Law libraries are drivers of legal education as they curate quality information sources needed by stakeholders to achieve their goals and mandate. The proliferation of information technologies has given rise to new models of publication notably the Open Access model. Unfortunately, the Open Access sector, in as much as it holds great promise to revolutionise information access and production, has been exploited for profit leading to the emergence of predatory publishing. This has the potential to compromise the quality of work of law libraries as under-qualified information sources find their way into the standard information hubs of law libraries and other networks of information provided for legal education.
This development has resulted in several initiatives aimed at cleaning the publication and information networks of law libraries, among which is Research4Life’s GOALI database. As indicated on their website, GOALI’s motto “Research for Global Justice” is suggestive of the fact that the aim of the database is to ensure justice through the provision of information in an increasingly unequal world as a result of economic and social barriers.
The Education and Webinar Committee of the Association African Law Library and Information Professionals (AfLLIP), cognizant of the changing terrain of information access and cost involved in securing subscription access to proprietary databases in law and related subjects, is proud to present a webinar on “Leveraging on GOALI for increased access to affordable legal information in Africa”.
The theme chosen for this webinar has been endorsed by the Executive Committee of AfLLIP to support African law libraries to overcome the cost barriers associated with access to legal information in law libraries. It is important to point out that the GOALI database is not just a legal information database but one that incorporates “disciplines such as politics, economics, philosophy, history and many more from the most prestigious academic publishers, GOALI offers access to up to 16,000 resources, including books and peer-reviewed journals from 70 publishers”.
The webinar would be presented by Alison Shea, Edit Horvath, and Trezlen Drake, a team from Research4Life, the umbrella initiative responsible for the database GOALI. Your host is Christopher M. Owusu-Ansah, PhD.
Date and Time
31 January, 2023
14.00 GMT
Target Audience
Librarians from all library types are welcome, including particularly law libraries, academic, special, public and community libraries.
Registration details and link
Click on the button below to join the meeting:
https://meet.google.com/ayo-qyhv-vzx
About the Resource Persons
Alison Shea is currently Research & Instructional Law Librarian (Foreign, Comparative & International Law) and Adjunct Professor of Law at the Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York. She has been involved with various library associations including the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL), the International Association of Law Librarians (IALL), and International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). Alison is a former Chair of AALL’s Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Special Interest Section, and has coordinated, moderated, and spoken at a number of professional librarian association conferences.
Edit Horvath serves as User and Outreach Librarian in the International Labour Organization in Geneva and as Co-Chair of the Communication and Marketing Committee of the Research4Life partnership. She is responsible for managing the communication and outreach activities of Research4Life partnership with the objective to increase the usage of Research4Life content and services in lower income countries. Ms Horvath also provides research assistance and public information services to researchers and users at international level.
Trezlen Drake is currently the Head of Digital Resources and a Foreign & international Law Research Librarian at Yale Law School. In addition to her recent work with GOALI at Yale as a University Partner of Research4Life, she has been involved in numerous law library associations including the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) and has been active within the leadership of AALL helping create a special interest section for newer law librarians, chairing and participating in subcommittees on diversity and inclusion within the library profession, and coordinating, moderating, writing and speaking on different topics within librarianship.
About the Host
Christopher M. Owusu-Ansah, PhD, is the Acting University Librarian of the Akenten Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development. He has over 12 years of experience in university library management. His professional and teaching interests involve Digital Library Systems and management; Distance learning, Electronic Information Retrieval; Metadata; Collection development & management; and Information Literacy. His ongoing research focuses on implementing digital library services in academic contexts, remote library services, information-seeking behaviour, and open science/access publishing. He teaches undergraduate and graduate-level Information Literacy. He holds professional/academic qualifications including a Diploma in Education (UEW-Ghana), BA, MA in Information Studies (University of Ghana) and Doctor of Literature and Philosophy, Information Science (University of South Africa). He is also a Research Fellow at the Department of Information Science of the University of South Africa, Pretoria-South Africa.
