Twenty years ago, most of the users at the University of Oslo's Faculty of Law Library (UOFLL) were what we would call “Norwegians from Norway”. They came to the library to find Norwegian domestic law to address issues of purely domestic concern. In recent years, bilateral, regional and global agreements have increasingly become an integral part of our domestic legal system.

On July 17, 1998, the world community voted on the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC,) which, if ratified by 60 countries, would establish for the first time in history, a permanent international criminal tribunal. The outcome was an overwhelmingly favorable vote, with 120 countries voting in favor, 21 abstentions, and 7 countries, including the United States, against. The idea of an international criminal court appeared to be in the making.

This contribution to the IALL Annual Course 2001 focuses on electronic law journals, an issue that doesn't seem to arouse much interest in either the Serials Community or the Legal Community. Electronic law journals are hardly ever mentioned by the Serials Community, which seems more occupied with scientific, technical and medical (STM) electronic journals than with journals from other disciplines. Electronic law journals don't attract many comments from the Legal Community either. There has been in the past few years an occasional focus on the topic, but it aimed essentially at proving that electronic journals in law had no particular reasons to survive the era of electronic self-publication. As such however, the phenomenon of electronic journals is rarely addressed by the professionals of legal information.

The development of globalization processes in the world economy allows reconciling supply and demand for staff regardless of the employee's country of origin and leads to international labor migration. The experience of highly developed countries shows that a country's economy and its subsequent growth largely depend on the effective recruitment and use of skilled labor. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a drastic restriction on population mobility and, consequently, worsened the economic and social situations in countries where labor migration was a widespread phenomenon. The ensuing economic crisis has not only altered trends in labor migration but has also brought new challenges to its legal regulation. The article aims to determine the features of migration trends and policy in the COVID-19 environment, examine them in the context of new regulations adopted to protect the labor rights of migrants under the current circumstances, suggest effective measures to regulate the situation in the labor market, and address the economic crises in the countries of destination and origin. The examination of this issue involved a complex methodological framework where the general scientific dialectical method was central to the research. The conducted research provides a foundation for overcoming the social and economic crises caused by COVID-19, which contributes to its practical significance.

This paper aims to present the historical development of academic libraries and librarianship in Turkey. It takes its starting point from the first years of the Republic and follows the reforms, improvements and setbacks in this field.

Law publishing — that is, the reproduction and dissemination of statutes, judicial decisions, commentaries, legal forms and texts — is as old as writing and can be found in all literate societies. In the ancient world, written law was essential to political and social relations. That can be seen from the importance given to law codes in the Semitic, Greek and Roman societies. Over the centuries and in every medium from stone and clay, papyrus and parchment, to paper and the electronic media of our day — law has been a major component of literature. The very fact of publication is an essential requirement for the enactment and efficacy of laws in many societies. Publication of law was widespread before the invention of printing and was achieved by reproducing important texts in multiple manuscript copies which could then be disseminated to libraries, officials and others who needed them and could afford them. The printing of law depended not only on the invention of the press itself, but also on the acceptance of what more accessible law might mean to society. In England, for example this was a matter of considerable controversy for over a hundred years.

Among Asian Nations, India has become a major political, cultural and business hub. This situation has contributed to frequent interaction of foreign governments, foreign nationals and businesspersons with India and Indians. In order to make them aware of the Indian Legal System and Literatures - so that they act within scope of the system – I present here a brief article giving an introduction to Indian legal literature and legal sources.

Two earlier resources for Indian legal materials include:

1. A Bibliography of Indian Law, edited by Charles Henry Alexandrowicz, (Oxford University Press, 1958), and

2. Indian Legal Materials: A Bibliographic Guide, by H.C. Jain, (N.M. Tripathi, Bombay, 1970).

This is an interdisciplinary article focusing on the interplay between information and communication technology (ICT) and international law (IL). Its purpose is to open a dialogue between ICT and IL practitioners that focuses on the ways in which ICT can enhance equitable participation in international legal structures, particularly through capturing the possibilities associated with big data. This depends on the ability of individuals to access big data, for it to be structured in a manner that makes it accessible and for the individual to be able to take action based on it.

This article will introduce an approach to teaching legal research called Expansive Legal Research. The Expansive Legal Research perspective is based upon dissertation research on legal information behavior at a law school legal aid clinic. This approach is inspired by an educational perspective called Expansive Learning, which in turn has roots in the psychological theory called Activity Theory. The Expansive Legal Research perspective includes elements inspired by Expansive Learning and Activity Theory such as a focus on an activity-centered context of both the individual and social aspects of human behavior; the design-oriented nature of human problem-solving; the role of tacit knowledge and unwritten rules in daily activity and practice; and a cultural historical approach to learning and development, where both the user and their tools are undergoing a constant process of growth and change and transformation. An Expansive Legal Research approach, and the theory it is based upon, may provide new insights into legal research instruction, and may be a useful tool for legal research instructors.

One of the spectacular and liberating features of the Internet in general and the United Nations web site in particular is that if a treaty you are researching was drafted in connection with a conference relating to human rights, the environment, development, or a major topic in criminal or commercial law, entire web pages based on the treaty and its history are now in place. The process of drafting and finalizing the texts of major conventions and treaties sponsored by bodies within the United Nations system is unusually well-documented. The conference process and other drafting procedures have always made researching UN treaties rather more systematic than is the case with many inter-governmental organizations.

Discussing the European Union (EU) is an excellent way of dealing with the question of the translation of legal texts. Why is this the case? The European Union, with approximately 370 million inhabitants, is unique among the world's international organizations. It is unique because it uses all the official languages of its Member States in its official publications.

Thank you, Terry [Harry S. Martin III] for this kind introduction. I'm glad to be here to meet you all. I'm very fond of law librarians, perhaps because of Terry, who has given us such unstinting support for a program and for a body of literature that might otherwise be considered exotic or unnecessary. I don't think we've ever asked for anything from this Library that it has not tried its very best to give us. In our program we are aware that probably the most essential thing we can do—building for the long-term—is to strengthen the Library in our field. I have to admit, in my modest moments, that people most often come here to study with us, to join our program, not for us, but for the Library. Occasionally people let it slip.

This article examines the potential effects of the developing user-centered, networked information environment on scholarly communication in law. By “user-centered, networked information environment,” I mean the emerging environment for legal research and scholarship, in which most seekers and users of legal information will have ready desktop access to a networked computer and to applications that will allow them to communicate with colleagues around the world and enable them to retrieve increasing amounts of the information they need to be productive directly via the Internet, without needing to rely on locally held print sources.