I read with interest this morning, Simon Chester's interesting post on SLAW about Thomson Reuters' Bold Leap to become a software company. It's an interesting piece that gives additional perspective on the announcements TR made at the recent blogger event in St Paul and blogged about by many worthy commentators, such as +Jean O'Grady, +Jason Wilson and +Greg Lambert, to name a few.
The over-arching theme of the reactions to TR's announcement that they now see themselves primarily as a "software solutions" company as opposed to a "content" company is that this is a departure from what West Publishing once was. While I agree the announcement is significant, it's also an interesting glimpse into their own self-image problems.
While it is true that on the surface, West has always been primarily a "content" company, there's a significant misunderstanding about exactly what that means in the context of West Publishing Company. Most observers, lawyers and librarians tend to see West as the producer of the National Reporter System, Digests and Westlaw as their bread and butter. And because each product is so large, it's easy to see them as the primary things they do, produce content. Encyclopedias, treatises, and educational materials pale in volume so seem minor within the West universe of business. It appears that West has always seen themselves in this light, too.
But if you look more closely at their catalog over the years, the most significant product of all is rarely mentioned or given the light of day. While the National Reporter System made West's millions and billions, it would have failed without a method for using the materials. From the start, West's Topic and Key Number System was the thing that actually made the reporters useable and made the company a success. At the turn of the 19th Century Chancellor James Kent complained about the proliferation of case law proclaiming that so many cases were being published that it was driving our legal system into ruin. The rise of the great treatises and encyclopedias of that century were partly a response to that general complaint. West Publishing in its early days was all about publishing more cases, not fewer, so there needed to be tools that facilitated the use of the case law. The Topic & Key Number System and Digests provided the indexing needed to make the case law accessible. All the secondary materials that West produced over the years were crucial commentary that gave sense to the mass of cases produced by West.
The content produced by West, all the primary case law and statutes was not West's main product at all, it was their indexing, commentary and, later, computer algorithms (squirrelly as the are!) that facilitated lawyers and scholars access to the primary law that they needed. There are twelve million published cases. The fact is, without systems and services that facilitate their use, simply publishing twelve million cases is worthless. Therefore, West's main product over the years, wasn't primary law, or even the secondary materials, it was their indexing structure and systems that made that primary law useful.
Perhaps West was a service company all along and just didn't know it.... All along, West has been fighting with potential competitors who came along and tried to publish the cases. They defended their pagination in attempt to strengthen their hegemony in the field of publication of case law when all along it wasn't really their strong suit: it was their finding tools.
Showing posts with label legal research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label legal research. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Friday, October 14, 2011
A New Mode of Full-text Case Retrieval - a work in progress
[This past academic year, John Palfrey, Professor of Law, Vice Dean, Library and Information Resources, Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Center For Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, was intrigued by an idea that I’ve been kicking around for several years and invited me to come to Harvard to work on it.
With the support of an incredibly talented staff in my home library, I felt comfortable taking a semester off. And so, I am visiting, as an Academic Fellow at Harvard Law School Library’s Innovation Lab for the 2011 fall semester.]
Designing a Solution to a Problem
The project that I’ve been asked to explore has to do with the inherent challenges of conducting case law research using full text online databases. The working title of the project is “Leading Case Service” and is designed to make online case law research more productive and more efficient. There are three factors that make online case law research very difficult.
First is the size of the database. It is estimated that there are approximately ten million published cases in the American legal system. The size of the database alone poses very serious difficulties for designers of search engines and indexing systems, both digital and analog.
The size of the corpus of case law in the American legal system isn’t merely the result of our society’s litigious nature. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, the publication of cases was done very judiciously. Most cases were published in selective case reporters that only published leading cases. In fact, the most influential American case reporter in the nineteenth century was the predecessor to what we know today as American Law Reports, or ALR, and it only published cases of some particular significance, either because the opinion made a ruling on a novel aspect of the law or clarified an issue that had been dealt with by many courts with varying outcomes. In the late nineteenth century, the West Publishing Company entered the case law publishing market and effectively turned cases into a commodity. The method by which West published cases was virtually indiscriminate because it published any and all cases submitted to it by the courts. Its business model was founded on the premise that the more cases it could publish, the better; the more cases it could publish, the more volumes it could sell.
As the volume of cases it published grew, West developed an elaborate subject indexing system to help researchers. We know the indexing system as the Key Number System, and the index as the West Digest System. Today, the index alone numbers several thousand volumes! Coupled with Shepard’s citations, the digest and case-verification systems helped researchers identify both cases that were useful and those that were “still good law,” in the sense that they hadn’t been specifically overruled by another court. This system was extremely accurate, thorough, and objective but still left the researcher with a serious problem of having to wade through a substantial mass of material. The comprehensiveness of the West National Reporter System, its Digests and Shepard’s meant that the cases discovered on any one particular topic could number in the thousands.
