take almost two thousand years to digitize the nine billion text records it presently holds in its collection.[1]
Wikis and other collaborative tools change this picture in potentially important ways. Just as other informational projects have benefited by opening themselves to participation by a distributed community of volunteers,[2] the means now exist to harness the efforts of legal professionals, students, and even interested members of the public at large to improve access to legal information, court decisions, statutes and regulations, and legal scholarship. In 2008, for example, the participants in one such project (initiated by the present author) succeeded in making crucial portions of the legislative history of the landmark Copyright Act of 1976 freely available online for the first time.[3] The online version of the Copyright Act’s legislative history improves access not only by duplicating the text of the original report, but—perhaps more importantly—by making it possible for other online works that cite the report to hyperlink to it.[4] This creates a seamless web of knowledge that improves upon the practical experience of using reference sources in paper form. If we multiply this isolated example by dozens, hundreds, or thousands of interested online users of legal texts, the possibility of a transformative moment in access to legal knowledge begins to appear ever closer.[5]
This essay begins with a review of the open access imperative, which may be normatively grounded in considerations of transparency, democratic legitimacy, and the fulfillment of the university’s public service mandate. It then surveys the current status of a number of projects aimed at improving public access to legal
- ↑ See Katie Hafner, History, Digitized (and Abridged), N.Y. Times, Mar. 11, 2007, § 3 (Magazine), at 1.
- ↑ See, e.g., Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks 68–90 (2006) (collecting examples).
- ↑ See infra note 142 and accompanying text.
- ↑ See Wikisource, Pages that link to “Copyright Law Revision (House Report No. 94-1476)”, at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Copyright_Law_Revision_(House_Report_No._94-1476)) (accessed Apr. 15, 2010); Wikisource, Pages that link to “Copyright Law Revision (Senate Report No. 94-473)”, at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Copyright_Law_Revision_(Senate_Report_No._94-473)) (accessed Apr. 15, 2010).
- ↑ As one writer put it: “[M]any nerds believe that a billion readers can reliably weave together the pages of old books, one hyperlink at a time. Those with a passion for a special subject, obscure author or favorite book will, over time, link up its important parts. Multiply that simple generous act by millions of readers, and the universal library can be integrated in full, by fans for fans.” Kevin Kelly, Scan This Book!, N.Y. Times, May 14, 2006, § 6 (Magazine), at 42, 45.
