trustworthy? Has the government entity providing digital information online taken the care necessary to ensure its authenticity? This chapter presents a historical perspective of authenticity of government information, provides definitions of significantterms and phrases related to authentication, offers basic descriptions of some methods used to ensure authenticity of government information, and identifies some examples of what is happening at the federal and state level in the United States and in other countries to address these important questions. It also suggests some strategies and appropriate steps toward the goal of an affirmative answer to the two questions under consideration. The authors are both law librarians, and the examples used in this chapter are government-issued legal information. However, the principles, processes, and concepts identified in this chapter should be applied to all types of digital government information.

A judge asks you to present her with a copy of the Virginia Code section you are referencing in court, or she asks you to provide a copy of the Supreme Court of Virginia opinion you cited. You used Virginia state government websites to find both the code section and the court opinion. This is easy, right? You give her the copy of what you found online. But could there be a problem? Is the court opinion that you retrieved from the court website considered an official version of the court opinion? Has the Virginia Code section that you provided been authenticated to establish its legitimacy? Do these issues matter, and do they have any practical effect on your work as an attorney?

A report on the state of Alabama's authentication of online legal resources, the first update was recorded in 2007.

Attorneys researching bankruptcy law use a diverse collection of print resources to locate bankruptcy primary and secondary sources. Bankruptcy code provisions appear in Title 11 of the codified federal statutes, available either in the official U.S. Code (published by the U.S. Government Printing Office) or one of the two commercially published unofficial codes, U.S.C.A. (Thomson-West) and the U.S.C.S. (LexisNexis). Attorneys find bankruptcy rules and official forms (Rules 1-9036; Forms 1-35) in the same three sets. Researchers often find the unofficial codes preferable because they are annotated with case summaries and references to other materials and are supplemented more frequently than the U.S. Code. When an attorney needs legislative history materials about a bankruptcy code section, he or she can find legislative history information and documents in several sources, including West's U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News as well as Collier Bankruptcy Service and Norton Bankruptcy Law and Practice. Code conversion tables and rules conversion tables can be found, also with Title 11 in the three codes.

The Superintendent of Documents with the U.S. Government Printing Office . the Law Library Director of the Tel Aviv University School of Law . Justices of the Supreme Courts of Virginia and Oklahoma . Deans of three library schools . . Several law school professors . . the President of the American Judicature Society . Judges from other courts . plus many MLL members. These were among the more than 45 individuals who participated in the "Strategic Initiatives" sessions following the Sunday and Monday programs at the 1999 Annual Meeting and Conference in Washington, D.C, in July. The final report from these "Strategic Initiatives" sessions is available now at the following URL: http://www.aallnet.org/events/99 strategic.asp

If the United States Congress follows in the direction that it has been moving recently, the United States Code (2000 edition), the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, the official United States Reports, along with many other primary legal materials currently published and distributed to libraries through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), will no longer be available in print for attorneys, librarians, legal assistants, and citizens. Congress has directed the Government Printing Office (GPO) to move toward electronic dissemination of materials and is reducing GPO's funding so significantly that GPO soon may no longer publish these and other titles in both electronic and print formats.

Nearly all U.S. law schools include an Advanced Legal Research course as an elective course for second and third-year students. The justification for the course is obvious, and proponents of advanced courses have succeeded easily in convincing law school curriculum committees to approve chem. Most Advanced Legal Research courses also use "real-world figures" (guest speakers) ro supplement and enhance the instruction provided by the professors of the courses.3 The experiences and current positions of rhe "real-world" speakers are diverse, including librarians, attorneys, publisher/vendor representatives, and government officials. This article discusses the reasons for using real-world figures in Advanced Legal Research courses, who some of those real-world figures are, and the advantages and disadvantages of outside speakers in the classroom. It also includes, where appropriate, illuscrarions from the use of realworld figures in the Advanced Legal Research course at the University of Alabama School of Law.