The enormous volume of case law poses difficulties for researchers for another reason. Important research in the field of information science that explains that, due to the vagaries of language and other empirical laws of linguistics, full text database searching is by definition inefficient, even in databases filled with documents of a professional nature and highly specialized vocabulary, such as law. Studies have shown that the best a full text search engine is capable of retrieving amounts of only about twenty percent of the relevant documents on a topic. With 10 million published cases, even a 20% efficiency yields far more cases than any person can reasonably be expected to read.
Second, full text databases are objective search tools. This makes full text case law databases very difficult places for researchers to go to find answers about the law. For instance, let’s say you want to know what the law is on the rights of grandparents to intervene in custody proceedings in dissolution cases. A search for cases on this topic, if done with absolute precision, may yield dozens, if not hundreds, of cases, not what you really want or need. In this instance, a more useful approach would be to consult secondary sources, such as handbooks or treatises, that not only discuss the leading cases in the field but also summarize and analyze what these cases mean to the practitioner. Full text case law databases themselves are only part of what researchers need to complete their research.
Third, in order for online databases to be efficiently used, each document, as well as its sections, parts, words, letters, etc., should be indexed and tagged with what’s known in the computing world as meta-data. Indexing on this scale is massive and extremely complex but can make the development of search engines designed to work with these huge databases much more efficient. This is why Westlaw’s and Lexis’s search engines are so useful. Each company runs the full text of each case contained in their databases through extensive indexing and tagging. Part of this process eliminates repetitive words that have no legal meaning, such as articles, conjunctions, etc. Further, the content of the cases is divided into sections, such as majority and minority opinions, jurisdictions, etc., that dramatically helps narrow the search results. Indexing and tagging on this scale is a very costly venture, leaving only Lexis and Westlaw dominating the field. The process also is so complex that each company’s processes are highly guarded trade secrets. The Lexis and Westlaw case law databases are comprised entirely of public domain materials, but they still are extremely expensive to use. Each company cites the high cost of thorough indexing, tagging and sorting as a rationale to charge high prices for access.
A Solution to a Problem
The “Leading Case Service” may be a means of leveling the playing field for newcomers to the online database market, or for existing services that offer access to case law for free. The theory behind the project is that among the ten million cases in the American legal system, there is a relatively small percentage of cases that are considered more significant and interesting than the rest. If these cases can be identified and a search tool developed to exploit them, it may make searching case law more efficient by helping researchers focus on the most important cases first, before moving into the vast body of case law to find newer cases, cases with variant facts or those more specific to a specific jurisdiction.
The first step is to determine if there is such a thing as a group of “leading cases” and, if there is, to figure out how to find them and use them. The theory at present is that this group of cases can be found in the body of secondary materials. Initially, I thought that we could find leading cases in footnotes and body of treatises, presuming that treatise writers would discuss or cite to only the most important cases in their fields. To gather this group of leading cases, we could “mine” treatises and discover the cases cited in them. However, there are significant challenges to mining treatises for the cases the authors have cited, not the least of which is that treatises are published in many different formats and by enough publishers to make it difficult to use a single system to acquire the desired information. I’ve been convinced to put this step on hold; at least for the moment.
Our thinking at present is that we may have better luck focusing our efforts on cases cited in law review articles. There are two reasons that we think that law review articles may be better sources with which to discover this body of leading cases. First, we presume that the writers of law review articles as experts in their fields, are vigilant in identifying important cases in those fields and that overall, these scholars will discuss all the important cases in American law. I realize that this is a strong presumption, but over the last century, virtually all significant developments in law have been discussed and debated at length in law reviews and law journals. It follows, then, that the cases cited by the writers should be the ones most important or significant for one reason or another and can be identified as “leading cases,” those that researchers should read or at least be aware of when researching case law in that field.
A second advantage of using law review articles to identify leading cases is that the body of scholarship is continually expanding. If my theory is correct and we can discover this body of case law, we may be able to create an automated process that will continually add to the corpus of leading cases.
Questions
There are many questions to be answered. The most interesting question, and the one that I’ll be spending my time exploring initially is, exactly how many cases are cited by law review articles?
