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it will require the services of a part-time coordinator to plan the interview schedule, obtain background information for the interviewers, arrange the logistics, and organize the resulting videotapes. In addition to completing this set of critical interviews, the NEJL also has plans to catalog and to transcribe selective portions of the videotaped conversations. This task, too, will require additional funds.
NEJL International Legal Aid Collections.
The NEJL has made substantial progress in assembling its International Legal Aid Collection, especially during the past year. The ultimate goal is to create the world's first comprehensive library of published materials - books, articles, studies, etc. -- about legal aid and related developments in all countries. This includes English language translations - or English language summaries - of materials published in another language. A catalog of non-US as well as US materials will be included on the NEJL's second Website [See (8)] and staff will respond to inquiries from other countries as well as from U.S.
Between 1998 and 2000, the National Equal Justice Library added over 1000 publications to its collection on legal aid in England and the rest of the United Kingdom. Most of these publications are included in a list maintained on one of the Library's two websites -- http://www.equaljusticeupdate.org. In the future it expects to achieve the same coverage for legal aid programs in continental Europe, Canada, and the Commonwealth countries.
The NEJL considers the International Collections critical to several of its goals. Developments in this country have been inhibited by ignorance of what has happened elsewhere during the past three decades. For example, while the Legal Service Corporation's budget shrunk drastically since 1980, the governments in several comparable industrial democracies were dramatically increasing their investments in civil legal services for the poor. (If the U.S. funded civil legal services as generously as England, the LSC budget would be over ten billion dollars instead of a quarter billion dollars.)
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