GOALI Goes to Johannesburg – Training and Outreach in South Africa for Research4Life’s Global Online Access to Legal Information Program

Abstract

Global Online Access to Legal Information (GOALI), a Research4Life program providing access to legal information in low- and middle-income countries, conducted a three-day training in Johannesburg, South Africa, in January 2019, for trainers in Africa and for South African librarians. Cornell Law Library, one of the GOALI institutional partners, planned and delivered the training. Since the majority of the workshop attendees were already experts in using the Research4Life research platform but novices in legal research, the training focused on legal systems, subjects, and information, because these topics are the necessary context for training and developing capacity to use a database of legal secondary sources.

The workshop planners successfully collaborated with existing programs to make the workshop possible. As one of the planners’ goals was to facilitate student engagement in access to justice, they partnered with the Cornell Legal Research Clinic, which provided a librarian-instructor and one of the two students who co-taught the workshop. Funding for student engagement was provided by Cornell University. Because the attending trainers were primarily based near Pretoria, South Africa, the workshop planners developed a new collaboration with an existing Cornell Law School partner, the University of Johannesburg Faculty of Law, to provide conference room facilities, as well as housing for the visiting Cornell librarian-instructor and students.

Evaluations by the participants of the resulting workshop showed that they gained valuable information and context for future GOALI trainings, and that the hands-on aspects of the workshop were most highly valued. The participating students were engaged both personally and professionally.