We know that there are around ten million cases published in total, but we don’t know what percentage of those cases found their way into the footnotes and text of law review articles. We are very close to obtaining the tools to answer this question conclusively. Hunches about the percentage of cases discussed in law reviews ranges from 5% to less than 1%, between 100,000 and 500,000 cases. If this is true, then full text case law database searching should be greatly improved by the mere fact that the researcher would be searching in a database of two or three hundred thousand cases instead of ten million!
Assuming that our initial tests reveal that there is, indeed, a body of leading cases that we can identify, many interesting possibilities emerge. The cases themselves may be ranked based upon the numbers of law reviews or journals that have cited them. (This is sort of a twist on Shepard’s service for law review articles. Instead of Shepardizing articles to find cases that cite to the articles, we’re looking for cases cited in the articles themselves.) Other information that may help rank the value of the cases includes the standing of the journal itself in which the article is published, or the reputation, publishing record or school of residence of the author.
Even if we are successful in identifying this corpus of leading cases, we have yet to determine how they should be used. The options are to create a separate database or to use meta-data to tag, or identify the cases so that search engines will be able identify the leading cases from among the rest of the millions of cases in the corpus of American law. Depending on the tags used, the researcher can use this information to sort search results in interesting and valuable ways. For example, a researcher desiring to know what is the law in an area novel to him, could begin with a full text case law database and immediately identify the most important cases in the field. After perusing these cases, links and metadata could then be used to immediately find articles, blogs and other pertinent online materials.
The goal of the project is to create a new way of using online digital legal materials. New technologies have allowed us to think of combining information in ways that were unheard of, even unthinkable, before today. “Leading Case Service” is essentially a ‘mash-up’ of online case law databases and online databases of law review articles. To this mash-up, colleagues have suggested that we may be able to add blogs, digital commons, wire-services, websites, legal periodical indexes and possibly treatises. The use of this information is not merely academic. It may also prove to be a way to power new search engines or discover new ways that various parts of the conceptual, scholarly world of the law influence each other.
With the support of an incredibly talented staff in my home library, I felt comfortable taking a semester off. And so, I am visiting, as an Academic Fellow at Harvard Law School Library’s Innovation Lab for the 2011 fall semester.]
Designing a Solution to a Problem
The project that I’ve been asked to explore has to do with the inherent challenges of conducting case law research using full text online databases. The working title of the project is “Leading Case Service” and is designed to make online case law research more productive and more efficient. There are three factors that make online case law research very difficult.
First is the size of the database. It is estimated that there are approximately ten million published cases in the American legal system. The size of the database alone poses very serious difficulties for designers of search engines and indexing systems, both digital and analog.
The size of the corpus of case law in the American legal system isn’t merely the result of our society’s litigious nature. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, the publication of cases was done very judiciously. Most cases were published in selective case reporters that only published leading cases. In fact, the most influential American case reporter in the nineteenth century was the predecessor to what we know today as American Law Reports, or ALR, and it only published cases of some particular significance, either because the opinion made a ruling on a novel aspect of the law or clarified an issue that had been dealt with by many courts with varying outcomes. In the late nineteenth century, the West Publishing Company entered the case law publishing market and effectively turned cases into a commodity. The method by which West published cases was virtually indiscriminate because it published any and all cases submitted to it by the courts. Its business model was founded on the premise that the more cases it could publish, the better; the more cases it could publish, the more volumes it could sell.
As the volume of cases it published grew, West developed an elaborate subject indexing system to help researchers. We know the indexing system as the Key Number System, and the index as the West Digest System. Today, the index alone numbers several thousand volumes! Coupled with Shepard’s citations, the digest and case-verification systems helped researchers identify both cases that were useful and those that were “still good law,” in the sense that they hadn’t been specifically overruled by another court. This system was extremely accurate, thorough, and objective but still left the researcher with a serious problem of having to wade through a substantial mass of material. The comprehensiveness of the West National Reporter System, its Digests and Shepard’s meant that the cases discovered on any one particular topic could number in the thousands.
The enormous volume of case law poses difficulties for researchers for another reason. Important research in the field of information science that explains that, due to the vagaries of language and other empirical laws of linguistics, full text database searching is by definition inefficient, even in databases filled with documents of a professional nature and highly specialized vocabulary, such as law. Studies have shown that the best a full text search engine is capable of retrieving amounts of only about twenty percent of the relevant documents on a topic. With 10 million published cases, even a 20% efficiency yields far more cases than any person can reasonably be expected to read.
