The time to debate the role of blogs in legal scholarship has passed. As we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, one of our oldest and most conservative disciplines has clearly embraced the era of electronic publishing. Blogging has indeed transformed legal scholarship. Now it's time to move the dialogue forward.

The Future of Today's Legal Scholarship is a symposium that brings together academic bloggers, law librarians, and experts in preservation to tackle the bigger, more imperative challenges that will influence legal scholarship and democratic access to legal information for generations to come.

We must determine how to prioritize, collect, archive, preserve, and ensure reliable long-term access to the burgeoning amount of legal scholarship being published through new, informal channels on the Web.

The Future of Today's Legal Scholarship aims to accomplish this objective through non-conventional means. This symposium is an active, idea-based exchange inviting the participation and contribution of attendees alongside that of expert presenters and panelists.

This unique symposium will seek answers to the questions:

1. How can quality academic scholarship reliably be discovered?

2. How can future researchers be assured of perpetual access to the information currently available in blogs?

3. How can any researcher be confident that documents posted to blogs are genuine?

When: July 25, 2009

Where: Gewirz Student Center, Georgetown University Law Center

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Welcome and Opening Remarks

9:00 - 10:00 a.m.
Bob Berring, Walter Perry Johnson Professor of Law, UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall

The Future Research Value of Blogs

10:00 - 11:00 a.m.
Chris Borgen, Associate Professor of Law, St. John's University
Lee Peoples, Associate Professor of Law Library Science, Associate Law Library Director, and Director of International Programs, Oklahoma City University School of Law
Margaret Schilt, Faculty Services Librarian, D'Angelo Law Library, University of Chicago

Blogs and Reliability

11:15 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Tom Goldstein, Partner, Akin Gump
Toby McIntosh, Director of Editorial Quality Review, BNA
Mike Wash, Chief Information Officer, U.S. GPO

Blog Preservation

1:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Laura Campbell, Associate Librarian for Strategic Initiatives, Library of Congress
Linda Frueh, Regional Director, Washington D.C, Internet Archive
Carolyn Hank, Triangle Research Libraries Network Doctoral Fellow at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Victoria Reich, Director of the LOCKSS Program (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), Stanford University
Donna Scheeder, Director, Law Library Services, Library Of Congress