I'm baffled by publishers' arrogance these days. Two recent events made me whack my head with the palm of my hand….
Law Journal Seminars Press is now rolling out a "fantastic" new program for their books. Instead of merely paying for the looseleaf supplements for their books (for the most part reasonably priced, by the way), we can now either opt to receive them in print and online, or online only. Print and online, of course, costs more than the print supplements alone. Online only costs about the same.
I'm in an academic law library and online has absolutely no interest for me - or my patrons. Apparently, each title would have to have a separate login. So, if I did opt for either option, I'd need to keep track of the various passwords for each title. Good grief. I can't imagine a more inconvenient process.
We're canceling all Law Journal Seminars Press titles.
The other situation is even more annoying. And it always has been. We subscribe to the Economist ($138/year) and route it among the faculty and put the routed one in the faculty lounge. They've got a pretty nice online service with email alerts, etc., and we looked into getting an online subscription. After six months, they finally got back to us with a "fantastic" deal: $1500 per year for online access for our library. Are they mad? Do they really think that only one person reads our single subscription to the print version?
Come to think of it, I wonder why they don't charge volume rates for the print version any way?
Actually, I'm pretty sure that that's coming….
Showing posts with label legal information. Show all posts
Showing posts with label legal information. Show all posts
Friday, January 14, 2011
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Where are the Catalogers? Proposed Amendment to the Durham Statement
Reflecting on the character of the Durham Statement
As the scholarship becomes more widely available in digital formats, it is critical that we seek input from catalogers and technical services librarians on how to make these digital resources as useful and usable as possible.
I've been thinking about the meaning to legal researchers and legal bibliographers of the Durham Statement. It has occurred to me that there is a very important stake-holder/contributor is missing from the statement. The Statement involves aspirations that reflect observations and presuppositions about how we feel the future will affect the publication of modern legal scholarship. The observations and assumptions are well and good, and, at least partially true. (See my post, "Why I'm Signing the Durham Statement” 2/6/2010)
The Statement accurately reflects how technology is speeding the process of the digitization legal scholarship along and, therefore, calls on law schools to immediately and expeditiously cease publication of their journals in print in favor of digital formats. It presumes, of course, that technology is developing in such a way that researchers will prefer to access the information digitally, and, not only that the technology either exists, or will exist, but that it will be presented in a form that researchers can use. The two parties present in this scenario are researchers and technicians.
The missing party
The best technology available, in terms of readers, websites, formats, etc., and the scholarship it contains is only as good (to a large and very practical extent) as the form of the content itself. One of the advantages of print media was that it's very "artifactness" seemed to beg the question, but that it must be curated properly. That is, each item received into a library should be thoroughly analyzed and objectively described in order to facilitate discovery and access, and, hence, usage. Part of the nature of analog scholarship is its very permanence: once printed, its memorialized, it becomes an artifact. It is, thus, capable of objective description. This description, seen by cynics as bibliographic hypertrophy, is what we know as MARC, LC Classification and LC Subject Heading description. These descriptions and analyses made collection of, and access to library materials standard. Despite our cynicism, the system as a whole served/serves us well. RLIN and OCLC and the host of OPAC and serial automation vendors made access to collections remarkably easy, especially when compared to the alternatives. (Librarians simply storing materials as they see fit based on their own understanding of a subject, for instance.)
It is time to subject digitally produced, born digital scholarship to the same rigorous analysis. It is almost certainly the case that the old wineskins won't meet the needs of modern libraries. MARC record format, Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings would likely all need to be modified or revised to served the needs of modern formats that aren’t physical or don’t possess the physical character of printed law review articles, for example. This new analysis would need to take advantage of things like metadata and hypertext links and would be less concerned, of course, with organizing the materials themselves, but could provide important tools to allow others to organize, use and access them
Whatever the exact format, form or nature, it is clear that production and distribution of born digital scholarship will benefit from systematic, standard analysis and bibliographic description. If each article of a born digital law review, journal or scholarly blog was subjected to standard bibliographic description and analysis, it could serve the user in many ways. First, it may facilitate the development of better search engines that mine this important form of legal scholarship. Second, it may also facilitate the creation of better, more secure storage formats. It would also bring thoughtful vigor to the process of digitization and make stability of formats not merely useful, but desirable to librarians and technicians.
The alternative of doing nothing and letting technology take care of itself results in relying on Google as a search engine. Google’s fine to an extent, but its functionality and reliability as a search engine is not consistent or reliable. Its quickness and ubiquity make it an easy thing thing to rely upon and use despite its limitations. With something so cheap and easy, it’s very easy to overlook its shortcomings. But as the volume of digital scholarship increases Google’s limitations may become more and more apparent and it may be harder for users to shrug off the annoyance of Google’s inherently sloppy indexing.
It's an easy conclusion that we must bring Technical Services to the table as we endorse (more or less) the migration from print to digital formats.
The Proposal
I don’t have specific language in mind for how the Durham Statement should be amended or supplemented. It would be something to the effect that the signatories commit to involving TS departments and experts in the process of digitization of their law reviews.
As the scholarship becomes more widely available in digital formats, it is critical that we seek input from catalogers and technical services librarians on how to make these digital resources as useful and usable as possible.
I've been thinking about the meaning to legal researchers and legal bibliographers of the Durham Statement. It has occurred to me that there is a very important stake-holder/contributor is missing from the statement. The Statement involves aspirations that reflect observations and presuppositions about how we feel the future will affect the publication of modern legal scholarship. The observations and assumptions are well and good, and, at least partially true. (See my post, "Why I'm Signing the Durham Statement” 2/6/2010)
The Statement accurately reflects how technology is speeding the process of the digitization legal scholarship along and, therefore, calls on law schools to immediately and expeditiously cease publication of their journals in print in favor of digital formats. It presumes, of course, that technology is developing in such a way that researchers will prefer to access the information digitally, and, not only that the technology either exists, or will exist, but that it will be presented in a form that researchers can use. The two parties present in this scenario are researchers and technicians.