During the past decade, information technology developments have the dissemination and use of legal and legal-related In 1995, the American Association of Law Libraries, a organization with more than 5,000 members, convened the first "National Conference on Legal Information Issues" in conjunction with its eighty-eighth meeting. National Conference provided a forum for members of the legal and information communities to discuss the challenging problems and issues arising from the dynamic technological changes that have impacted the creation, dissemination and use of legal information. The National Conference assembled more than 2,500 librarians, law faculty and deans, judges court administrators, practicing attorneys and firm administrators, government officials, legal information producers, and leaders of information associations to help chart the course of the information revolution.

In earlier essays Henry Perritt, Marvin Anderson, Gary Bass and Patrice McDermott discuss the increasing use of computers to access information through the information superhighway, the Internet and online services, the increasing reliance on electronic formats by publishers and the federal government and the continuing debate about "information redlining." They indicate that information redlining is broader than just the availability and effects of technology and enhanced online services on lower income, minority and rural communities. It also deals with what information will be available to these groups. As more and more data comes in digital form and when some information can be found only in cyberspace, some believe that the economically disadvantaged and the rural communities will suffer more significantly than the affluent and the urban communities. This bibliography, distributed at the "National Conference on Legal Information Issues," provides locations for additional perspectives about the subjects discussed by the panelists.

The Government Relations Policy [hereinafter Policy] of the AALL outlines the objectives of its government relations program. The Policy emphasizes that a primary goal of this Association's program is to ensure timely and equitable access to government and legal information. This Policy represents the views of an association with more than 5,000 members who provide law library services to government officials, the bench, the bar, legal scholars and the public in nearly 1,900 libraries. AALL, its members and its users are affected by a broad span of public policy concerns "ranging from the development of the National Information Infrastructure and the dissemination of government information to intellectual freedom and intellectual property. AALL members have a special responsibility for ensuring that federal, state and local legal information resources are developed, managed and shared effectively." For these reasons, the AALL membership and its leaders recognized early in the Association's development that they must participate in legislative, judicial and regulatory processes. It is only recently, however, that the government relations program of AALL has been formalized into a "proactive program to inform its members of current issues and to assist government decision-makers developing laws and policies consistent with its Government Relations Policy." This statement traces the early involvement of the Association, its committees and its members in government activities and tracks the developing collective interests of law librarians and AALL members in these issues. The discussion concludes with the late-1980s and early- 1990s developments, which resulted in an increased AALL, presence in Washington, D.C. The presentation deals exclusively with the American Association of Law Libraries' activities and not with the activities of its chapters and Special Interest Sections. It focuses primarily on involvement at the federal level, rather than at the state and local levels.

During the summer of 1993, Kay Todd, President Elect of the American Association of Law Libraries, named a special task force to review the Association's government relations activities, presenting it with a goal of achieving a better coordination of such activities. The charges to the Task Force on AALL's Government Relations Activities and the processes that the Task Force utilized in fulfilling these charges are outlined in the final and interim reports of the Task Force, which follow this introduction. The Interim Report of the Task Force was submitted to the AALL Executive Board prior to its April 1994 meeting for information purposes only. The Final Report, issued on June 21, 1994, outlined nine recommendations relating to AALL's government relations activities. This report was considered by the Executive Board at its July 7-8, 1994, meetings. This introduction details the Executive Board's actions on the nine recommendations of the Final Report. It is followed by the text of the Final Report, as submitted to the AALL Board but with added footnote information to facilitate access to material cited in the Report. The Interim Report is included as an appendix to the Final Report.

A Foreword for the North Carolina Libaries Journal on "Law and the Library."

This note examines the considerations which led the United States Supreme Court to determine that a school board's authority over the administration of the schools is not absolute if the exercise of this authority violates the constitutional rights of the students. Second. the note explores the development of a student's right to receive information through a school library as a guarantee of the first amendment, a right that cannot be ignored by a school board when the board removes books which it considers to be inappropriate either because of the ideas presented in the books or because of the local community's moral. political, and religious opinions. Third. even though the Is/and Trees decision offers no final determination on the "right to receive" information issue, this note will point out how the alignment and the analyses of the Justices will influence the future determination of the issue.