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WebLaw - a Subject Gateway to Australian Legal Resources
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WebLaw is a legal researcher's first choice for accessing online Australian legal information.
It provides lawyers, students, researchers and lay professionals with annotated links to
up-to-date, quality assessed internet resources.
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View WebLaw video  (size = 6.5 MB)
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Project summary
WebLaw is a cooperative subject gateway to Internet resources for Australian legal researchers. It is a distributed cataloging system, based on a central database model. Law librarians from the participating organisations have taken responsibility for a particular subject area or areas and provide annotated records for quality Internet legal resources in this area. An academic or practitioner with expertise in the subject is involved in peer assessment of the listings. The sites are checked and updated each month. Quality control is assured because participating organisations adhere to common selection criteria and quality guidelines, as well as to the designated metadata and thesaurus schema.
A Research Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities (RIEF) Grant from the Australian Research Council as well as significant contributions, both financial and in kind, from the collaborating organisations have provided the resources necessary to set up the project in its present form.
Aims and objectives
The aim of WebLaw is to enhance research and learning in all areas of Australian law. This has been made possible by the indexing of quality resources and the addition of metadata that complies with the internationally accepted Dublin Core standard. The gateway utilises the combined experience of law librarians, legal information experts, and the infrastructure of the participating institutions to provide comprehensive coverage of as many areas of Australian law as possible.
Subject areas and contributors
The following areas are currently available. This list will continue to grow.
| Area of Law | Responsible contributor/s |
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| Administrative Law | Queensland University of Technology
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| Biotechnology Law | Southern Cross University
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| Children & the Law | University of New South Wales
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| Citizenship and Migration | University of Technology Sydney
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| Constitutional Law | Commonwealth Parliamentary Library
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| Corporations Law | University of Melbourne
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| Criminology | University of Sydney
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| Cyberspace Law | University of New South Wales
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| Dispute Resolution | University of Queensland
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| e-Commerce Law | Monash University
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| Environmental Law | University of Adelaide
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| European Union Law | University of Queensland
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| Evidence | Australian Law Reform Commission
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| Family Law | Law and Justice Foundation of NSW
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| Government | University of Melbourne
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| Health Law | La Trobe University
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| Human Rights | University of Queensland
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| Industrial Law | University of Sydney
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| Intellectual Property | University of Western Australia
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| International Law | Australian National University
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| Law of the Sea | Murdoch University
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| Legal Research | University of New South Wales
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| Media and Telecommunications | National Library of Australia
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| Native Title | National Native Title Tribunal
Federal Court of Australia
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| Occupational Health & Safety Law | University of Newcastle
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| Policing | Flinders University
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| Privacy | Monash University
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| Property Law | University of Western Australia
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| Sports Law | Victoria University
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| Taxation Law | University of Sydney
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| Torts | University of Western Australia
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| Transnational Crime | University of Wollongong
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| Women and the Law | University of Sydney
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A brief technical overview
The WebLaw repository was built using open-source software and includes full source code: MySQL for the DBMS, Apache with mod_php for the web-server, PHP for the server-side programming and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) with Javascript for the client-side web interface. The server runs on the Linux operating system. All user interaction with WebLaw occurs through a web interface. Clients can be on any platform that supports a relatively recent web browser.
Who can participate ?
Participants need to demonstrate that they have the infrastructure and expertise in place to develop and maintain a quality guide. Participants must demonstrate institutional support and commitment to the WebLaw project. Participating institutions will send an agreement to the WebLaw project coordinator stating that they will maintain their site in accordance with the selection and quality criteria outlined in the agreement.
Organisations interested in participating in the WebLaw project should contact the WebLaw Coordinator:
Julie Oates
Law Library
The University of Queensland
St Lucia Campus
Brisbane, Qld 4072
Telephone: (07) 33464301
Fax: (07) 33651552
e-mail: j.oates@library.uq.edu.au
History of the project
A number of organisations found that maintaining a wide range of subject guides to the law was time consuming. Several of these organisations were interested in developing a co-operative solution to this problem.
Preliminary discussions were held at the 2nd Law Libraries Symposium (Melbourne, 1998). These were followed up by discussion between Clare Cappa (University of Queensland), Sue Scott, Kathy McGuire (Law Foundation of NSW) and Carolyn Kearney (University of Sydney). They called an initial meeting to determine interest and outline the concept of the project. This was held on 21st July 1999.
A second meeting was held at the Specials, Health and Law Librarians Conference in Hobart in August 1999. Sue Scott from the Law and Justice Foundation of NSW provided project management until December 2000.
WebLaw began as a collection of individual web subject guides to the law. Each institution nominated one or more subject area/s of interest/expertise and developed a guide according to an agreed set of selection criteria and a standard 'look and feel'. The resources in each guide were peer-reviewed for quality. Working as a virtual team each institution provided links to the other institutions' guides thus forming an integrated collection of resources. Despite its success WebLaw suffered from a number of limitations - with the lack of searchability across the sites being the most obvious.
This project has laid the groundwork for the development of WebLaw as a searchable database underpinned by Dublin Core metadata. Clare Cappa from the University of Queensland provided project coordination in 2001. From 2002 the project has been coordinated by Barbara Thorsen, also from the University of Queensland.
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