The missing party
The best technology available, in terms of readers, websites, formats, etc., and the scholarship it contains is only as good (to a large and very practical extent) as the form of the content itself. One of the advantages of print media was that it's very "artifactness" seemed to beg the question, but that it must be curated properly. That is, each item received into a library should be thoroughly analyzed and objectively described in order to facilitate discovery and access, and, hence, usage. Part of the nature of analog scholarship is its very permanence: once printed, its memorialized, it becomes an artifact. It is, thus, capable of objective description. This description, seen by cynics as bibliographic hypertrophy, is what we know as MARC, LC Classification and LC Subject Heading description. These descriptions and analyses made collection of, and access to library materials standard. Despite our cynicism, the system as a whole served/serves us well. RLIN and OCLC and the host of OPAC and serial automation vendors made access to collections remarkably easy, especially when compared to the alternatives. (Librarians simply storing materials as they see fit based on their own understanding of a subject, for instance.)
It is time to subject digitally produced, born digital scholarship to the same rigorous analysis. It is almost certainly the case that the old wineskins won't meet the needs of modern libraries. MARC record format, Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings would likely all need to be modified or revised to served the needs of modern formats that aren’t physical or don’t possess the physical character of printed law review articles, for example. This new analysis would need to take advantage of things like metadata and hypertext links and would be less concerned, of course, with organizing the materials themselves, but could provide important tools to allow others to organize, use and access them
Whatever the exact format, form or nature, it is clear that production and distribution of born digital scholarship will benefit from systematic, standard analysis and bibliographic description. If each article of a born digital law review, journal or scholarly blog was subjected to standard bibliographic description and analysis, it could serve the user in many ways. First, it may facilitate the development of better search engines that mine this important form of legal scholarship. Second, it may also facilitate the creation of better, more secure storage formats. It would also bring thoughtful vigor to the process of digitization and make stability of formats not merely useful, but desirable to librarians and technicians.
The alternative of doing nothing and letting technology take care of itself results in relying on Google as a search engine. Google’s fine to an extent, but its functionality and reliability as a search engine is not consistent or reliable. Its quickness and ubiquity make it an easy thing thing to rely upon and use despite its limitations. With something so cheap and easy, it’s very easy to overlook its shortcomings. But as the volume of digital scholarship increases Google’s limitations may become more and more apparent and it may be harder for users to shrug off the annoyance of Google’s inherently sloppy indexing.
It's an easy conclusion that we must bring Technical Services to the table as we endorse (more or less) the migration from print to digital formats.
The Proposal
I don’t have specific language in mind for how the Durham Statement should be amended or supplemented. It would be something to the effect that the signatories commit to involving TS departments and experts in the process of digitization of their law reviews.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
A New Form of Cheeseburger: Modern Technology & the Development of the Next Generation of Secondary Materials
[With due thanks to Jason Wilson's brilliant post, "Secondary Materials are Like Cheeseburgers," I propose below, a concept of how law librarians, law review editors, scholars and bloggers can cooperate and build a better (well, new!) cheeseburger. These are random thoughts. I welcome feedback. RL]
The recipe:
Take Web 2.0 + Digital Commons + Durham Statement; Combine them, process until well-done and place between slices of WWW, Web 2.0 and app-technology.
The Next Generation of Secondary Materials
It is generally understood that secondary materials serve two very important purposes (beyond earning money for publishers and money and prestige for authors): First, a secondary resource, such as a treatise, practice material, looseleaf or scholarly article, provides users with clear statements of the meaning and application of the legal principles or concepts that are reflected in court opinions, statutory and administrative materials. They are essentially syntheses of rules and ideas expressed in these disparate resources, which are created and published by necessarily disparate entities for necessarily disparate audiences with necessarily disparate interests.
Second, they provide important indexing of these disparate resources through citation and analysis of the various materials. For example, if you are interested in finding the most significant cases that explain the difference between civil and criminal contempt, one need only read the relevant chapter of Wright and Miller’s Federal Practice and Procedure, because it is there that recognized experts in the field not only express their opinions as to those differences, but they also provide citations to the authorities that support their conclusions and analysis. Indeed, there may well be more cases available on the topic, but we trust that the ones cited by the authors of this treatise are the most important and most significant.
As publishers grapple with a variety pressures from shareholders and corporate boards as well as with changes in the technology and practical aspects of publishing, they have tended to respond with practices and policies that have actually served to run contrary to their underlying function which is to offer research tools to lawyers, students, practitioners and lay people who come to them for answers to pressing legal questions. Instead of, as once was the case, of serving the legal community by offering helpful tools and distributing them as widely as possible, they are narrowing their distribution to customers who can and must pay.
It is my opinion that several recent advances in “technology” generally can provide us with a new mode of secondary materials that may be as useful as traditional secondary materials, but that may be available for free for all.
The New Mode of Secondary Legal Materials
OK, here's the idea. What we're seeking is modern indexing to help the researcher focus on the most important cases - and, if possible clear commentary about what the cases mean.
Law review articles and blogs can give us a glimpse of which cases are important by examining which cases are written about and mentioned in articles and blogs. It is possible that wire services, too, can help identify which cases are important by analyzing the frequency with which cases are reported and commented upon. (There are significant problems with using data on cases reported in commercial media sources, but the problems can be accommodated for in various ways.)
The proliferation of digital law reviews in digital commons and services like SSRN, as well as articles and commentary on blogs can provide the substance for building a free database that consists of analysis of primary materials and commentary on policies and procedures.
Given the disparate forms of materials that are readily available on the web already, it is my opinion that new technology can be developed that can efficiently mine them to give researchers valuable information as they conduct research on any topic. Essentially, this new form of research tool would aggregate material from many sources, index them and offer searching and sorting in forms and of the most benefit to researchers.
In order for such as project to be successful, several foundational things should happen:
1. Law reviews should adopt the practice of asking authors to not only supply abstracts of articles, but should tag them with an approved list of subjects headings. They should also agree to tag digital articles with metadata that accurately reflects author and copyright information.
2. An approved list of metadata tags could also be circulated among bloggers and periodicals that produce digital editions.
3. Articles should be mined for citation data, including references to cases, courts, judges, scholars, etc.
4. Search results should be able to be ranked based on a variety of factors, including reputation and productivity of the authors and citation frequency.
5. Full text of cases should be indexed by computer and archived in a secure location. Search results should be available either as full text or as citation lists.
Fantasy or Possibility?
Is it possible to build a research tool that aggregates and searches information from such disparate sources? What’s more, what will such a service look like, and will it actually be valuable to researchers?
