The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) has added the Vermont Toolkit to their collection of state legal "toolkits" to help public librarians and their patrons answer legal questions.  The Vermont Public Library Legal Toolkit contains information on how to access the Vermont Constitution and Statutes, legislative bills, regulations, municipal codes, and self-help links to a wide variety of advocacy groups.  Also included are links to information on how to research a legal issue, making sure the information is up to date, and legal collection development. There is also a list of the Federal Depository Libraries in Vermont - likely sources for Federal legal information of all sorts.  For library patrons who are members of the Bar or who are representing themselves in court, there are links to the Vermont Bar Association, their continuing legal education resources, jury instructions (unofficial) and form books.  The Vermont Public Library Legal Toolkit can be downloaded at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/lisp/vermont.pdf and the list of other States with such toolkits is at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/lisp/toolkit.htm 

As it happens, these toolkits are the "first rehearsal" for a much larger project.  The AALL, along with the Law Library of Congress, a number of law schools, foundations and corporations (including Google and Justia.com), is working on a project styled "law.gov" to obtain and make available all primary and selected secondary source materials on American law. Their guiding principle belies the tremendous scope of the project: "Primary legal materials include documents of primary authority issued by governmental bodies, such as court opinions, statutes, and regulations. They also include the supporting documents and other media issued and maintained by those bodies, such as dockets, hearings, forms, oral arguments, and legislative histories. These materials can be found in every branch, at every level, national, tribal, state and local, and should be available to anyone with the will and the heart to obtain them." [http://resource.org/law.gov/; downloaded 2010-09-10.]  Nonetheless, the release date is projected to be late summer 2011 - if the authors have the "will and the heart" to complete it!

We know this is your favorite time of year.  Not only because of the beautiful leaves and the cool evenings -- but because it's time for public libraries to report their annual statistics and submit their Applications for Standards to the Department of Libraries!  As librarians know from last year, DOL now collects the Annual Public Library Report and Standards Application via an online "survey" using Bibliostat software. That's right: no more paper forms.