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Preserving resources from Haiti: On the Shelf

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Preserving law sources is one of our top priorities and every day we find ourselves working with different jurisdictions.  In May, as we were working on reclassifying Law-classed materials, our serials cataloger came across some deteriorating issues of the law reports of Haiti, La Gazette du palais: organe juridiqueAs a law source, this bimonthly collection of legal cases, commentary, and news is valuable to legal researchers.  The Law Library has made special efforts to gather and preserve Haitian legal materials  after the Haitian earthquake of 2010, among other jurisdictions with their national bibliographies at greater risk because of natural disasters and/or political upheaval.

La Gazette du Palais Organe Juridique 1er Janvier, 1947 [photo by J. Davis]
La Gazette du Palais is held by few libraries and is not digitized anywhere . The reports were printed on exceptionally cheap newsprint as the issues were probably viewed as advance copies of later collected bound reports. This strategic use of cheap, low quality paper for gazettes is a common practice. With these factors in mind, when we determined that our copies of certain issues were in an advanced state of deterioration, we moved quickly to preserve their content with microfilm copies that can be safely stored. When the next users need this title, we—and La Gazette du Palais— will be ready for them.

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