• 6 February 2017, 15:25

Theme:

"Law in Transition - Challenges for Legal Research and Legal Methodology in Post-communist Europe"

The IFLA Law Libraries Section and Government Libraries Section are seeking proposals for papers to be presented at a session during the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Wroclaw, Poland, August 19-25, 2017. The conference theme is “Libraries. Solidarity. Society.”

Poland and many other countries in Central and Eastern Europe have transitioned from Communist legal systems to traditional civil law systems. This raises several issues relating to legal methodology and legal research, and complicates orientation in the region’s legal information environment. Communist systems might have published court decisions but did not recognize their precedential value. New systems that have implemented EU law and ECHR-based law do rely on case law. In many countries, Communist-era statutes remain in force and exist alongside new or reformed statutes often regulating similar issues. In addition, many countries have adopted legal transplants. For example, the United States has offered aid projects introducing translations of the U.S. Code to countries drafting new codes.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• general overview of the legal developments in the region
• a discussion and review of examples of the “collision and collusion,” which is transplanting, accepting, and reforming of West European and Soviet legal traditions in these countries
• a case study examining how requests regarding laws of these jurisdictions affect legal scholarship and shape library collections
• methods and techniques used to research laws of the CEE countries; evaluation of available legal information resources

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts must be in English and should include:

• Title of proposed paper
• Abstract of the proposed paper (no more than 500 words)
• Name(s) of presenter(s) plus position and/or title, Employer / affiliated institution
• Contact information including e-mail address, telephone number, and a short biographical statement of presenter(s).

Submit proposal abstracts to:

Anne Burnett
Email: aburnett@uga.edu

Important dates

Proposal abstracts must be submitted by 6 March 2017.

We will notify selected presenters by 7 April 2017.

The deadline for the final versions of papers is 1 June 2017.

Submissions

All proposals must be received by 6 March 2017.

Please note

If submitting a joint proposal, at least one of the paper’s authors must be present to deliver a summary of the paper during the program in Wrocław, Poland. Abstracts should only be submitted with the understanding that the expenses of attending the conference will be the responsibility of the author(s)/presenter(s) of accepted papers.

All papers presented at the WLIC 2017 will be made available online via the IFLA Library under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

Authors of accepted papers must complete the IFLA Authors’ Permission Form.

All expenses, including registration for the conference, travel, accommodation etc., are the responsibility of the authors/presenters. No financial support can be provided by IFLA, but a special invitation letter can be issued to authors.

Congress Participation Grants

A list of opportunities for financial support is available on our Conference Participation Grants webpage.