Second, full text databases are objective search tools. This makes full text case law databases very difficult places for researchers to go to find answers about the law. For instance, let’s say you want to know what the law is on the rights of grandparents to intervene in custody proceedings in dissolution cases. A search for cases on this topic, if done with absolute precision, may yield dozens, if not hundreds, of cases, not what you really want or need. In this instance, a more useful approach would be to consult secondary sources, such as handbooks or treatises, that not only discuss the leading cases in the field but also summarize and analyze what these cases mean to the practitioner. Full text case law databases themselves are only part of what researchers need to complete their research.
Third, in order for online databases to be efficiently used, each document, as well as its sections, parts, words, letters, etc., should be indexed and tagged with what’s known in the computing world as meta-data. Indexing on this scale is massive and extremely complex but can make the development of search engines designed to work with these huge databases much more efficient. This is why Westlaw’s and Lexis’s search engines are so useful. Each company runs the full text of each case contained in their databases through extensive indexing and tagging. Part of this process eliminates repetitive words that have no legal meaning, such as articles, conjunctions, etc. Further, the content of the cases is divided into sections, such as majority and minority opinions, jurisdictions, etc., that dramatically helps narrow the search results. Indexing and tagging on this scale is a very costly venture, leaving only Lexis and Westlaw dominating the field. The process also is so complex that each company’s processes are highly guarded trade secrets. The Lexis and Westlaw case law databases are comprised entirely of public domain materials, but they still are extremely expensive to use. Each company cites the high cost of thorough indexing, tagging and sorting as a rationale to charge high prices for access.
A Solution to a Problem
The “Leading Case Service” may be a means of leveling the playing field for newcomers to the online database market, or for existing services that offer access to case law for free. The theory behind the project is that among the ten million cases in the American legal system, there is a relatively small percentage of cases that are considered more significant and interesting than the rest. If these cases can be identified and a search tool developed to exploit them, it may make searching case law more efficient by helping researchers focus on the most important cases first, before moving into the vast body of case law to find newer cases, cases with variant facts or those more specific to a specific jurisdiction.
The first step is to determine if there is such a thing as a group of “leading cases” and, if there is, to figure out how to find them and use them. The theory at present is that this group of cases can be found in the body of secondary materials. Initially, I thought that we could find leading cases in footnotes and body of treatises, presuming that treatise writers would discuss or cite to only the most important cases in their fields. To gather this group of leading cases, we could “mine” treatises and discover the cases cited in them. However, there are significant challenges to mining treatises for the cases the authors have cited, not the least of which is that treatises are published in many different formats and by enough publishers to make it difficult to use a single system to acquire the desired information. I’ve been convinced to put this step on hold; at least for the moment.
Our thinking at present is that we may have better luck focusing our efforts on cases cited in law review articles. There are two reasons that we think that law review articles may be better sources with which to discover this body of leading cases. First, we presume that the writers of law review articles as experts in their fields, are vigilant in identifying important cases in those fields and that overall, these scholars will discuss all the important cases in American law. I realize that this is a strong presumption, but over the last century, virtually all significant developments in law have been discussed and debated at length in law reviews and law journals. It follows, then, that the cases cited by the writers should be the ones most important or significant for one reason or another and can be identified as “leading cases,” those that researchers should read or at least be aware of when researching case law in that field.
A second advantage of using law review articles to identify leading cases is that the body of scholarship is continually expanding. If my theory is correct and we can discover this body of case law, we may be able to create an automated process that will continually add to the corpus of leading cases.
Questions
There are many questions to be answered. The most interesting question, and the one that I’ll be spending my time exploring initially is, exactly how many cases are cited by law review articles?
We know that there are around ten million cases published in total, but we don’t know what percentage of those cases found their way into the footnotes and text of law review articles. We are very close to obtaining the tools to answer this question conclusively. Hunches about the percentage of cases discussed in law reviews ranges from 5% to less than 1%, between 100,000 and 500,000 cases. If this is true, then full text case law database searching should be greatly improved by the mere fact that the researcher would be searching in a database of two or three hundred thousand cases instead of ten million!
Assuming that our initial tests reveal that there is, indeed, a body of leading cases that we can identify, many interesting possibilities emerge. The cases themselves may be ranked based upon the numbers of law reviews or journals that have cited them. (This is sort of a twist on Shepard’s service for law review articles. Instead of Shepardizing articles to find cases that cite to the articles, we’re looking for cases cited in the articles themselves.) Other information that may help rank the value of the cases includes the standing of the journal itself in which the article is published, or the reputation, publishing record or school of residence of the author.
