Released: August 21, 2002. Two of the most powerful tools for finding legal and law-related information in Minnesota are now available together, and they complement each other perfectly.

Pritchard Law Webs' LawMoose, Home of the Minnesota Legal Web, is a powerful search engine and knowledge management environment for and about the Minnesota legal community.

The Minnesota State Law Library's Minnesota Legal Periodcal Index has been the definitive subject-classified index to legal articles published by recognized Minnesota legal publishers since 1984.

Now, this powerful, state-specific index is web powered, and you will find live hyperlinks to many of the indexed sources. The web version is the most powerful, comprehensive, and convenient version of the MLPI ever.

Better yet, the MLPI seamlessly integrates with LawMoose, and LawMoose with the MLPI.

How did this all happen and who does what? In a unique, public-private collaboration, the Minnesota State Law Library and Pritchard Law Webs, publisher of LawMoose, joined forces for the web version of the Minnesota Legal Periodical Index (MLPI).

This collaboration combines the professional classification expertise of the Minnesota State Law Library and its unparalleled knowledge of Minnesota legal periodicals with the web application construction expertise of Pritchard Law Webs and its LawMoose legal community knowledge server philosophy and capabilities.

According to Marvin Anderson, Minnesota State Law Librarian, "The Minnesota Legal Periodical Index is a unique resource for all researchers. This collaboration allows us to offer it freely to all with an Internet connection."

Barbara Golden, the State Law Library's Electronic Services Librarian and co-author of Minnesota Leal Research Guide (1985), is the creator of the Minnesota Legal Periodical Index. She says, "Providing free public access to MLPI on the web has been a goal of the State Law Library since 1996. I am grateful to LaVern Pritchard and LawMoose for helping to make this dream come true."

LaVern Pritchard, founder of Pritchard Law Webs, says, "When we discovered the State Law Library was interested in bringing the Minnesota Legal Periodical Index to the Web, but had no funding to do it, we said we would gladly undertake the project. LawMoose operates as a unique legal community knowledge utility. The addition of the MLPI to LawMoose makes the Web more useful for everyone in the community in two ways. First, it extends the information available on the Web about Minnesota law back to 1984 and into the print domain. Second, it provides professionally subject-classified knowledge, one of the things the Web needs most to acquire in its evolution into a truly serious medium for the legal community and the wider community interested in legal subjects."

What's the bottom line effect of the collaboration?

Both organizations can do more than they could otherwise do alone. And that means Minnesotans have access to one of the most advanced, extensive, and convenient Internet legal reference and research environments in the world.