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Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Ind. Law - This is tremendous

Here is the introduction:

The Indiana Supreme Court and the Indiana Historical Bureau are collaborating on a major project to gather in one place copies of original documents and research materials relating to Indiana's constitutional history. The first phase will make documents and transcriptions that led to Indiana statehood in 1816 available and fully searchable on the Web. Sources for the original documents include the National Archives and Records Administration, the Indiana State Archives, the Indiana State Library, and the Library of Congress.

A major goal of the collection is to make this historical information available for use, especially by the legal profession and educators and students at all levels.

The IUPUI University Library has digitized and organized the material to make it user-friendly and fully searchable and serves as the host for this Web-based material. The documents and transcriptions also will be available through the Indiana Historical Bureau Web site and the Indiana Courts' "Courts in the Classroom" Web site.

The project [traces] Indiana's constitutional history with material from 1816 through the 1850-1851 constitutional convention and the resulting constitution, which governs Indiana today. The Collection [includes] the 1851 convention, journal and reports and debates, as well as the four volumes of the Indiana Historical Bureau's Constitution Making in Indiana. Future additions will include publications about constitutional issues and other materials to enhance the educational value of the Collection.

Here are the 39 documents currently available. They include, for example, the 900-plus page Laws of the NW Territory and the 1085-page Journal of the Constitutional Convention of 1850-1851, and the Journals of the General Assembly of Indiana Territory from 1805-1815. What will be next? The ILB hopes, for starts, the ACTS of Indiana from at least 1852 to the present, as well as the equivalent Journals of the Indiana House and Senate.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 7, 2007 10:48 AM
Posted to General Law Related