It is clear that collectively, blogs, law reviews, digital commons and various websites that report and comment upon legal matters cover a substantial portion of the most important cases of the day. A systematic method of crawling and indexing this content should provide researchers with a viable starting point for researching any current legal topic.
With Google Scholar and efforts on the part of law reviews and digital commons to build retrospective collections of secondary materials, the potential exists to build a rich, publicly accessible free resource.
Looking forward, legal scholars and other experts may endeavor to regularly comment upon breaking cases and other developments, thus providing a continuing source of present commentary about modern legal matters.
Modern developments in AJAX and HTML5, as well as new functionality of apps on iOS and Android platforms and their respective hardware platforms have the potential for the development of entirely new research tools. Unlike the present generation of online databases that are essentially flat text files built from print treatises, these new tools can give people access to a new concept of secondary materials in ways that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.
We’ve often heard of the difficulty of building a better mouse trap. Is it possible to build a better cheeseburger?
Perhaps.
The recipe:
Take Web 2.0 + Digital Commons + Durham Statement; Combine them, process until well-done and place between slices of WWW, Web 2.0 and app-technology.
The Next Generation of Secondary Materials
It is generally understood that secondary materials serve two very important purposes (beyond earning money for publishers and money and prestige for authors): First, a secondary resource, such as a treatise, practice material, looseleaf or scholarly article, provides users with clear statements of the meaning and application of the legal principles or concepts that are reflected in court opinions, statutory and administrative materials. They are essentially syntheses of rules and ideas expressed in these disparate resources, which are created and published by necessarily disparate entities for necessarily disparate audiences with necessarily disparate interests.
Second, they provide important indexing of these disparate resources through citation and analysis of the various materials. For example, if you are interested in finding the most significant cases that explain the difference between civil and criminal contempt, one need only read the relevant chapter of Wright and Miller’s Federal Practice and Procedure, because it is there that recognized experts in the field not only express their opinions as to those differences, but they also provide citations to the authorities that support their conclusions and analysis. Indeed, there may well be more cases available on the topic, but we trust that the ones cited by the authors of this treatise are the most important and most significant.
As publishers grapple with a variety pressures from shareholders and corporate boards as well as with changes in the technology and practical aspects of publishing, they have tended to respond with practices and policies that have actually served to run contrary to their underlying function which is to offer research tools to lawyers, students, practitioners and lay people who come to them for answers to pressing legal questions. Instead of, as once was the case, of serving the legal community by offering helpful tools and distributing them as widely as possible, they are narrowing their distribution to customers who can and must pay.
It is my opinion that several recent advances in “technology” generally can provide us with a new mode of secondary materials that may be as useful as traditional secondary materials, but that may be available for free for all.
The New Mode of Secondary Legal Materials
OK, here's the idea. What we're seeking is modern indexing to help the researcher focus on the most important cases - and, if possible clear commentary about what the cases mean.
Law review articles and blogs can give us a glimpse of which cases are important by examining which cases are written about and mentioned in articles and blogs. It is possible that wire services, too, can help identify which cases are important by analyzing the frequency with which cases are reported and commented upon. (There are significant problems with using data on cases reported in commercial media sources, but the problems can be accommodated for in various ways.)
The proliferation of digital law reviews in digital commons and services like SSRN, as well as articles and commentary on blogs can provide the substance for building a free database that consists of analysis of primary materials and commentary on policies and procedures.
Given the disparate forms of materials that are readily available on the web already, it is my opinion that new technology can be developed that can efficiently mine them to give researchers valuable information as they conduct research on any topic. Essentially, this new form of research tool would aggregate material from many sources, index them and offer searching and sorting in forms and of the most benefit to researchers.
In order for such as project to be successful, several foundational things should happen:
1. Law reviews should adopt the practice of asking authors to not only supply abstracts of articles, but should tag them with an approved list of subjects headings. They should also agree to tag digital articles with metadata that accurately reflects author and copyright information.
2. An approved list of metadata tags could also be circulated among bloggers and periodicals that produce digital editions.
3. Articles should be mined for citation data, including references to cases, courts, judges, scholars, etc.
4. Search results should be able to be ranked based on a variety of factors, including reputation and productivity of the authors and citation frequency.
5. Full text of cases should be indexed by computer and archived in a secure location. Search results should be available either as full text or as citation lists.
Fantasy or Possibility?
Is it possible to build a research tool that aggregates and searches information from such disparate sources? What’s more, what will such a service look like, and will it actually be valuable to researchers?
It is clear that collectively, blogs, law reviews, digital commons and various websites that report and comment upon legal matters cover a substantial portion of the most important cases of the day. A systematic method of crawling and indexing this content should provide researchers with a viable starting point for researching any current legal topic.
With Google Scholar and efforts on the part of law reviews and digital commons to build retrospective collections of secondary materials, the potential exists to build a rich, publicly accessible free resource.
Looking forward, legal scholars and other experts may endeavor to regularly comment upon breaking cases and other developments, thus providing a continuing source of present commentary about modern legal matters.
Modern developments in AJAX and HTML5, as well as new functionality of apps on iOS and Android platforms and their respective hardware platforms have the potential for the development of entirely new research tools. Unlike the present generation of online databases that are essentially flat text files built from print treatises, these new tools can give people access to a new concept of secondary materials in ways that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.
We’ve often heard of the difficulty of building a better mouse trap. Is it possible to build a better cheeseburger?
Perhaps.
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Reflections on the End of the World Wide Web and the Future of the Internet as an Information/Service Resource
[This post is in an essay written in preparation for the December 10, 2010, Episode 16 of "Law Librarian Conversations," a podcast about all things law library.... This week's podcast with guests Tom Boone, Reference Librarian, Loyola Law School; Jason Wilson, Vice President Jones McClure Publishing; Ed Walters, CEO, Fastcase.
If you are reading this before Friday, 12/10, you can join us by clicking on this link:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/537047386
Title: LawLibCon 16 - Future of Interface Design (12/10/2010)
Date: Friday, December 10, 2010
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM CST
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. Follow the conversation in the chat room during the live broadcast athttp://lawlibcon.classcaster.com/chat.
Subscribe to LawLibCon on iTunes here: http://u.cali.org/2jwf . Enough shameless self-promotion.... RL]
==================================================
I've been fascinated recently by a new trend in consumer use of the internet.
