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Law Library of Congress and Harvard Law School Collaboration Improves Access to Legal Collection Materials

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The Law Library of Congress and Harvard Law School are excited to commence work on a project to increase access to and discovery of national legal gazettes, manuscripts, and other legal materials.

This multi-year effort will facilitate analysis and knowledge-sharing by the Law Library of Congress and the Program In Islamic Law (PIL) at Harvard Law School regarding the copyright status of collection materials, particularly national gazettes. Following a copyright clearance analysis, these materials will be posted on the Law Library of Congress and Harvard Law websites, with the goal of facilitating open access to these valuable legal materials for scholars in one convenient location.

This effort will also harness the power of data science and artificial intelligence to create a tool called “SEARCHstrata,” which will improve the ability of users to search within these collections. The Program in Islamic Law and SHARIAsource Lab at Harvard Law School are building a tool to facilitate more robust searches of Islamic law collections at the Harvard Libraries and Library of Congress than are currently possible.

Click here to learn more about this effort, and stay tuned to In Custodia Legis to learn more about this exciting project, including the beta release of SEARCHstrata later this fall.

About the Program in Islamic Law

The Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School works to promote research and provide resources for the academic study of Islamic law through a suite of projects, including programs, publications, and people, who are part of the community of fellows and researchers. Learn more about PIL at pil.law.harvard.edu, explore the data science initiatives at its SHARIAsource Lab, and read about the latest scholarship and developments in Islamic law at the islamiclaw.blog.

About the Law Library of Congress

The Law Library of Congress was established in 1832 as a department of the Library of Congress. Today, the Law Library of Congress is not only the largest law collection in the world, with 2.9 million volumes, it is also an institution serving Congress and the public with unparalleled research and reference services, and extensive electronic resources.

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