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.

Law librarianship, especially the librarianship in judicial institutions, is different from librarianship in any other discipline. This aspect is more appropriately explained by Prof. Igor I. Kavass, when he says that “the reason for law libraries being different from other types of libraries is that they serve a profession which is literally unable to exercise its work without the use of books.” While Librarians in other organizations may convince their users to give them some time for catering to their information requirements, a court librarian has to furnish the desired information at once because the case is being argued in the Court and desired information is needed in the course of the argument. So a law librarian has to provide the information instantly without any excuse. Because of this reason, a law librarian has to be a very alert professional and must develop his or her own tools and expertise to provide the desired information instantly.

Despite its recent development, the Web already contains an astonishing variety of legal materials from dozens of countries. Significant collections of legislation are already available on the Web from over 50 countries. The full text is available on the Web of all legislation from almost all the jurisdictions of the USA, Canada, Australasia, many Latin American countries and some European countries (such as Norway and Germany), and extensive collections from many other European counties (such as the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal). Substantial collections of legislation are available from many developing countries, including India, Turkey, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Vietnam, Zambia, China, Mexico and Israel.

Working with United Nations documentation can be challenging. For starters, titles of documents are generic. In general, it's a good idea to have a basic sense of how the Organization is structured and its reporting system. (For example, the Commission on Human Rights reports to the Economic and Social Council, the International Law Commission to the General Assembly.) Many tools are available to help in this regard but perhaps the most useful is United Nations Documentation: Research Guide, which is an excellent starting point for neophytes but also has features for advanced researchers which enable them to further hone their skills.

In today's increasingly interdependent global society, international institutions formerly committed to operating as insular systems recognizing only states as legitimate participants have come under pressure to open their processes to public view and participation. The World Trade Organization (WTO) in particular has been widely criticized for its lack of transparency and democratic participation. Nowhere has this criticism been more prevalent than in the arena of dispute settlement. The controversy over the acceptance of amicus briefs at the WTO reflects the tensions among WTO members and non-members concerning greater public access to dispute settlement proceedings. This battle has been fought primarily through the Appellate Body and its important series of decisions on amicus briefs.

The author identifies and evaluates the respective merits of publication in law journals and publication on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) - the largest open access repository for legal scholarship. This evaluation leads to the conclusion that at this stage of the evolution of law journals and SSRN, there are advantages in authors publishing both in journals and on SSRN. However, publication on SSRN can have particular advantages for authors in smaller countries.

In the beginning of this month we commemorated the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The 9th of November 1989 not only marked the end of the Cold War but also the opening up of the possibility of joining global, and regional, economic activities and institutions for millions of people east of the wall - and indeed elsewhere in the world, from India to Latin America. This has levelled the global economic playing field. It has “flattened” our world. For some, this marked the beginning of the globalization process. But our world has become “horizontal” in a more fundamental sense and over a longer period of time. Human relationships are now far more than in the past determined by horizontal connections with like-minded others across borders, including virtual connections through cyberspace and mass-media, and much less by vertical lines of authority within a closed society.

The European Union membership process has had an impact on Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy. However, when compared with previous candidate countries to the EU, the Europeanization of politics in Turkey has not been an even process. The reformation of politics in Turkey has had three main characteristics. First, instead of the pace of the reforms being linear, there has been a periodic rise and fall of interest in introducing amendments. Second, the reforms have not necessarily replaced past practices, rather they have only introduced new ones in addition to the old ways of doing politics. Finally, there has been considerable opposition to the reforms in Turkey, partially because the government does not seem to follow the liberal-democratic trajectory set out by the EU membership process. The delays in enacting the constitutional and legal changes and the biased selection of laws and practices that are being amended do not give the impression that the government is sincere. Whether the amendments are in fact Europeanizing Turkey or pulling it away from its Western and secular political framework is a significant question leading to conflict among different factions in society. This divergence of opinion, in turn, results in further stalling the reforms.

This paper aims to give an overview of education of librarians, professional associations, publications and the types of libraries in Turkey. In addition, the activities of the Turkish Platform of Law Librarians and law librarianship in Turkey are presented.

Iceland is a small country with a long legal history. Iceland, an island between Norway and G ree nland, has today appr. 250,000 inhab itants. The country was settled (mostly) by Norwegians in the 9th and 10th century. The parliament—the “Althing”—is more tha n 1,000 years old. The first Althing met in A.D. 930.

The client with a United Nations-related question, once the bogeyman of law librarians, can now be approached with confidence, in the knowledge that many questions can be readily answered by recourse to the Internet – through websites that are either free, or relatively inexpensive to access, or through commercial hosts such as Lexis and Westlaw. This contention is supported with particular reference to treaty research.

It must be emphasized that the functions and structure change continuously and, of course, the documentation changes as well.

United Nations Documentation: a Brief Guide

The UN is a major publisher. Over the more than five decades of its existence, it has published hundreds of thousands of documents (reports, studies, resolutions, meeting records, letters from Governments, etc.) on topics of key interest (disarmament, the environment, human rights, international law, peace-keeping, etc.).

Under the circumstances, it might initially seem impossible to track down precise information in view of the overwhelming amount of data available, but a systematic approach to your research will always yield results.

United Nations Documentation Research Guide

Switzerland is a federal state that lies in the heart of Europe and is bordered by Germany (to the north), Austria and the Principality of Liechtenstein (to the east), Italy (to the south) and France (to the west).

Law libraries occupy a unique and, in many respects, an ambiguous status in the United States. This status tends to set them apart in a variety of significant ways from the ubiquitous prototypes of general libraries and, with the possible exception of medical libraries, even from the different categories of specialized libraries in other academic or professional areas. The distinctiveness of law libraries in the United States, which is shared to a greater or lesser extent by many law libraries elsewhere in the world, and especially in countries possessing legal systems based on common law, cannot fully be appreciated by anyone who does not have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the nature and content of law as well as a working familiarity with the idiosyncratic uses of library materials by the legal profession in the exercise of judicial and legislative processes. Unfortunately, the incontro-vertible value of this self-evident requirement if frequently overlooked.