The internet itself has remained pretty stable as a continuing backbone for the electronic exchange of information. It has been surprisingly robust and scalable. Embarrassingly, I was one of those people who, in the early 1990's was predicting that the internet would soon break from the volume of usage as it spread from academic to commercial users. At the time, it seemed that as usage - especially, graphical intense usage - would fill the capacity of routers and cables of our national infrastructure. Surprise, surprise. Hardware manufacturers and ISPs have somehow figured out to meet the demand. (And have they ever….)
If you are reading this before Friday, 12/10, you can join us by clicking on this link:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/537047386
Title: LawLibCon 16 - Future of Interface Design (12/10/2010)
Date: Friday, December 10, 2010
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM CST
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. Follow the conversation in the chat room during the live broadcast athttp://lawlibcon.classcaster.com/chat.
Subscribe to LawLibCon on iTunes here: http://u.cali.org/2jwf . Enough shameless self-promotion.... RL]
==================================================
I've been fascinated recently by a new trend in consumer use of the internet.
The internet itself has remained pretty stable as a continuing backbone for the electronic exchange of information. It has been surprisingly robust and scalable. Embarrassingly, I was one of those people who, in the early 1990's was predicting that the internet would soon break from the volume of usage as it spread from academic to commercial users. At the time, it seemed that as usage - especially, graphical intense usage - would fill the capacity of routers and cables of our national infrastructure. Surprise, surprise. Hardware manufacturers and ISPs have somehow figured out to meet the demand. (And have they ever….)
But while the internet backbone has scaled up and provided one and all with (potential) capacity for the mammoth amounts of bandwidth. A well wired home could (does?) have a wireless access point that supports at least ten simultaneous devices on the same router at speed and capacity to allow all ten users to stream music while surfing the web with several tabs open.
So the internet itself supports surprisingly intense usage. But the people who make money on the sale of this usage are the ISPs. What about the information providers who provide the information or services that consumers use? In order for content and service providers to make money for their information or services, they need two things: Unique, high quality information or services, and, eyeballs. Service or information providers either make money on the information that they sell to users, or they give their information or services away for free and sell advertising to others. This much is obvious. It's also the great challenge of being in business on the internet.
Either way, the vendor has a vested interest in holding the users' attention as long as possible. One way that they are doing that is by creating new "platforms" for access to, or usage of information or services available on the internet. If you think about it, this basic concept underlies nearly all recent developments in cyber-business. The creation of the iOS and its use of apps to access the internet was one of the very first examples of a way to lure users away from the wide-open world wide web and into a world where use of the internet was now carried out completely from within an application. This provided us with excellent, robust access to and usage of the information or services, while at the same time, keeping us in that very location for focused, discreet periods of time.
But as Mobile Safari began to become a major source of internet activity, other service and information providers began to see the potential for customized, focused internet experience. Google keeps developing more and more products and services and makes them available for free to all-comers - and yet makes billions. And they make that money without ever sending you a bill! The strategy is simple, get users to click into the world of Google for search, mail, documents, RSS feeds, phone, etc.; And keep them there! Google is striving to extend their reach even further by developing its mobile platform, Android and its forthcoming operating system, ChromeOS. Once in the Google world, a user will be able to stay in that world. FaceBook, too, making plays to become the one-stop source of all your internet life and activity.
Developments such as these may ultimately serve to make the intent a series of walled gardens where users can't easily move from one application or platform at will, at least not easily. Examples of how fine these walled gardens have become can be seen in two recent announcements of publishing ventures which have begun entirely as applications on the iPad. For example, Rupert Murdoch's announcement of the creation of an iPad based newspaper called "The Daily," and Richard Branson's new magazine called, "Project." The Daily isn't yet released (as of this writing) but Project is. And it is stunning in nearly every respect. It's beautiful, packed with features and utility. But it is limited in one important respect.
Even if I wanted to share with you the wonderful cover story in Project, I couldn't. First off, there is no URL. Second, even if I could, somehow send you a link to the article, because Project was developed on an app built especially for the iPad, you need one in order to view it. And there's no end in sight. Such applications are bound to appear in all major platforms.
The irony is that well-executed applications provide outstanding experience for the user and many people prefer the experience of browsing Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and databases through available apps over accessing the same information with a browser.
What's a developer to do? The hope, from a user's point of view is that developers will focus their efforts on building good services and databases and make them available on every available platform. It is also important for a new system of link locators be developed so that links from within a ChromeOS application will be able to find the same article or information in an iOS application or from within a browser.
Such challenges are so subtle and nuanced as to be nearly invisible today. Tomorrow they may well be extreme obstacles for cross-platform use and may make today's successful platform the preferred one for distribution of tomorrow's information and services….
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Open Access Plus
The Fourth Rail of the Digital Revolution in Legal Materials
Much good work is being done to insure that as the internet develops and digital information becomes the norm, it remains freely accessible to all citizens. After all, how can citizens participate in their government if they can't have access to their own laws? Efforts by AALL, PublicResource.org and NCCUSL and others are focused primarily on making sure that all government and primary legal materials are free, reliable and that they are authentic. Again, how can citizens participate in their government if cost limits their access and they can't be assured that what they are accessing is the real thing? Law.gov, NCCUSL and AALL's Washington Affairs Office are working hard on all fronts, known collectively as "access, authentication and preservation."
I want to discuss the all but overlooked aspect of the digital revolution in legal materials: meaningful access to the the law. If we think of access, authentication and preservation as three legs upon which the ideals of "open access" stand, meaningful access as described below would constitute the fourth leg of the equation, without which all the access in the world may not be enough to truly address the needs of American citizens.
We librarians know good and well that the key to efficient, effective legal research is not finding cases and statutes. Rather, a skilled researcher knows which tools lead you to the right statutes and cases, and, preferably, especially if you're new to the subject, tools that also explain what is the 'law' of that subject. In this context, the 'law' is not merely a rule, but, a series of calculations and interpretations about what all the cases and statutes (and politicians and society in general?) say, and standards of practice or behavior that result, about the subject.
The debate, therefore, about free, unfettered access to primary legal materials is, therefore, something of a red herring. Access to the primary law is really secondary if the goal is to give citizens free, unfettered access to the 'law.' In this context, practical knowledge of the law can be described as the ability to predict outcomes of law suits, relational expectations or legal proceedings. This knowledge causes people to live and pursue livelihoods in accordance with legal standards.
