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 publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label legal publishing. 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….
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Two Observations About the State of Modern Law Book Publishing
First, things cost too much and the prices keep increasing at rates that are out-stripping inflation and funding for libraries. It's almost as though publishers don't want law libraries to buy law books any more. Second, while the quality of online services, and, indeed, even print resources get better and better, there is still an indication that publishers aren't developing their materials for what people need, but, rather, what they can profit from.
Think that the reason that we're in these predicaments is at least partly because most of our publishers are so far removed from their customers that they simply don't understand who their customers are, or how or why they are using them.
For the most part, the executives of the big three publishers of materials about American law are not lawyers, nor publishers. Even if they have law degrees, they usually also have MBA's and come from business backgrounds. They are corporate types who see their companies as manufacturing widgets! They don't appreciate the grave responsibility that they have as publishers. (Seriously.)
Think about it. Without publishers, we'd have no idea what the law is. After all, the law is ideas, and it doesn't become static or fixed in any way, shape or form until it's captured in some form or other. The government and the courts have traditionally done a half-a**ed job of publishing legal materials, but that's about it. The only two government publications that are effectively published are the Federal Register and the CFR. Everything else they publish is poorly done: slow, bizarre formats and classification systems, etc. Without commercial publishers, we wouldn't have a workable USC, US Supreme Court Reports, federal court reporters, etc. What's more, even if we did have all that it wouldn't be worth much without looseleafs, treatises and law reviews to tell us what it all means. (See Jason Wilson's excellent post on why Secondary Sources are Like Cheeseburgers. The work of publishers isn't just like manufacturing hub caps or widgets, it's a vitally important role in our whole legal system. It's the lynchpin of our understanding the law.
But publishers and executives who come to the law publishing industry thinking that they are publishing widgets, will view their work differently than those who realize that they are not publishing widgets. This is the first problem: the new publishers are not serving us, they're serving themselves. They think they're making widgets.
Second, in the aftermath of the enormous mergers of the Ninties, the companies have merely grown more dense at the top. People who make decisions about what should be published and what shouldn't, or how they should serve their customers or how they shouldn't are now made by people who are so far removed from their customers, that they can't really hear what's being said. Sales people don't know who to communicate with inside companies in order to pass along good ideas. (Librarians are full of good ideas, by the way. No fooling.) I had an experience recently in which a single title published by a single publisher was available in both print and electronic formats. Managers of the print format didn't even know there was an electronic format available! The left hand didn't merely no know what the right hand was doing; the left hand didn't even know the right hand existed!
There are a couple publishers still around who are independent and produce good materials, and they succeed, in part I think because they are still small enough where actual customers can talk to the publishers and the product development people. But with the likes of the big three (or four, depending on how you count), you can't get any face time with a person who matters unless you can deliver.... profits.
Now, lest this sound too pessimistic and negative, please understand that I'm simply trying to be objective with this post. All this is understandable and remediable. Publishers must realize that their roles are critical components of our legal system and take a broader, bigger view of what they do. And, we customers must be more understanding about who were are dealing with; and we must continually strive to inform them. Especially the those newest to the field. If they don't get it, we must work to explain to them why we care so much, and why they should care about why we care.
Think that the reason that we're in these predicaments is at least partly because most of our publishers are so far removed from their customers that they simply don't understand who their customers are, or how or why they are using them.
For the most part, the executives of the big three publishers of materials about American law are not lawyers, nor publishers. Even if they have law degrees, they usually also have MBA's and come from business backgrounds. They are corporate types who see their companies as manufacturing widgets! They don't appreciate the grave responsibility that they have as publishers. (Seriously.)
Think about it. Without publishers, we'd have no idea what the law is. After all, the law is ideas, and it doesn't become static or fixed in any way, shape or form until it's captured in some form or other. The government and the courts have traditionally done a half-a**ed job of publishing legal materials, but that's about it. The only two government publications that are effectively published are the Federal Register and the CFR. Everything else they publish is poorly done: slow, bizarre formats and classification systems, etc. Without commercial publishers, we wouldn't have a workable USC, US Supreme Court Reports, federal court reporters, etc. What's more, even if we did have all that it wouldn't be worth much without looseleafs, treatises and law reviews to tell us what it all means. (See Jason Wilson's excellent post on why Secondary Sources are Like Cheeseburgers. The work of publishers isn't just like manufacturing hub caps or widgets, it's a vitally important role in our whole legal system. It's the lynchpin of our understanding the law.
But publishers and executives who come to the law publishing industry thinking that they are publishing widgets, will view their work differently than those who realize that they are not publishing widgets. This is the first problem: the new publishers are not serving us, they're serving themselves. They think they're making widgets.
