NATIONAL LEGAL HERITAGE: LEGAL DATABASE PROVIDING ACCESS TO LEGAL PAST

Abstract

This paper focuses on the issue of making historical legal literature in the Czech Republic accessible.
For historical and structural reasons, the accessibility of old legal literature in Czech libraries is inadequate.
One possible solution to this long-term problem is the systematic digitisation of this old literature. The primary
objective would not be preservation digitisation, otherwise the most common type in library digitisation
projects, but rather both supplementary digitisation intended to supplement the book and periodicals fund
with additional titles, and also ‘opening digitisation’, meaning digitisation to enable new ways of working
with texts and information. The paper also concisely introduces the basic principles and technological, software
and licence parameters of the National Legal Heritage project, which is an attempt at the practical application
of these conclusions. This pilot project is primarily focused on the interwar period of the First
Czechoslovak Republic, which was – in both Czech and Slovak history – an important period of great legal
activity and preparations for major reforms.