As the body of primary legal materials grows and access to it spreads, what will be the result? Will citizens actually be better able to understand the law without access to the scholarship, analysis and the sophisticated objective finding tools of legal research?
In addition to advocating the free, unfettered access to primary laws, perhaps we should also focus our efforts toward using new technology to develop new finding tools and access to secondary materials.
I propose that the internet provides us with the means to create aggregated, federated meta-search engines that could mine legal scholarship and commentary found in emerging web-based resources such as digital commons, blogs, news and RSS feeds, Twitter feeds, podcasts, etc. We librarians are in a unique position to understand the "informatiosphere"; how it's structured, how to evaluate authenticity, authority and the 'new' provenance. There are many ways that search engines and search algorithms may be designed to provide access to new, free materials that make access to the law more useful, and, contrary to the prevailing commercial model, encourages the development of more free materials.
And herein lies the rub. in the coming 'digital age', one of its byproducts is the ability of commercial publishers to closely regulate access to various information sources. Commercial legal publishers' products rarely have value exclusively in the publication of primary legal materials. The value that commercial legal publishers offer lawyers and lay people interested in learning about he law lies in their secondary materials and finding tools. As open free access to primary materials becomes the norm, legal publishers will likely tighten the circle around their proprietary commercial products. As their income declines from the sale of primary materials, which most also publish in addition to secondary resources, these corporations will make up the difference by increasing the prices of finding tools, treatises, form books, looseleaf reporters, etc. As the print versions of these secondary resrouces disappear from library shelves, access to them by lay people will be all but blocked because most cannot afford access to online products produced by the major legal publishers.
When efforts to make access to primary legal materials free succeeds, it is possible that only legal professionals will have access to commercially produced finding tools and secondary materials. As described earlier, these may actually be the most important materials to which people interested in learning the law must have access in order to equip them to make reasoned, legal decisions about their lives and livelihoods.
Should this come to pass, if we fail to provide to ordinary citizens access to some form of secondary materials that help them find and understand the law, our success in providing them with free, unfettered access to primary materials may, in the end be a pyrrhic victory.
Much good work is being done to insure that as the internet develops and digital information becomes the norm, it remains freely accessible to all citizens. After all, how can citizens participate in their government if they can't have access to their own laws? Efforts by AALL, PublicResource.org and NCCUSL and others are focused primarily on making sure that all government and primary legal materials are free, reliable and that they are authentic. Again, how can citizens participate in their government if cost limits their access and they can't be assured that what they are accessing is the real thing? Law.gov, NCCUSL and AALL's Washington Affairs Office are working hard on all fronts, known collectively as "access, authentication and preservation."
I want to discuss the all but overlooked aspect of the digital revolution in legal materials: meaningful access to the the law. If we think of access, authentication and preservation as three legs upon which the ideals of "open access" stand, meaningful access as described below would constitute the fourth leg of the equation, without which all the access in the world may not be enough to truly address the needs of American citizens.
We librarians know good and well that the key to efficient, effective legal research is not finding cases and statutes. Rather, a skilled researcher knows which tools lead you to the right statutes and cases, and, preferably, especially if you're new to the subject, tools that also explain what is the 'law' of that subject. In this context, the 'law' is not merely a rule, but, a series of calculations and interpretations about what all the cases and statutes (and politicians and society in general?) say, and standards of practice or behavior that result, about the subject.
The debate, therefore, about free, unfettered access to primary legal materials is, therefore, something of a red herring. Access to the primary law is really secondary if the goal is to give citizens free, unfettered access to the 'law.' In this context, practical knowledge of the law can be described as the ability to predict outcomes of law suits, relational expectations or legal proceedings. This knowledge causes people to live and pursue livelihoods in accordance with legal standards.
As the body of primary legal materials grows and access to it spreads, what will be the result? Will citizens actually be better able to understand the law without access to the scholarship, analysis and the sophisticated objective finding tools of legal research?
In addition to advocating the free, unfettered access to primary laws, perhaps we should also focus our efforts toward using new technology to develop new finding tools and access to secondary materials.
I propose that the internet provides us with the means to create aggregated, federated meta-search engines that could mine legal scholarship and commentary found in emerging web-based resources such as digital commons, blogs, news and RSS feeds, Twitter feeds, podcasts, etc. We librarians are in a unique position to understand the "informatiosphere"; how it's structured, how to evaluate authenticity, authority and the 'new' provenance. There are many ways that search engines and search algorithms may be designed to provide access to new, free materials that make access to the law more useful, and, contrary to the prevailing commercial model, encourages the development of more free materials.
And herein lies the rub. in the coming 'digital age', one of its byproducts is the ability of commercial publishers to closely regulate access to various information sources. Commercial legal publishers' products rarely have value exclusively in the publication of primary legal materials. The value that commercial legal publishers offer lawyers and lay people interested in learning about he law lies in their secondary materials and finding tools. As open free access to primary materials becomes the norm, legal publishers will likely tighten the circle around their proprietary commercial products. As their income declines from the sale of primary materials, which most also publish in addition to secondary resources, these corporations will make up the difference by increasing the prices of finding tools, treatises, form books, looseleaf reporters, etc. As the print versions of these secondary resrouces disappear from library shelves, access to them by lay people will be all but blocked because most cannot afford access to online products produced by the major legal publishers.
When efforts to make access to primary legal materials free succeeds, it is possible that only legal professionals will have access to commercially produced finding tools and secondary materials. As described earlier, these may actually be the most important materials to which people interested in learning the law must have access in order to equip them to make reasoned, legal decisions about their lives and livelihoods.
Should this come to pass, if we fail to provide to ordinary citizens access to some form of secondary materials that help them find and understand the law, our success in providing them with free, unfettered access to primary materials may, in the end be a pyrrhic victory.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Google Scholar LOJ - Where Did Google Get the Cases?!
Uh-oh. It may be nothing at all, but a few searches in Google SLOJ have retrieved cases that have headnote numbers embedded in them. There are no headnotes, of course, nor are there any key numbers, but the headnote numbers themselves are clearly embedded in the text of the cases.