Second, in the aftermath of the enormous mergers of the Ninties, the companies have merely grown more dense at the top. People who make decisions about what should be published and what shouldn't, or how they should serve their customers or how they shouldn't are now made by people who are so far removed from their customers, that they can't really hear what's being said. Sales people don't know who to communicate with inside companies in order to pass along good ideas. (Librarians are full of good ideas, by the way. No fooling.) I had an experience recently in which a single title published by a single publisher was available in both print and electronic formats. Managers of the print format didn't even know there was an electronic format available! The left hand didn't merely no know what the right hand was doing; the left hand didn't even know the right hand existed!
There are a couple publishers still around who are independent and produce good materials, and they succeed, in part I think because they are still small enough where actual customers can talk to the publishers and the product development people. But with the likes of the big three (or four, depending on how you count), you can't get any face time with a person who matters unless you can deliver.... profits.
Now, lest this sound too pessimistic and negative, please understand that I'm simply trying to be objective with this post. All this is understandable and remediable. Publishers must realize that their roles are critical components of our legal system and take a broader, bigger view of what they do. And, we customers must be more understanding about who were are dealing with; and we must continually strive to inform them. Especially the those newest to the field. If they don't get it, we must work to explain to them why we care so much, and why they should care about why we care.
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.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Gizmodo: Sony Virtual Library eBook Check Out
In an interesting twist, eBooks are now available for virtual check out from libraries. Gizmodo's article says it all:
My favorite part of Sony's Reader announcement was probably Library Finder, powered by OverDrive, which lets you check out eBooks from your local library—and "thousands" have signed up—for free, wirelessly, direct to your reader. But there's a catch.
There aren't an unlimited number of ebooks—each library has an actual "stock" of ebooks (because the library had to pay for each copy). So, if they have a stock of 5 books, and they're all checked out, you have to wait in a queue for somebody else's book to expire when they hit the 21-day mark. When it's available, you get an email, and then you can go check it out.
Today also marks the launch of Sony's Library Finder application. Sony, working with OverDrive (www.overdrive.com), the leading global digital distributor of eBooks and to libraries, will now offer visitors to the eBook Store by Sony easy access to their local library's collection of eBooks. Thousands of libraries in the OverDrive network offer eBooks optimized for the Sony Reader, and visitors can now find these libraries by typing their zip code into the Library Finder. Through the selected library's download website, visitors can check out eBooks with a valid library card, download them to a PC and transfer to their Reader. At the end of the library's lending period, eBooks simply expire, so there are never any late fees.
My favorite part of Sony's Reader announcement was probably Library Finder, powered by OverDrive, which lets you check out eBooks from your local library—and "thousands" have signed up—for free, wirelessly, direct to your reader. But there's a catch.
There aren't an unlimited number of ebooks—each library has an actual "stock" of ebooks (because the library had to pay for each copy). So, if they have a stock of 5 books, and they're all checked out, you have to wait in a queue for somebody else's book to expire when they hit the 21-day mark. When it's available, you get an email, and then you can go check it out.
Today also marks the launch of Sony's Library Finder application. Sony, working with OverDrive (www.overdrive.com), the leading global digital distributor of eBooks and to libraries, will now offer visitors to the eBook Store by Sony easy access to their local library's collection of eBooks. Thousands of libraries in the OverDrive network offer eBooks optimized for the Sony Reader, and visitors can now find these libraries by typing their zip code into the Library Finder. Through the selected library's download website, visitors can check out eBooks with a valid library card, download them to a PC and transfer to their Reader. At the end of the library's lending period, eBooks simply expire, so there are never any late fees.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
The Reinvention of Legal Research: The Future Is Now
The Future Isn't Now. Not quite. Just because we can get "free" and easy access to all the primary law in the world, it doesn't mean that we can safely say that we can do "free" and easy legal research.
There's an interesting post on the Huffington Post that's being circulated in the law library blogosphere by Peter Schwartz that's causing some alarm with the declaration that "The Future is Now." I think that Mr. Schwartz is overstating the importance of access to primary materials and fails to understand the real subtlety of legal research.
First off, I agree that the two big publishers, Lexis and West are in big trouble. They have built their empires publishing primary law, and they're making so much money doing so that they've mistakenly come to believe that that's what they are: commercial publishers of primary legal materials.
While it's true that both companies began by publishing primary materials, this isn't the real value that they bring to lawyers, libraries and legal researchers. When West Publishing first began, it brought something to the field that didn't exist before: quick, easy access to cases. That was it's bread and butter. When Lexis entered the scene in the late 1970's, it brought quick access to primary law, too. But over time, West's greatest contributions to the field was it's Key Number System, CJS, and it's great treatises, such as Wright and Miller.
The real trick of legal research (the lawyering part) isn't necessarily finding the law, it is interpreting and understanding it. This isn't done by merely reading a lot of cases, it is done using tools: treatises, classification systems, restatements, journals, etc. Any researcher worth his salt knows, that having every case on the law of insider trading isn't worth a damn toward understanding the law of insider trading; unless you have time to read ten thousand cases!
Today, in the modern legal information economy the useful parts of what West and Lexis are selling us is not the primary law, it's the secondary materials! Lawyers don't actually learn what the law is by reading cases, they learn what it is by reading treatises, handbooks and articles written by scholars and experts who do read the cases.
What West and Lexis under-appreciate with their ridiculous pricing options is that making people pay through the nose for access to primary legal materials - when nearly all of it is available for free in numerous places - is blind. What they both possess that has real value are their secondary materials: key numbers, treatises, etc. This is what they should be selling and promoting. I'm looking for the day when I can cancel all the reporters and access to the primary materials and focus on collecting the secondary. Hopefully, someone will be archiving the primary materials.... just in case.
Peter Schwartz and others correctly point out that lawyers and their libraries may soon simply have to stop subscribing to Lexis and Westlaw because their services are becoming unaffordable. This may soon be true. But if we do, how will we find the law? Without those treatises and classification services, we're hosed. Right?
There's an interesting post on the Huffington Post that's being circulated in the law library blogosphere by Peter Schwartz that's causing some alarm with the declaration that "The Future is Now." I think that Mr. Schwartz is overstating the importance of access to primary materials and fails to understand the real subtlety of legal research.
First off, I agree that the two big publishers, Lexis and West are in big trouble. They have built their empires publishing primary law, and they're making so much money doing so that they've mistakenly come to believe that that's what they are: commercial publishers of primary legal materials.
While it's true that both companies began by publishing primary materials, this isn't the real value that they bring to lawyers, libraries and legal researchers. When West Publishing first began, it brought something to the field that didn't exist before: quick, easy access to cases. That was it's bread and butter. When Lexis entered the scene in the late 1970's, it brought quick access to primary law, too. But over time, West's greatest contributions to the field was it's Key Number System, CJS, and it's great treatises, such as Wright and Miller.
The real trick of legal research (the lawyering part) isn't necessarily finding the law, it is interpreting and understanding it. This isn't done by merely reading a lot of cases, it is done using tools: treatises, classification systems, restatements, journals, etc. Any researcher worth his salt knows, that having every case on the law of insider trading isn't worth a damn toward understanding the law of insider trading; unless you have time to read ten thousand cases!
Today, in the modern legal information economy the useful parts of what West and Lexis are selling us is not the primary law, it's the secondary materials! Lawyers don't actually learn what the law is by reading cases, they learn what it is by reading treatises, handbooks and articles written by scholars and experts who do read the cases.
What West and Lexis under-appreciate with their ridiculous pricing options is that making people pay through the nose for access to primary legal materials - when nearly all of it is available for free in numerous places - is blind. What they both possess that has real value are their secondary materials: key numbers, treatises, etc. This is what they should be selling and promoting. I'm looking for the day when I can cancel all the reporters and access to the primary materials and focus on collecting the secondary. Hopefully, someone will be archiving the primary materials.... just in case.
Peter Schwartz and others correctly point out that lawyers and their libraries may soon simply have to stop subscribing to Lexis and Westlaw because their services are becoming unaffordable. This may soon be true. But if we do, how will we find the law? Without those treatises and classification services, we're hosed. Right?
Friday, August 14, 2009
E-Textbooks come to the Analog World!
The New York Times (and many others) report that textbook sellers and publishers are renting textbooks. The irony is stunning. One of the (many) complaints about e-textbooks has been the fact that you can't really "buy" one. You simply license it. But the paradigm that publishers and booksellers drool over is one where they can license the information without having to sell anything. They would love to sell you the material each time you use it. For years textbook publishers have been complaining about students' resistance to adopting e-textbooks. It appears that they've discovered a way around that obstacle: let students rent the books. They get the real thing, but have to give it back so it can be re-sold.
Watch for the development of special paper that these textbooks will be printed on that can be thoroughly erased when annotated with certain (proprietary?) pens, pencils or highlighters....
I credit Mr. Jerome Rubin, of Lexis fame, with developing the "pay as you go" approach to selling digital information. In my opinion this development is counter-evolutionary, if not downright criminal....
Watch for the development of special paper that these textbooks will be printed on that can be thoroughly erased when annotated with certain (proprietary?) pens, pencils or highlighters....
I credit Mr. Jerome Rubin, of Lexis fame, with developing the "pay as you go" approach to selling digital information. In my opinion this development is counter-evolutionary, if not downright criminal....
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....
Friday, May 15, 2009
What's More I'm Need of Preservation, Primary or Secodary Legal Materials?
I'm inclined to think that secondary materials are in greater danger of disappearing from the Public's access than are primary materials - if only because they are being distributed in ways that keep them out of reach: restrictive licensing agreements; great cost in obtaining access; and, pragmatic obstacles, such as lack of bandwidth or lack of adequate equipment. Since secondary materials are the true keys to unlocking the meaning of primary law, might not the consequences be dire?
-- Richard Leiter
-- Richard Leiter
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