Colorado Enacts Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act

Colorado has enacted the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA), according to a 27 April 2012 announcement by the Uniform Law Commission.

According to the announcement, Colorado is the first state to enact UELMA, which has also been introduced in California, Connecticut, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Tennessee.

UELMA is a new, proposed, uniform, U.S. state statute requiring states that enact it to authenticate, preserve, and provide permanent public access to legal information that those states publish in electronic formats.

Professor Barbara A. Bintliff of the University of Texas School of Law is the reporter for UELMA.

For more information on UELMA, please see Professor Bintliff’s VoxPopuLII post, entitled The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act Is Ready for Legislative Action, and Alan S. Kowlowitz’s recent report, Opening Government’s Official Legal Materials: Authenticity and Integrity in the Digital World.

CTG Albany on Authenticity and Integrity in Official Legal Information

New from @CTG_UAlbany : Opening Government’s Official Legal Materials: Authenticity and Integrity in the Digital World (2012).  

Here is the abstract:

Increasingly, state governments are moving toward making primary legal materials available online via state government websites. The goal in these efforts, and also the challenge, is to provide users with more efficient access while ensuring that the electronic versions of primary legal materials are as “official” as their paper originals. The desire of state governments to make this a priority is strong. However, they currently lack the necessary policies and management practices necessary for success. State legislators and their staffs, legislative reference librarians, state archivists, and chief information officers all have important roles to play in laying the foundation for these efforts through the creation of new policy, management, and technology capabilities. This brief provides background to the recently approved Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA), explores the concepts behind authenticated electronic materials, defines what it will take to create, maintain, and make available official electronic legal material, and provides recommendations for states.

HT @tpardo

Bintliff on the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act

Professor Barbara A. Bintliff of the University of Texas School of Law has posted The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act Is Ready for Legislative Action, on the VoxPopuLII Blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In this post, Professor Bintliff — who is the Reporter for the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) — explains the provisions of UELMA — a new, proposed, uniform, U.S. state statute requiring states that enact it to authenticate, preserve, and provide permanent public access to legal information that those states publish in electronic formats. The statute is intended to “ensur[e] the trustworthiness of online legal resources and preserv[e] … electronic [legal] publications to provide for continuing accessibility.”

The post also examines the policy principles that inform the Act — especially the Act’s “outcomes-based” approach, intended to accommodate technological change and to afford states substantial flexibility in complying with the Act — as well as the origins of the Act in the American Association of Law Libraries’ 2007 National Summit on Authentication of Digital Legal Information.

Professor Bintliff explains that UELMA is scheduled to be introduced into a number of U.S. state legislatures in January 2012.

This post will be of interest to policy makers responsible for digital legal information resources, the government and legal technology communities, the legal community, legal information professionals, and advocates of improved public access to legal information.

Uniform Electronic Material Act Approved by ULC

The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act — formerly called The Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials Act — has been approved by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC; formerly called the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, NCCUSL) at their annual meeting in Vail, Colorado, according to a ULC Twitter post.

[Update 12 July 2011, 6:22 p.m. Pacific: Click here for the ULC's press release.]

According to ULC, the vote was “45 [states] in favor, 1 abstention and 7 states not voting.”

The Act establishes uniform legal standards for the authentication and preservation of U.S. state legal information in digital formats.

The chair of the drafting committee for the Act is Michele L. Timmons, the Revisor of Statutes for the State of Minnesota, and the committee’s reporter is Professor Barbara A. Bintliff of the University of Texas School of Law.

Click here for the meeting agenda.

Click here for the current draft of the Act and the memo describing it.

Click here for earlier drafts of the Act and related documents.

July 7: NCCUSL to Consider Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act

The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act — formerly called The Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials Act — will be considered by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) at their upcoming annual meeting, on 7 July 2011, in Vail, Colorado. The Act would establish uniform legal standards for the authentication and preservation of U.S. state legal information in digital formats.

The chair of the drafting committee for the Act is Michele L. Timmons, the Revisor of Statutes for the State of Minnesota, and the committee’s reporter is Professor Barbara A. Bintliff of the University of Texas School of Law.