What does this mean? Apparently the cases in Google SLOJ were, at some point, in the Westlaw database. To see what I mean, search for State v Dragoo, 765 N.W.2d 666 (2009), in Westlaw. Now, find the case on Google SLOJ. As you scroll down through the opinion, you'll notice that on page 670, at the beginning of the first paragraph under the heading "Standard of Review," is a number one, in brackets: [1]. The second paragraph of the section has the numbers two and three in brackets: [2][3]. This corresponds to the headnote numbers in the West version of the case.
Oddly, the Google SLOJ version of the case has excluded the court's own Syllabus, which isn't an official part of the opinion, but is written by the court and is contained in the official publication of Nebraska Supreme Court cases, and is included in the Westlaw version as well. This also explains why the Google SLOJ version is missing page 667.
Listen carefully, you might soon be able to make out the sound of a shoe dropping in Mountain View....
What does this mean? Apparently the cases in Google SLOJ were, at some point, in the Westlaw database. To see what I mean, search for State v Dragoo, 765 N.W.2d 666 (2009), in Westlaw. Now, find the case on Google SLOJ. As you scroll down through the opinion, you'll notice that on page 670, at the beginning of the first paragraph under the heading "Standard of Review," is a number one, in brackets: [1]. The second paragraph of the section has the numbers two and three in brackets: [2][3]. This corresponds to the headnote numbers in the West version of the case.
Oddly, the Google SLOJ version of the case has excluded the court's own Syllabus, which isn't an official part of the opinion, but is written by the court and is contained in the official publication of Nebraska Supreme Court cases, and is included in the Westlaw version as well. This also explains why the Google SLOJ version is missing page 667.
Listen carefully, you might soon be able to make out the sound of a shoe dropping in Mountain View....
Monday, November 16, 2009
New Concept in Database Search Engines
I have been thinking about this concept for about a year, and I can't get it out of my head. It's time to share it. I hope that Google, CCH or BNA reads it, exploits it and sends me a hefty check....
Why online haven't legal database providers figured out that online databases are a new breed of legal research tool and developed something completely different? To date, all online databases are not much more than online versions of their old-fashioned print tools. There are differences, of course: Online searching allows users to find particular cases and documents quickly, sort rapidly and print more cleanly, but in reality, online tools do no more than allow users to skate around through masses of undifferentiated primary law, using cite-verification tools to sift through the mass of material fairly quickly. But without much help or guidance.
I propose development of a new kind of online search engine. First, let's establish a few assumptions. First, let's presume that cases cited by treatises, law review, blog writers and commentators are cases that are most important than cases that are not cited by these writers. Second, let's presume that cases cited more frequently are more important than less cited cases. Third, it is possible to make assumptions about the relative value of a case based upon the kinds of works a case is cited in, as well as the kind of treatment that a case receives in that work.
Based upon these three assumptions, I think that it is possible to develop a database(s) that is comprised of only cited cases. What's more, meta-data can be created that will note where it was cited, and the level of treatment.
There are at least six great sources from which you can build such databases. West has, perhaps the greatest library from which to build such a database. It's collection of secondary materials is tremendous. Lexis is also well-positioned to accomplish something like this with its Matthew Bender titles. But, perhaps the two companies best equipped to build such a high performance database are CCH and BNA. These companies own some of the very best specialized law treatises. It's nice for these companies to put their newsletters and looseleafs in electronic format, but, to paraphrase early library automation consultants, "an electronic version of a good looseleaf only creates a good electronic looseleaf." In other words, it doesn't make a good thing better; it only makes it electronic. In order to make a good thing great, it must be different. (That should be obvious, but somehow it's not….)
But what if you're not West, Lexis, BNA or CCH? Are you out of luck? I don't think so. There are two resources left. First, Hein Online is now comprised of an unprecedented collection of law reviews. This is a vast gold mine of notable cases. Hein itself could develop a search engine that sifts through the very best cases based on citation frequency among law review writers.
A newly emerging resource that may accomplish roughly the same thing, are digital commons and blogs. Looking forward, a crawler could be designed that will crawl through digital commons, legal blogs and law review websites looking for cited cases. Here, the presumption is that cases that are discussed by more writers are more significant.
Finally, it is possible that such as database could be made simply from cases cited by other cases. It can be presumed that cases that are cited by other cases most frequently are those cases that are more significant legal precedents.
Why online haven't legal database providers figured out that online databases are a new breed of legal research tool and developed something completely different? To date, all online databases are not much more than online versions of their old-fashioned print tools. There are differences, of course: Online searching allows users to find particular cases and documents quickly, sort rapidly and print more cleanly, but in reality, online tools do no more than allow users to skate around through masses of undifferentiated primary law, using cite-verification tools to sift through the mass of material fairly quickly. But without much help or guidance.
I propose development of a new kind of online search engine. First, let's establish a few assumptions. First, let's presume that cases cited by treatises, law review, blog writers and commentators are cases that are most important than cases that are not cited by these writers. Second, let's presume that cases cited more frequently are more important than less cited cases. Third, it is possible to make assumptions about the relative value of a case based upon the kinds of works a case is cited in, as well as the kind of treatment that a case receives in that work.
Based upon these three assumptions, I think that it is possible to develop a database(s) that is comprised of only cited cases. What's more, meta-data can be created that will note where it was cited, and the level of treatment.
There are at least six great sources from which you can build such databases. West has, perhaps the greatest library from which to build such a database. It's collection of secondary materials is tremendous. Lexis is also well-positioned to accomplish something like this with its Matthew Bender titles. But, perhaps the two companies best equipped to build such a high performance database are CCH and BNA. These companies own some of the very best specialized law treatises. It's nice for these companies to put their newsletters and looseleafs in electronic format, but, to paraphrase early library automation consultants, "an electronic version of a good looseleaf only creates a good electronic looseleaf." In other words, it doesn't make a good thing better; it only makes it electronic. In order to make a good thing great, it must be different. (That should be obvious, but somehow it's not….)
But what if you're not West, Lexis, BNA or CCH? Are you out of luck? I don't think so. There are two resources left. First, Hein Online is now comprised of an unprecedented collection of law reviews. This is a vast gold mine of notable cases. Hein itself could develop a search engine that sifts through the very best cases based on citation frequency among law review writers.
