[Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

[Ray Saintonge]

Samuel Klein wrote:
> There is a wealth of work done all the time by primary source
> researchers and publishers, which could be improved on by having
> wikisource entries, translations, &c.
>
> Related question : how appropriate would large numbers of public
> domain texts, with page scans and the best available OCR [and
> translations of same], fit with what Wikisource does now?  This is
> clearly a wiki project that needs to happen : OCR even at its best
> misses rare meaning-bearing words.   If not Wikisource, where should
> this work take place?
>   
 From my perspective it fits perfectly with the vision that I had of 
Wikisource on the first day of its existence.  Tim Armstrong 
[[User:Tarmstro99]] has already done a considerable amount of valuable 
work relating to law on Wikisource.  That has been mostly a one-man 
project to deal with a massive amount of material.  Some have even 
proposed deleting all the US Code material on the grounds that we don't 
have the ability to keep it up to date. That has prompted some very 
interesting questions and ideas about how this kind of stuff might be 
handled, but taking those questions to the next level requires lots of 
work.  Most regular Wikisourcerors already have long personal to-do 
lists to keep them busy.  So the question is not really about whether 
Wikisource should host these goods, it's about recruiting volunteers to 
do the hard work.

Ec

> On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:41 AM, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2009/06/19/using-wikisource-as-an-alternative-open-access-repository-for-legal-scholarship/
>>
>> Interesting. How well does this fit with what Wikisource does?
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
>>