Project Overview
Mission Statement
Vision Statement
Collection Scope
Copyright Information
Contact

The Chesapeake Project is a two-year pilot digital preservation program established to preserve and ensure permanent access to vital legal information currently available in digital formats on the World Wide Web.

This project is a collaborative venture implemented under the auspices of the Legal Information Preservation Alliance, or LIPA, by three LIPA-member libraries:

• The Georgetown University Law Library,
• The State Law Library of Maryland, and
• The Virginia State Law Library.

Through this two-year pilot phase, The Chesapeake Project aspires to lay the foundation for what could become a nationwide program to preserve materials supporting legal research, practice, and scholarship in the U.S.

The mission of The Chesapeake Project is to successfully develop and implement a pilot program to stabilize, preserve, and ensure permanent access to critical born-digital legal materials on the World Wide Web. The Chesapeake Project is working to establish the beginnings of a strong regional digital archive collection of U.S. legal materials as well as a sound set of standards, policies, and best practices that could potentially serve to guide the future realization of a nationwide preservation program.

The Chesapeake Project aims to set a precedent for a national movement to prevent the widespread loss of legal information in digital formats, securing these materials for generations to come. Upon reaching the close of its two-year pilot phase in 2009, The Chesapeake Project hopes to help inspire, establish, and galvanize widespread participation in a comprehensive, collaborative, and nationwide preservation program for legal resources.

I. Georgetown University Law Library

The digital archive collection of the Georgetown University Law Library consists of secondary legal sources, such as reports and studies from commissions, task forces, agencies, organizations, scholarly societies, and lobbying groups. The initial collection scope for the pilot phase of the project comprises the following subject categories, selected based on research and educational areas of interest at the Law Center:

1. Animal Law
2. Journalism and the Law
3. Copyright Law
4. Law and Public Health
5. Environmental Law and Policy
6. Conflict Resolution and Problem Solving
7. Human Rights
8. Supreme Court

Additional collection areas include law-related publications produced by and about the District of Columbia, and select high-interest reports and studies produced by federal commissions.

The digital archive collection of the State Law Library of Maryland consists of selected digital material that describes, analyzes, documents, proposes, clarifies, or defines public policy and legal issues that affect the citizens of the state of Maryland.

Of particular interest are task force reports mandated by the Maryland General Assembly and reports of gubernatorial commissions. The Law Library seeks to not only capture the final report, but, when available, interim reports and meeting minutes.

The Law Library is also committed to collecting all publications issued by the Maryland Judiciary, as well as major reports, i.e. annual reports, special studies, handbooks, directives, etc., issued by Maryland executive agencies.

Finally, the Law Library collects selected publications from Maryland community and research organizations whose studies and reports provide an analysis of major issues of public policy and law. The Library will seek and retain copyright permission for those materials not in the public domain.

The digital archive collection of the Virginia State Law Library consists of all publications issued by the Supreme Court of Virginia, such as annual reports, special studies, handbooks, directives, etc.

The Law Library is also committee to collecting all publications issued by the Judicial Council of Virginia and the range of administrative divisions, commissions, and task forces operating within Virginia's judicial branch of government. The Library will seek and retain copyright permission for those materials not in the public domain.

Institutions participating in The Chesapeake Project respect copyright laws and the intellectual property rights of others.

Note that works archived and made accessible through The Chesapeake Project may be protected by copyright. All archived works were originally published on the free Web and have been harvested for preservation purposes under a claim of fair use. Please consult the works directly for additional statements regarding copyright ownership and permissions.

If you are a copyright owner who objects to the preservation of your work in this fashion, or if you believe that your copyright has been violated by the efforts of The Chesapeake Project, please make that concern known to the Law Librarian at Georgetown University, and the work will be removed from the digital archive.

Sarah Rhodes, Digital Preservation Librarian
Georgetown University Law Library
111 G St., NW
Washington, DC 20008
Phone: 202-662-4065
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