A newly emerging resource that may accomplish roughly the same thing, are digital commons and blogs. Looking forward, a crawler could be designed that will crawl through digital commons, legal blogs and law review websites looking for cited cases. Here, the presumption is that cases that are discussed by more writers are more significant.
Finally, it is possible that such as database could be made simply from cases cited by other cases. It can be presumed that cases that are cited by other cases most frequently are those cases that are more significant legal precedents.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Interview with Carl Malamud; Thoughts on "Free Law," Kerfuffles and Law.Gov
On Friday afternoon, 6 November 2009, we interviewed Carl Malamud, founder of Public.Resource.org. A transcript of the chat room can be found here. You can download the interview from The Law Librarian's BlogTalkRadio web page or find it on iTunes.
Law.Gov was the focus of the interview, and it seems that much of the hoopla (and kerfuffle) about Law.Gov and the "free law" movement is all misguided worry on the part of commercial publishers. The worry on the part of researchers is justified, but, after listening to Malamud's explanation of the Law.Gov movement, not cause for pessimism.
Lexis and Westlaw are the two largest commercial sources of very high priced primary legal material (VHPPLM), as opposed to "free (primary) law," (FPL). The worry on the part of VHPPLM providers is that the free law, or the Open Access movement, will result in loss of market share and lost revenue. The logic of this is really extraordinary. VHPPLM providers get the primary material for free, refine and repackage it with very good (no, excellent) indexing and finding, and then sell it to professionals at a premium.
This is perfectly fair (if over-priced), because the market will get what it can for its services.
The problem with the equation is that the people who deserve the FPL, the people who actually, by right of citizenship, own it, end up in a position that makes it difficult for them to even get access to it. Ordinary citizens must have complete and reliable access to FPL. It is argued by many that unfettered access to it is even critical to our democracy. As our government depository program dries up and disseminates more and more government information via the internet or formats that require mediating technology or services, access to information becomes less available to the general population.
In fact, over the last century governments have, in some cases, abdicated their responsibility to freely disseminate their laws and legal materials to commercial publishers, making VHPPLM the sole source of access to the law. For example, until the late 1970's, when Lexis came on the scene, the opinions federal district and circuit courts were only published by West Publishing. Many states have ceased publication of their own case law in favor of West's Regional Reporters, and, in some cases ceased publication of their statutes in favor of commercial publication of their codes. This left access to the law beyond the reach of most citizens and, even, many public libraries.
If an informed citizenry is critical to a functioning government, what can be done to make sure that the laws are accessible to everyone who wants to read them? Who looks out for the public, who simply wants, indeed by rights needs free access to government information? Well, Open Access advocates do, as do people and movements that work to build free databases that strive to provide reliable access to primary materials. LII is an example of a service that's been around for a long time and that provides as much access to free information as possible. The problem for aggregators like LII is that the information that they provide is only as good as the sources available to them. And governments are just not very good sources of their own information.
Law.Gov is a movement that is determined to work to raise the quality of government information. They are determined to establish standards for state and local courts, legislatures and agencies to follow in the production and distribution of their own legal materials.
If Law.Gov succeeds in its mission, it will mean that governments and courts will produce better information, in formats that are reliable, accurate and distributed freely to all who need it. And all who need it include both private citizens and providers of VHPPLM. As such, this is good for news for providers of VHPPLM, as well as ordinary consumers of primary legal materials.
As Malamud said in response to a question from the chat room that asked whether he sees Law.Gov as a competitor to Lexis and Westlaw, (paraphrasing) "No, absolutely not! We are simply looking to formulate a system that will assist governments and courts to provide free, reliable access to government information." Lexis and Westlaw, will be the beneficiaries of the movement, as will the public. (Gee, they are members of the public, aren't they?) Nothing in the movement should discourage them from developing their critically important secondary materials.
Law.Gov is entering a phase of self-study and over the next year will be examining how governments and courts can work to systematically and freely publish and distribute government and legal materials. Visit http://public.resource.org/law.gov to learn more about Law.Gov. At the website you can find out about how to donate to the project and support its work, and about a nationwide series of workshops that will be held next year to discuss how its work will be accomplished.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Following the Yellow Brick Road to the Ephemeral City....
The Ephemeral City and Modern (Digital) Libraries
As we move toward an all born-digital information future feel like I’m wandering a yellow brick road that leads inevitably to the Ephemeral City. A city governed by illusion and impermanence. We need to be careful, lest we all end up with libraries filled with copies of 1984 to our suppliers’ Amazon.....
I’m not sure of the exact reasons, but it seems that law, especially legal academia creates more than it’s fair share of ephemera. Much of it developed by the sources of the law itself: courts, agencies and legislatures. Slip laws, slip opinions, advance sheets, letter rulings from nearly every agency, position papers, reports, speeches, lectures, etc., all material that can/may/should/could have very important effect legally or historically.
Over the years, libraries have handled ephmera many different ways: tossed them, added them to a vertical file, bound the items that seemed important, saved them in princeton boxes and waited for enough to accumulate for binding by year, volume or some other cycle. It also depended on whether the material was regularly published or was subject to editing and re-compiling prior to an official compilation/printing/publishing cycle. This is material that is important, but was not published in a format typical of important material: durable bindings, paper, organizational finding aids, etc. It was relatively easy for librarians to collect ephemera, (it often came unsolicited in the mail, from faculty who had attended conferences, or came as part of a larger subscription arrangement such as from the FDLP, or a looseleaf subscription, etc.) but not easy to catalog, organize and preserve.
I’m very concerned that all material that is “born digital” is, by definition, ephemeral. The recent Amazon/1984 fiasco demonstrated to us that nothing digital is permanent - even if you “bought it” from a reputable dealer. Another example: I was recently referred to Lawrence Lessig’s presentation, “Free Culture,” presented at the 2002 Open Source Conference, as being one of the best presentations, ever. I followed the links to watch the presentation. It’s not available online any more! Not even at Lessig’s own, lessig.org website. I’ve no doubt that this may be a temporary situation and that the presentation can be put back online as easily as it was taken away. The point is, the digital content can be changed - no matter what - with the click of a mouse. No mater what. No matter what! (I’m repeating myself on purpose to challenge those objections in your head.) No matter what....
