Thankfulness

It is November and this is the time of year to give thanks for the many good things we have and the opportunities for the future.

I am thankful that the Legal Information Preservation Alliance formed about 10 years ago. LIPA is holding firm to its described mission to be devoted to providing leadership, direction, and support for preservation initiatives in law libraries.

LIPA makes a point to: •Listen to members and Lead our libraries in collaborative projects (membership meetings and support for projects like the Chesapeake Project) •Investigate ways to preserve tangible print and digital legal publications into the future (white papers) •Preserve and save legal information in various formats (PALMprint and Internet Archives), and •Ally itself with other organizations with a preservation and legal information interest for programming, research and innovation.

The outreach and collaborative activities of LIPA serves its members and potential library users well. LIPA libraries can work collaboratively on preservation projects at a lower cost and make the most of partnerships created by the organization.

Here are some of the projects that rely on collaboration (also listed in the LIPA brochure): • PALMPrint (Preserving America’s Legal Materials in Print) – a shared, jointly-owned print collection of legal materials, housed in a climate-controlled, purpose-built facility and widely accessible for use as needed. This is a collaborative project with NELLCO, an international consortium of law libraries.

• Web Archiving Service – a subscription service that allows LIPA members to harvest and preserve collections of digital content and create digital archives, using the Archive-It web archiving service from the Internet Archive. LIPA has a consortial subscription to Archive-It, which allows participating LIPA libraries to subscribe at a fraction of the cost of a full license. Long-term plans include collaboration on the curation of topical law-related collections of archived web content.

• Law Review Preservation Program – a long-term archiving solution for law reviews published online. In partnership with Berkeley Electronic Press, law reviews published on bepress’s Digital Commons platform can be automatically archived in CLOCKSS, an international dark archive for long-term preservation.

• Legal Information Archive – a collaborative digital archive established to preserve and ensure permanent access to vital born digital legal information, using OCLC’s CONTENTdm® and its Digital Archive™ system. The Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group is the biggest contributor to the Legal Information Archive. LIPA has negotiated consortial discounts and waivers of some fees for its members who wish to use this OCLC service.

• LlPA is a member of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance, a collaborative effort of the Library of Congress to preserve a distributed national digital collection for the benefit of present and future generations.

• LIPA is a supporting partner of Perma.cc, an online preservation service developed by the Harvard Law School Library in conjunction with academic law libraries across the country and other organizations.

These collaborations provide LIPA members with lots of possibilities. I appreciate being part of an organization that is active, informed and makes these opportunities available.

Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving!