Austlii: Thinking Locally, Acting Globally

Abstract

The Australasian Legal Information Institute's (AustLII's) Australasian service is the testbed for new Australasian service is the testbed for new developments which are then implemented in AustLII's international services (WorldLII, AsianLII and CommonLII), and often also adopted by other LIIs with which AustLII collaborates most closely. This presentation focuses on the most important new developments taking place on AustLII in 2010, including redevelopment of the results interface to integrate it with LawCite; expansion of LawCite to include law journals, law reform reports and treaties; large scale expansion of AustLII content both horizontally (comprehensive current caselaw and legislation sources) and vertically (historical collections of legislation, case law and legal scholarship); versions of legislation at different times; and content-specific Libraries involving virtual databases. Other new developments in the pipeline will be mentioned including RSS and other feeds, and user-generated content/contributions. How these developments are then adopted by AustLII's international projects and collaborating LIIs is then explained, in the context of the overall aim of a global network of free access legal information. Some new international projects are previewed.