____________________________________________________________________ NEWS FROM AUSTLII http://www.austlii.edu.au/ 20 December 2001 ____________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS The Launch of the Hong Kong Legal Information Institute (HKLII) Law via the Internet Conference 2001 World Law searches with Google Best Wishes for the Festive Season ____________________________________________________________________ THE LAUNCH OF THE HONG KONG LEGAL INFORMATION INSTITUTE (HKLII) The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law and the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) are very pleased to announce that access is now available to the Hong Kong Legal Information Institute (HKLII) - http://www.hklii.org/ Access to HKLII and to all data on it is free and includes: - Court and Tribunal Judgments (approximately 10,000 in full text) from the Court of Final Appeal, Court of Appeal, Court of First Instance, District Court, Family Court and Lands Tribunal. The commencement dates of the collections vary, some commencing in 1982. The judgments are provided by the Judiciary of the Hong Kong SAR. Practice Directions, provided by the Judiciary of the Hong Kong SAR. - All Current Ordinances of Hong Kong, provided by the Department of Justice and its BLIS service. - The table of contents of Historical Law of Hong Kong, an image database of Hong Kong's Ordinances back to 1844 created by the Hong Kong University Libraries. Search results on HKLII link users to the image of the Ordinance held by the Libraries. - Domain name arbitration decisions under the .hk domain, provided by the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC) - The Hong Kong Treaties Index, provided by the Centre for Comparative and Public Law of the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong. - Miscellaneous Courts of Hong Kong Judgments 1982-1990 (approximately 2000 judgments in full text) including decisions from the Supreme Court and High Court as they were then, provided by the Deparment of Justice. HKLII also include a catalog and search engine for other legal resources on the web from Hong Kong and elsewhere in China, provided via the World Law service. At present only English language versions are provided on HKLII, but Chinese language versions of some data will be provided later. HKLII uses the SINO search engine used by AustLII, BAILII, CanLII and PacLII. While the system is still under development at present, we have released it now as it is already useful. We wish to thank all of HKLII's sources of data, and to note that HKLII is possible because of the enlightened policies toward public access to legal information of the Hong Kong SAR government, its agencies and its Judiciary. These policies strengthen the rule of law. ____________________________________________________________________ LAW VIA THE INTERNET CONFERENCE 2001 AustLII's third conference on Law via the Internet took place at the University of Technology, Sydney on the 28th, 29th and 30th of November, 2001. The program was a great success and a big thanks to all those who spoke or attended. Look out next year for a move into the northern hemisphere with plans for the Canadian Legal Information Institute to hold the next conference on Law via the Internet in July. Thanks to our sponsors, the NSW Bar Association, Thomson Legal Publishing, Diskcovery, Workplace Info and Westlaw for their support of the conference and the continuing work of AustLII. For those of you who couldn't attend, a CD-ROM of conference papers is available direct from AustLII, for AUD$165. Please contact cathy@austlii.edu.au to order your copy. ____________________________________________________________________ WORLD LAW SEARCHES WITH GOOGLE A new search option has now been introduced to World Law with the integration of an interface to the popular Google search engine. On each page of the World Law catalog there is now a choice between searching 'All World Law' (the default option), only the Web sites located on the particular directory page you are on, or, 'Law on Google'. This latter option in the search box - 'Law on Google' - is new. Google is at present the Internet-wide search engine with the greatest coverage (it claims to cover over 2 billion Web pages) This will allow World Law users to undertake the most comprehensive possible research as they can now repeat any searches they do using AustLII's law site-specific search engine over the far wider body of data made searchable by Google. In order to make it easier for World Law users to search Google effectively, AustLII has implemented automatic translation of World Law searches to Google searches so that the search syntax of the World Law search is converted into the search syntax of a Google search and a list of law words is automatically added to this search to help ensure that Google only retrieves law-related material. AustLII has also changed the way World Law search results are presented, to make them more user-friendly and informative, clarifying further whether the results are from World Law catogories or actual web documents and highlighting the home page of the web site on which a document has been found, in case the original page has moved. www.austlii.edu.au/links ____________________________________________________________________ BEST WISHES FOR THE FESTIVE SEASON! As another year draws to a close, we would like to thank all the users, partners, funding bodies and colleagues of AustLII for their continued support throughout 2001. We hope that you all have a happy and safe festive season and look forward to seeing you all again in 2002. ____________________________________________________________________ SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION News from AustLII is the regular email news update from the Australasian Legal Information Institute http://www.austlii.edu.au/. News from AustLII is only sent to users who have subscribed to the mailing list. To subscribe to News From AustLII send an e-mail message to "majordomo@austlii.edu.au" with the message subscribe austlii-news To unsubscribe, send the message unsubscribe austlii-news See http://www.austlii.edu.au/austlii/news/ for more information and archives. _______________________________________________________________________ CONTACT DETAILS Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) http://www.austlii.edu.au/ PO Box 123 Broadway NSW 2007 AUSTRALIA p: +61 2 9514 3174 f: +61 2 9514 3168 e: feedback@austlii.edu.au ____________________________________________________________________ End of AustLII News ____________________________________________________________________