Databases

One of my priorities is the creation of a comprehensive College of Law collection development plan. I am assessing many law databases with a Middle East focus and am on the phone with vendor representatives mainly in Europe who visit Qatar or can provide a webinar and limited database trial. Many of these are new to me. It is fun and here is a partial list that I get to test drive:

·         Eastlaw http://eastlaws.com/En_Default.aspx (just to balance Westlaw!)

·         Justis to www.justis.com   (for full text case law from around the world) or www.justcite.com   (for the legal indexing tool that will cite international use of a case)

·         Kotob Arabia e-Library http://www.kotobarabia.com/   (first e-book vendor for Arabic titles, some 334 in law) and Almanhal with 224 e-books in Arabic in law

·         LexisNexis Middle East Law www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/middleeast (attempting to cover  the GCC and translating materials starting with the UAE; QU may partner with this one for Qatari content)

·         LexisNexis Juris Classeur www.lexisnexis.com/fr/droit (all French navigation and content; many of QU law faculty speak French as a second or third language)

·         Westlaw International  http://www.westlawinternational.com/Welcome.html (useful for international common law research and Journals)

Arabic writing often does not display correctly in HTML formatting for the web and so databases with .PDF versions of documents are highly favored.