When I raise the issue of digital information’s archival value, publishers look at me with a look of understanding and empathy, then say, “There are ways to make it permanent. That’s not a problem any more.” I’m sorry, it’s still is a problem. People with links to Lessig’s Free Culture presentation thought that the link they used was permanent. People who bought 1984 from Amazon thought their copy was permanent. Duh. As far as I can tell at this point, the only way to make the material absolutely permanent is to commit it to some format that IS permanent. Etch it in stone, if you like. But a hard disk, e-book reader - even a very expensive one is simply not permanent. No way. No how.
And it’s something that we have to start worrying about or we’re going to be responsible for a catastrophe of remarkable scope. Ask Carl Malamud about going back and “digitizing” Betamax tapes of federal hearings and programs. How easy was it to find betamax players to use to get the material off the tapes? How long will it take before the data on our present servers needs to moved to the next generation of servers. Will we (or whoever the custodians are) move all the data? Or only the data that’s used most often? Most recently? Perhaps only the “good” stuff. The “important” stuff.” Who decides?
If all legal information is “born digital,” a la The Durham Statement, various digital commons, etc., it is my opinion that all of it becomes ephemeral, and this means fluid, quick moving and able to adapt and recombine like a virus. When the law (primary, secondary and everything in between) is published ephemerally like this, how can it possibly be stored, organized and preserved for posterity, scholarship or practice with the level of consistency and authority that users of legal information have taken for granted in the past?
In today’s information economy, when someone wants to see, for example, the first (English) edition of Burlamaqui’s Principles of Natural Law, it’s piece of cake. Once you locate a copy, or a reprint, there it is. The person can hold it, scan it and quickly satisfy him/herself that the copy is authentic. Unless it’s a counterfeit, just holding the book satisfies the user.
What is the equivalent for an article or a book that your find online? Whether it’s in a BePress Digital Commons, a blog, Intelliconnect, Lexis or Westlaw, we’ve not yet developed a technology that can communicate a document’s veracity and authority beyond a doubt.
In my book, it’s all becoming ephemeral....
As we move toward an all born-digital information future feel like I’m wandering a yellow brick road that leads inevitably to the Ephemeral City. A city governed by illusion and impermanence. We need to be careful, lest we all end up with libraries filled with copies of 1984 to our suppliers’ Amazon.....
I’m not sure of the exact reasons, but it seems that law, especially legal academia creates more than it’s fair share of ephemera. Much of it developed by the sources of the law itself: courts, agencies and legislatures. Slip laws, slip opinions, advance sheets, letter rulings from nearly every agency, position papers, reports, speeches, lectures, etc., all material that can/may/should/could have very important effect legally or historically.
Over the years, libraries have handled ephmera many different ways: tossed them, added them to a vertical file, bound the items that seemed important, saved them in princeton boxes and waited for enough to accumulate for binding by year, volume or some other cycle. It also depended on whether the material was regularly published or was subject to editing and re-compiling prior to an official compilation/printing/publishing cycle. This is material that is important, but was not published in a format typical of important material: durable bindings, paper, organizational finding aids, etc. It was relatively easy for librarians to collect ephemera, (it often came unsolicited in the mail, from faculty who had attended conferences, or came as part of a larger subscription arrangement such as from the FDLP, or a looseleaf subscription, etc.) but not easy to catalog, organize and preserve.
I’m very concerned that all material that is “born digital” is, by definition, ephemeral. The recent Amazon/1984 fiasco demonstrated to us that nothing digital is permanent - even if you “bought it” from a reputable dealer. Another example: I was recently referred to Lawrence Lessig’s presentation, “Free Culture,” presented at the 2002 Open Source Conference, as being one of the best presentations, ever. I followed the links to watch the presentation. It’s not available online any more! Not even at Lessig’s own, lessig.org website. I’ve no doubt that this may be a temporary situation and that the presentation can be put back online as easily as it was taken away. The point is, the digital content can be changed - no matter what - with the click of a mouse. No mater what. No matter what! (I’m repeating myself on purpose to challenge those objections in your head.) No matter what....
When I raise the issue of digital information’s archival value, publishers look at me with a look of understanding and empathy, then say, “There are ways to make it permanent. That’s not a problem any more.” I’m sorry, it’s still is a problem. People with links to Lessig’s Free Culture presentation thought that the link they used was permanent. People who bought 1984 from Amazon thought their copy was permanent. Duh. As far as I can tell at this point, the only way to make the material absolutely permanent is to commit it to some format that IS permanent. Etch it in stone, if you like. But a hard disk, e-book reader - even a very expensive one is simply not permanent. No way. No how.
And it’s something that we have to start worrying about or we’re going to be responsible for a catastrophe of remarkable scope. Ask Carl Malamud about going back and “digitizing” Betamax tapes of federal hearings and programs. How easy was it to find betamax players to use to get the material off the tapes? How long will it take before the data on our present servers needs to moved to the next generation of servers. Will we (or whoever the custodians are) move all the data? Or only the data that’s used most often? Most recently? Perhaps only the “good” stuff. The “important” stuff.” Who decides?
If all legal information is “born digital,” a la The Durham Statement, various digital commons, etc., it is my opinion that all of it becomes ephemeral, and this means fluid, quick moving and able to adapt and recombine like a virus. When the law (primary, secondary and everything in between) is published ephemerally like this, how can it possibly be stored, organized and preserved for posterity, scholarship or practice with the level of consistency and authority that users of legal information have taken for granted in the past?
In today’s information economy, when someone wants to see, for example, the first (English) edition of Burlamaqui’s Principles of Natural Law, it’s piece of cake. Once you locate a copy, or a reprint, there it is. The person can hold it, scan it and quickly satisfy him/herself that the copy is authentic. Unless it’s a counterfeit, just holding the book satisfies the user.
What is the equivalent for an article or a book that your find online? Whether it’s in a BePress Digital Commons, a blog, Intelliconnect, Lexis or Westlaw, we’ve not yet developed a technology that can communicate a document’s veracity and authority beyond a doubt.
In my book, it’s all becoming ephemeral....
Thursday, May 14, 2009
The 200-Title Law Library?
As I was signing invoices the other day, it ocurred to me that if all titles from the Big Three (or four) law publishers end up costing $3000 per year, we won't be able to afford much more than a 200-title law library!
But of course, I'm not sure what is a title anymore....
-- Posted From My iPhone
But of course, I'm not sure what is a title anymore....
-- Posted From My iPhone
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