Even if we are successful in identifying this corpus of leading cases, we have yet to determine how they should be used. The options are to create a separate database or to use meta-data to tag, or identify the cases so that search engines will be able identify the leading cases from among the rest of the millions of cases in the corpus of American law. Depending on the tags used, the researcher can use this information to sort search results in interesting and valuable ways. For example, a researcher desiring to know what is the law in an area novel to him, could begin with a full text case law database and immediately identify the most important cases in the field. After perusing these cases, links and metadata could then be used to immediately find articles, blogs and other pertinent online materials.
The goal of the project is to create a new way of using online digital legal materials. New technologies have allowed us to think of combining information in ways that were unheard of, even unthinkable, before today. “Leading Case Service” is essentially a ‘mash-up’ of online case law databases and online databases of law review articles. To this mash-up, colleagues have suggested that we may be able to add blogs, digital commons, wire-services, websites, legal periodical indexes and possibly treatises. The use of this information is not merely academic. It may also prove to be a way to power new search engines or discover new ways that various parts of the conceptual, scholarly world of the law influence each other.
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.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Some Issues Answered: West Explains and Raises questions....
3 Geeks and a Law Blog: WestlawNext - Some Issues Answered published an email that Anne Ellis, Senior Director, Librarian Relations, at West, distributed to many AALL listservs this week.
Just beneath the surface of all the hub-bub surrounding the roll-out of WestlawNext (WLN), is an unanswered question regarding the structure and nature of the new search engine. West doesn't seem to be very forthcoming about what it is other than to say that it is more than just a new interface on the same old product. It is, apparently more that simply new window dressing on WIN. It is also more than simply taking searches, analyzing them and then searching through West's vast universe of secondary materials. There is an aspect of the searching process (dare we call it "algorithm"?), apparently, where the users themselves actually contribute to the ranking/value of specific documents in Westlaw's database, be they primary or secondary law.
Indeed. This is essentially how Google has built it's search engine hegemony. Essentially, users "vote" for results with their clicks. (Of course Google makes money by selling votes to businesses that want to be top of any search list. The ramifications for law makes one think of a Grisham novel....) Is this really what WLN is all about? Is crowd-sourcing the law really good for the law? For researchers?
I wonder.
Just beneath the surface of all the hub-bub surrounding the roll-out of WestlawNext (WLN), is an unanswered question regarding the structure and nature of the new search engine. West doesn't seem to be very forthcoming about what it is other than to say that it is more than just a new interface on the same old product. It is, apparently more that simply new window dressing on WIN. It is also more than simply taking searches, analyzing them and then searching through West's vast universe of secondary materials. There is an aspect of the searching process (dare we call it "algorithm"?), apparently, where the users themselves actually contribute to the ranking/value of specific documents in Westlaw's database, be they primary or secondary law.
Indeed. This is essentially how Google has built it's search engine hegemony. Essentially, users "vote" for results with their clicks. (Of course Google makes money by selling votes to businesses that want to be top of any search list. The ramifications for law makes one think of a Grisham novel....) Is this really what WLN is all about? Is crowd-sourcing the law really good for the law? For researchers?
I wonder.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
The 21st Century Law Library Conundrum: Free Law and Paying to Understand It
For years people have been predicting the death of books and the general demise libraries. The people who have been most passionate about them are those who stand to gain financially by their own predictions. And that’s not to say that we haven’t all benefited from digital developments in the world of legal bibliography. But in this past decade has seen some extraordinary technological developments. It looks like world of law libraries may finally be at the cusp of a fundamental change in how we collect, organize and distribute legal materials.
Primary Legal Materials
For the entire history of our Western legal system, the publication of primary legal materials (cases, statutes and regulations) was intimately tied up with tools that help lawyers understand the law. The nineteenth century saw the rise of the industrialization of case reporting when John B West created the National Reporter System, a reporting service that systematically and promptly reported every published case that came from the United States judicial system. The process for collecting and publishing them was strictly objective and so efficient that the volume of reported cases made research virtually impossible without an elaborate indexing system, or some sort of key to finding needed cases. West’s Key Number System, that purported to index every legal issue decided by the courts and was accessible through the encyclopedic digest system served two purposes: reporting cases quickly and authoritatively, as well as providing subject access to the courts’ rulings specific issues.
Over time, West Publishing was so successful at its business that it became the reporter of record for many jurisdictions. Even when a state published its own cases, the West reporter versions were preferred because of their widespread distribution, reliability and speed with which they were published, none of which the official reporters could compete.
West also eventually tackled publication of state and federal codes with the same zeal. Although they were considered “unofficial” versions, their annotated codes became well regarded and authoritative, and, in some cases were adopted as official versions.