Click here for the meeting agenda.

Click here for the current draft of the Act and the memo describing it.

Click here for earlier drafts of the Act and related documents.

NCCUSL Accepts Draft Uniform Statute on Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials

The latest draft of The Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials Act, and its accompanying report, were accepted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) on 15 July 2010, according to a report by Professor Barbara Bintliff of the University of Colorado School of Law, the reporter to NCCUSL Drafting Committee on Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials, which is drafting the statute.

According to Professor Bintliff’s report, the NCCUSL Committee of the Whole’s principal comments on the draft were as follows:

a request for clarification of the relationship between the state’s official publishers and commercial publishers; a desire by Commissioners to include “free access” to preserved, historical materials as an option; and a need to explain better the Drafting Committee’s intentions regarding the effective date of the act.

According to Professor Bintliff’s report, the drafting committee will meet again on 19-21 November 2010 in Washington, DC, USA, to address those comments and to consider further revisions to the draft statute. Professor Bintliff’s report states that a second reading of the draft statute by NCCUSL is expected in summer 2011.

Most of the previous drafts and other documents produced by the drafting committee are available at the drafting committee’s documents Website.

Revised Draft Available: Proposed State Statute on Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials

A revised discussion draft of The Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials Act, has been posted at the documents Website of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) Drafting Committee on Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials.

The committee’s chair is Michele L. Timmons, the Revisor of Statutes for the State of Minnesota, and its reporter is Professor Barbara Bintliff of the University of Colorado School of Law.

According to the current draft of the statute’s prefatory note, “[d]igital information formats have become fundamental and indispensable to the operation of state government. This [act] addresses the critical need to manage electronic legal information in a manner that guarantees the trustworthiness of and continuing access to important state documents.”

The draft is to be discussed at the committee’s meeting to be held 5-7 March 2010 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Previous drafts, committee meeting minutes, and the study committee report, are available from the Website for the committee’s documents, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Biddle Law Library.

HT Tom Bruce.

Update on Legal Information Preservation: 2009 LIPA Minutes Available

Minutes are now available of the July 26, 2009 meeting of LIPA, the Legal Information Preservation Alliance, held in Washington, DC, at the 2009 AALL Annual Meeting. LIPA coordinates legal information preservation efforts in the United States. Here are some highlights of the July 2009 meeting:

• The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) has appointed a Drafting Committee on Authentication and Preservation of State Electronic Legal Materials, to write a uniform state law setting standards for the preservation and authentication of U.S. state legal resources in digital format. The Committee Reporter is Professor Barbara A. Bintliff of the University of Colorado School of Law.
• The Chespeake Project Legal Information Archive completed its pilot project, during which it captured and preserved 4306 digital law-related information resources, in a system that runs on the CONTENTdm platform. LIPA Executive Director Margaret Maes reported that the Chesapeake Project “is now part of LIPA under the umbrella of the Legal Information Archive,” and LIPA members were to be invited to participate in the Legal Information Archive in the fall of this year;
• Professor Kent McKeever of Columbia University Law School reported on LIPA’s Print Retention Program, which monitors and coordinates the retention of print legal resources among U.S. law libraries. Here is the most recent report on this program. This project currently involves Columbia University’s Diamond Law Library and the Harvard Law School Library. There are plans to expand the project to enable other libraries to commit to preserving particular print legal resources. “There is a parallel project being done by the old RLG group whereby preservation status will be in 583 field of the bibliographic record. This model will allow smaller libraries to be able to participate in the print retention project.”
• LIPA has named a Digital Preservation Priorities and Inventory Committee, which is “developing priorities for selecting materials for a repository of digital and born-digital information and maintaining that information on the LIPA Website”;
• LIPA has a new strategic plan, whose goals include:
• promoting preservation of born-digital and print legal information resources;
• creating a database of LIPA’s preservation inventory; and
• developing best practices for legal information preservation.

For more information, please see the minutes, or visit the LIPA Website.