The H-Law Resource Page

This issue's H-Law page comprises an introduction to the Law and History Review's own web site and also an invitation to readers both to visit the site and comment on what they find there. The site's URL (that is, its uniform resource locator or, more simply, its address) is: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/lhr.html . This information now appears in every issue of the LHR as a line on the journal's contents page.	1
As the address indicates, the LHR's web site was created in association with our publisher, the University of Illinois Press. It is maintained by the press in cooperation with the journal editor. Visitors to the site will encounter an image of the journal's cover and a menu of topics: tables of contents, beginning with Vol. 15.1, with linked abstracts of all articles; links to full text files of the articles and commentaries appearing in the journal's "forum" feature (beginning with Vol. 15.2); links to the H-Law index of the journal's first fourteen volumes and to H-Law's own home page http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~law/ , which is maintained by H-Net at Michigan State University. Several items are designed specifically for potential contributors to the journal: general notes about the journal for the guidance of anyone thinking about submitting a manuscript; a detailed description of LHR manuscript review procedures; stylesheets for preparation of "final form" articles and book reviews; and a full listing of current addresses of the journal's editorial staff. Lastly, the web site also offers links to the University of Illinois Press, to the press homepage, and to journal ordering information.	2
Priorities for further development of the site in the immediate future are likely to favor additions to its "servicing" capacities. For example, ASLH membership and LHR subscription applications and renewals, and back copy orders, can easily and efficiently be processed directly through a web site, eliminating postal responses and check writing. Direct e-mail links to editorial personnel and ASLH officers can also be expedited. As to the provision of journal content through the site, at the moment all articles are now abstracted on the web site and some—the "forum" files—are available as full-text files and can be read and downloaded (free) through the site. These are essentially "paper" files in electronic format, although we have begin to adapt them to on-line usage by reproducing notes as hypertext. We will continue to offer these files as a means to allow interested parties to "sample" the LHR's content on-line. We do not contemplate adding new full-text capacities or facilities for on-line subscription, at least for the time being, in part because this would require substantial additions to the site's sophistication (for example, passwords for subscribers; e-cash facilities for casual users), in part because electronic full-text access to the LHR is already available via Lexis and Westlaw. It is likely that demand for on-line text will eventually mount to the point where the LHR will need to take the next step. Demand for on-line text, however, is not yet registering in the humanities at anything like the levels to be found in certain of the sciences.	3
For the present, therefore, our site will stress author and reader information and subscriber servicing. One can nevertheless envisage the possibility that as legal historians develop the potential of hypertext composition the journal will need to offer authors opportunities to publish, and subscribers the means to read, truly electronic texts. At that point we can consider the possibility of publishing the journal in one or more regular electronic issues as well as print, or, more modestly, simply opening up the journal's web site for electronic publication as an on-going authorized electronic supplement to the print journal.	4
Readers are invited to offer their comments on the LHR's web site and ideas for its development (or any other matters of concern) directly to the editor, at the addresses below, or to post their comments to the American Society for Legal History's discussion list, H-Law, which may be accessed through the LHR's site or directly at the address already given above.	5
Christopher Tomlins  Editor, Law and History Review American Bar Foundation 750 North Lake Shore Drive Chicago, Illinois 60611 clt@abfn.org .

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