Since for most practicing lawyers, West was the best possible source for case law, the company assumed a business model that relied heavily on sales of primary legal materials. This left us in the peculiar situation in which most primary legal materials, that are, in fact, free to everyone, were only available from a single (very expensive) commercial source. West Publishing found itself in the awkward position of being a virtual monopolist of a great deal of free, public legal materials, through no fault of its own. Since ours is a nation of laws, it is difficult to understand how states and federal courts and legislatures could not have made it a priority to publish its laws and cases, but it is a fact that the federal government’s official US Code is so slow to be published as to be virtually unusable; the same with the publication of the official reports of the United States Supreme Court. It is equally difficult to understand how or why the federal courts have never even attempted to publish cases from any other federal courts.
Of course, West also publishes a prodigious amount of important secondary legal materials such as encyclopedias, treatises, textbooks, practice materials and form books. It’s unknown what portion of West’s revenue came from secondary materials, but it is likely that it was a significant percentage, perhaps as much as fifty percent. In any case, publication and sales of primary legal materials constituted a significant source of revenue. The company also integrated many features of both enterprises into an environment in which lawyers could easily move between primary and secondary materials. West’s slogan, “Forever associated with the practice of law,” was descriptive; not merely aspirational.
The “Open Access” Movement
Regardless of the nature of their intentions, by the 1980’s there was a significant amount of activism against West’s de facto monopoly on the publication of primary legal materials. Also known as the “free law” movement, activists in the last two decades have been working to make all primary legal materials freely accessible and free to everyone. They reason that since case law, statutes and regulatory materials are the primary sources of the law that governs them, all citizens should have free, easy access to the materials. The fact is, much of the best sources of this material is published by the West Publishing company, which, as described above, was the source of substantial corporate profit. As calls came for governments and courts to freely release their cases and codes, many were unable to do so because they weren’t the publishers of their own materials!
In the early 1990’s the situation heated up intensely, and open access advocates eventually brought the matter to the attention of the Justice Department, alleging that West Publishing was in violation of a number of anti-trust laws and moral principles for refusing to freely turn over their editions of federal case law to the courts or to emerging publishers who wished to scan the contents of the National Reporter System and distribute it on CD-ROMs, microfilm or their own databases.
The issue settled before it was fully heard in the courts, and resulted in West being able to sell their collections of primary materials for licensing fees. Little is known about the specific terms of the settlement, but it is known that publishers pay West to use the volume and page numbers for cases. But the most significant result of the controversy was the sale of West Publishing to Thomson, a Canadian newspaper publisher. The 60 shareholders of West were fed up with the controversy surrounding their publishing of primary legal materials, they simply wanted to get out while the going was good. The company sold for more than 3.5 billion dollars. And the new company, The West Group, a division of Thomson Reuters, still publishes primary legal materials.
But the world is changing and West, as well as the other main publisher of primary legal materials, Lexis, are struggling to keep up. As the government and courts make increased use of the internet and various other online digital technologies to publish and distribute primary legal materials, it is becoming less necessary for researchers to buy them from West or Lexis. As legal researchers, we are not yet in a position a position to abandon altogether the outstanding primary law products from Lexis and West, which are enhanced with elaborate indexing, digesting and case-verification tools, but it is clear that individuals and organizations are working to develop new programming tools to make web-based legal materials affordable and useful. Two examples are Govtrack.us, and Google Scholar’s Legal Opinions and Journals. Govtrack.us is an example of an outstanding free service that gives researchers superior access to pending federal legislation. It has substantially outdone West and Lexis’ offerings for tracking federal law making. Google’s SLOJ, is brand new and, though clearly an inferior means of researching US case law, Google is clearly committed to continuing to improve it, in terms of it’s content and usefulness. With the resources that Google can through into the process, it’s potential is nearly limitless.
This move to free access to primary legal materials appears to be inevitable. The major problems with digital access to primary legal materials are reliability and permanence. At present, there are no standards that can guarantee that any particular document retrieved from the internet at any point in time is the authoritative version of the underlying law or case. Neither is there a standard for for collecting, compiling and preserving electronic versions of this kind of material. These are huge obstacles, but many groups are presently working on developing such standards, including, among many others, the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws and the American Association of Law Libraries, and there is every reason to think that some meaningful standards will be forthcoming. In the end, everyone with an internet connection and a web browser will be able to have instant access to all primary legal materials from every jurisdiction, court and legislative body in the land.
“Not Free” Law
That means that law libraries and law books will simply disappear in a digital mist, right? Not quite. Every lawyer knows that having access to all needed primary materials doesn’t always help you solve a research question. What’s more helpful is a work that interprets the cases and describes the procedures and rules that come from them, or a system that provides you access to only the most important, instructive cases. Books that not only describe, discuss and criticize the laws, but provide practical information about how they are applied, plus forms and examples of practical documents, are the most valuable resources that publishers publish, and that libraries collect.
