Georgetown Law Library

Welcome and Opening Remarks (Watch the video webcast)

• Bob Berring, Walter Perry Johnson Professor of Law, UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall

Panel 1: The Future Research Value of Blogs (Watch the video webcast)

In this panel, experts on legal research will analyze the much-debated issue of whether future legal scholars will be interested in the analysis found in blogs or the documents posted to blogs. 

Panelists:

• Chris Borgen, Associate Professor of Law, St. John's University

• Lee Peoples, Associate Professor of Law Library Science, Associate Law Library Director, and Director of International Programs, Oklahoma City University School of Law
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• Margaret Schilt, Faculty Services Librarian, D'Angelo Law Library, University of Chicago

Panel 2: Blogs and Reliability (Watch the video webcast)

This panel will be devoted to examining the issue of the reliability of legal documents uploaded to blogs.  From Newsweek’s posting of the “Torture Memos” to SCOTUSBlog’s postings of Supreme Court briefs, news agencies and bloggers regularly upload legal documents to support their stories.  Although these web sites and blogs are often the only sources for these documents, few electronic documents have any verifiable proof of reliability.  Future researchers wanting to rely on these documents must be aware of this issue and must be able to confirm that the posted document is complete and unaltered from the version authorized for publication by the author.  This panel will discuss this issue and the current standards for proving the authenticity of a document in order to foster a system for preserving the value of blogs and documents found on blogs for future researchers.

Panelists:

• Tom Goldstein, Partner, Akin Gump

• Toby McIntosh, Director of Editorial Quality Review, BNA

• Mike Wash, Chief Information Officer, U.S. GPO
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Panel 3: Blog Preservation (Watch the webcast)

The final panel will assemble a group of national experts and leaders from a variety of backgrounds to share their perspectives, experiences and visions with respect to the problem of blog preservation.  Specifically, this panel will discuss who is responsible for blog preservation; how will we begin the process of prioritizing and collecting legal blogs; and  what are the current standards, as well as the technological, economic, and social considerations that must be addressed, in Web harvesting and digital preservation.

Panelists:

• Laura Campbell, Associate Librarian for Strategic Initiatives, Library of Congress
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• Linda Frueh, Regional Director, Washington D.C, Internet Archive
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• Carolyn Hank, Triangle Research Libraries Network Doctoral Fellow at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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• Victoria Reich, Director of the LOCKSS Program (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), Stanford University
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• Donna Scheeder, Director, Law Library Services, Library Of Congress
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Working Group Breakout Session

The symposium will conclude with a working group break out session to brainstorm on guidelines for working with blogs now and in the future for librarians, bloggers, preservationists and researchers.

Facilitator:

• Maureen Sullivan, Maureen Sullivan Associates