Our Google Book Searches, continued…
We might have better luck getting Full View of another series, Brazil’s Coleção das leis, a compendium of legislative and executive action printed every year by the Imprensa Nacional. The set is akin to the U.S. Congressional Record with bits and pieces of the Federal Register attached but the extended commentary of legislators removed. The annual volumes contain the texts of laws, decrees, resolutions, acts, and some notices related to legislation.
The text of several volumes of this series from the Bodleian and Harvard Libraries are now available online. Er…were available. Before Spring Break, an incomplete run of 23 volumes from the years between 1856 and 1908 were available in Full View. Don’t ask me what happened to these texts; maybe I just dreamt of them.
You can imagine the difficulties dealing with a series that has six formal titles. As listed in OCLC Worldcat, this series has been cataloged as “Collecção das leis do Brazil; 1808-21; Collecção das leis do Imperio do Brazil; 1822-Nov. 14, 1889; Decretos do governo provisorio da Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brazil; Nov. 15, 1889-Feb. 13, 1891; Collecção das leis da Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brazil; (varies slightly); Feb. 14, 1891-19.”
Nevertheless, in whatever manner these sets are cataloged, every one of the volumes is in the public domain. Under Law 9.610 of February 19, 1998, the most recent Brazilian legislation that fully addresses author rights, the texts of treaties, laws, decrees, regulations, judicial decisions and official enactments are EXEMPT from copyright.
The University of Texas owns a complete set of the annual publications dating back to 1808. The series consists of more than 580 volumes that now grace 75 linear feet of shelves in the Benson. Only twenty-three other libraries, most of them in research institutions, listed some of the same titles among their holdings. Wouldn’t it be nice to have all these texts available online? All the titles in the Benson Latin American Collection were sent out for digitization last October (2007) but have not year appeared on Google Book Search. Maybe it is just a matter of time until Google can sort out the complicated bibliographic information for this set of books and put them all on line. Be patient.
Do stay alert to the titles opening up on Google Book Search. Meanwhile, take a look at the Central Library of the Tribunal de Justicia do Estado da Bahia That library maintains an online database of the series but the listing does not yield full-text. Other websites also provide bits and pieces of this colossal set. An interesting group, Causa Imperial, which promotes the restoration of a Brazilian Empire, provides access to the indices for the 1831-1840 series.
Lawyers interested in current issues have other sources. For English-speaking researchers interested in Brazilian law, take a look at the Legal Research Guide for Brazil provided by the Library of Congress.