In the old, analog world, libraries could purchase a copy of a book and maintain, and make it available to all patrons and unlimited amount of time. In this environment, secondary materials, the most valuable materials to legal researchers, were distributed extremely broadly. A public library could purchase the materials it could afford and make them available to anyone. A law firm library could purchase a single copy of a treatise and not only make it available to all attorneys in the firm, but the could loan it to other firms, too.
The great revolution in legal research and publishing came not simply because online gave quick access to materials, it allowed publishers the ability to sell access to the materials based on a new paradigm: the volume of time the materials were used. This changed the landscape in fundamental ways by making publishers see the sale of online access to legal materials as the real way to increase profits. Essentially, the sale of online legal materials represents a second sale where libraries purchase online subscriptions to materials they already owned in print. And the sale of secondary materials is really a lease. Westaw and Lexis, as publishers sell two things: primary and secondary legal materials. Under this new paradigm in the present economic climate with shrinking budgets for legal materials, there is increased incentive for discontinuing paying for access to primary materials.
What all this means for today’s lawyers and libraries is that at some point we will be able to gradually discontinue our reliance on commercial publishers as sources for primary legal materials. Logically, this means that we’ll have to purchase less materials from Lexis and West. Sadly, while it may be the case that we won’t have to subscribe to as many titles as before, we will continue to pay them more, for less content.
This is how it will work. Even if we cancel the entire National Reporter System and all the annotated codes published by West, we will still need the indexes, digests and Key Numbers that they publish. Without West’s indexing system and catalog of secondary materials, legal researchers are lost. (Imagine sitting down at your computer and launching a service that has access to all cases ever published and inputing a query designed to retrieve all relevant cases on the subject of when a minor can commit to a binding contract. Would you really want every single case ever decided on the subject, or just the ones that are most influential?) As West and Lexis see their revenue decline from sales to primary materials, they will (and are) increasing their prices for access to their secondary materials to make up the difference.
The Revolution
Will increased access to free primary materials make libraries disappear, or become cheaper? It is unlikely that as demand for premiere versions of primary law, such as that available from Westlaw and Lexis declines, the cost for the enhanced, secondary materials will increase in order to account for the anticipated loss of revenue. Of course, part of the irony is that West has had decades to develop and enhance their primary offerings with annotations and cross references to encyclopedias, form books and treatises, such that it’s nearly unthinkable that someone can practice law with only access to free law resources.
For the last fifteen years, prices of materials have increased at rates steadily ahead of inflation or reason. The digital revolution, that once upon a time promised free access to legal materials, will deliver on that promise; it’s just that the free materials it will deliver, even if it comprises the sum total of all primary law in the the country at every level and jurisdiction, will amount to only a minor portion of the materials that lawyers need in order to practice law, and the public needs in order to understand it.
Primary Legal Materials
For the entire history of our Western legal system, the publication of primary legal materials (cases, statutes and regulations) was intimately tied up with tools that help lawyers understand the law. The nineteenth century saw the rise of the industrialization of case reporting when John B West created the National Reporter System, a reporting service that systematically and promptly reported every published case that came from the United States judicial system. The process for collecting and publishing them was strictly objective and so efficient that the volume of reported cases made research virtually impossible without an elaborate indexing system, or some sort of key to finding needed cases. West’s Key Number System, that purported to index every legal issue decided by the courts and was accessible through the encyclopedic digest system served two purposes: reporting cases quickly and authoritatively, as well as providing subject access to the courts’ rulings specific issues.
Over time, West Publishing was so successful at its business that it became the reporter of record for many jurisdictions. Even when a state published its own cases, the West reporter versions were preferred because of their widespread distribution, reliability and speed with which they were published, none of which the official reporters could compete.
West also eventually tackled publication of state and federal codes with the same zeal. Although they were considered “unofficial” versions, their annotated codes became well regarded and authoritative, and, in some cases were adopted as official versions.
Since for most practicing lawyers, West was the best possible source for case law, the company assumed a business model that relied heavily on sales of primary legal materials. This left us in the peculiar situation in which most primary legal materials, that are, in fact, free to everyone, were only available from a single (very expensive) commercial source. West Publishing found itself in the awkward position of being a virtual monopolist of a great deal of free, public legal materials, through no fault of its own. Since ours is a nation of laws, it is difficult to understand how states and federal courts and legislatures could not have made it a priority to publish its laws and cases, but it is a fact that the federal government’s official US Code is so slow to be published as to be virtually unusable; the same with the publication of the official reports of the United States Supreme Court. It is equally difficult to understand how or why the federal courts have never even attempted to publish cases from any other federal courts.
