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This article discusses the responsibilities of legal scholars to make their published works openly accessible through the Internet, within the context of efforts to increase free and open access to legal information, and to improve access to scholarly literature in other disciplines. The article also considers the roles and responsibilities of the institutions that support the creation and communication of legal scholarship for improving access to legal information.

The International Journal of Legal Information is the official publication of the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL). As noted in its current statement of purpose, the Journal "serves the global community of law librarians, legal scholars, and practitioners through the publication of original articles, conference papers, bibliographies, book reviews, and documents concerning law and law-related information." It is also a significant source of information about the history of the IALL and the major figures of international law librarianship who have participated in its programs and activities. Much of the history of the Association, which was established in 1959, is recorded within the Journal in presidential columns, editorials, memorials, and reports on meetings and conferences.

Histories of law publishing in the United States can be found in a number of sources, several of which are listed in the bibliography that accompanies this article. Although there are no completely up-to-date treatments of the subject, the most comprehensive is probably Erwin C. Surrency'sA History of American Law Publishing(1990). Surrency discusses American legal publishing from the colonial era to the late twentieth century, but his book closes before the far-reaching changes resulting from the growth of electronic publishing and dissemination of legal information in the latter years of the twentieth century. A few sources discuss the initial impacts and implications of computer-assisted legal research databases. More recent literature on the Internet's effects on legal research is discussed in section IV of this article. Other useful sources for exploring the history of U.S. law book publishing are found in two edited collections: George S. Grossman'sLegal Research: Historical Foundations of the Electronic Age(1994); and Betty Taylor and Robert Munro's four volume set:American Law Publishing 1860-1900: Historical Readings(1984).

This article examines the potential effects of the developing user-centered, networked information environment on scholarly communication in law. By "user-centered, networked information environment," I mean the emerging environment for legal research and scholarship, in which most seekers and users of legal information will have ready desktop access to a networked computer and to applications that will allow them to communicate with colleagues around the world and enable them to retrieve increasing amounts of the information they need to be productive directly via the Internet, without needing to rely on locally held print sources.