Of course, West also publishes a prodigious amount of important secondary legal materials such as encyclopedias, treatises, textbooks, practice materials and form books. It’s unknown what portion of West’s revenue came from secondary materials, but it is likely that it was a significant percentage, perhaps as much as fifty percent. In any case, publication and sales of primary legal materials constituted a significant source of revenue. The company also integrated many features of both enterprises into an environment in which lawyers could easily move between primary and secondary materials. West’s slogan, “Forever associated with the practice of law,” was descriptive; not merely aspirational.
The “Open Access” Movement
Regardless of the nature of their intentions, by the 1980’s there was a significant amount of activism against West’s de facto monopoly on the publication of primary legal materials. Also known as the “free law” movement, activists in the last two decades have been working to make all primary legal materials freely accessible and free to everyone. They reason that since case law, statutes and regulatory materials are the primary sources of the law that governs them, all citizens should have free, easy access to the materials. The fact is, much of the best sources of this material is published by the West Publishing company, which, as described above, was the source of substantial corporate profit. As calls came for governments and courts to freely release their cases and codes, many were unable to do so because they weren’t the publishers of their own materials!
In the early 1990’s the situation heated up intensely, and open access advocates eventually brought the matter to the attention of the Justice Department, alleging that West Publishing was in violation of a number of anti-trust laws and moral principles for refusing to freely turn over their editions of federal case law to the courts or to emerging publishers who wished to scan the contents of the National Reporter System and distribute it on CD-ROMs, microfilm or their own databases.
The issue settled before it was fully heard in the courts, and resulted in West being able to sell their collections of primary materials for licensing fees. Little is known about the specific terms of the settlement, but it is known that publishers pay West to use the volume and page numbers for cases. But the most significant result of the controversy was the sale of West Publishing to Thomson, a Canadian newspaper publisher. The 60 shareholders of West were fed up with the controversy surrounding their publishing of primary legal materials, they simply wanted to get out while the going was good. The company sold for more than 3.5 billion dollars. And the new company, The West Group, a division of Thomson Reuters, still publishes primary legal materials.
But the world is changing and West, as well as the other main publisher of primary legal materials, Lexis, are struggling to keep up. As the government and courts make increased use of the internet and various other online digital technologies to publish and distribute primary legal materials, it is becoming less necessary for researchers to buy them from West or Lexis. As legal researchers, we are not yet in a position a position to abandon altogether the outstanding primary law products from Lexis and West, which are enhanced with elaborate indexing, digesting and case-verification tools, but it is clear that individuals and organizations are working to develop new programming tools to make web-based legal materials affordable and useful. Two examples are Govtrack.us, and Google Scholar’s Legal Opinions and Journals. Govtrack.us is an example of an outstanding free service that gives researchers superior access to pending federal legislation. It has substantially outdone West and Lexis’ offerings for tracking federal law making. Google’s SLOJ, is brand new and, though clearly an inferior means of researching US case law, Google is clearly committed to continuing to improve it, in terms of it’s content and usefulness. With the resources that Google can through into the process, it’s potential is nearly limitless.
This move to free access to primary legal materials appears to be inevitable. The major problems with digital access to primary legal materials are reliability and permanence. At present, there are no standards that can guarantee that any particular document retrieved from the internet at any point in time is the authoritative version of the underlying law or case. Neither is there a standard for for collecting, compiling and preserving electronic versions of this kind of material. These are huge obstacles, but many groups are presently working on developing such standards, including, among many others, the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws and the American Association of Law Libraries, and there is every reason to think that some meaningful standards will be forthcoming. In the end, everyone with an internet connection and a web browser will be able to have instant access to all primary legal materials from every jurisdiction, court and legislative body in the land.
“Not Free” Law
That means that law libraries and law books will simply disappear in a digital mist, right? Not quite. Every lawyer knows that having access to all needed primary materials doesn’t always help you solve a research question. What’s more helpful is a work that interprets the cases and describes the procedures and rules that come from them, or a system that provides you access to only the most important, instructive cases. Books that not only describe, discuss and criticize the laws, but provide practical information about how they are applied, plus forms and examples of practical documents, are the most valuable resources that publishers publish, and that libraries collect.
In the old, analog world, libraries could purchase a copy of a book and maintain, and make it available to all patrons and unlimited amount of time. In this environment, secondary materials, the most valuable materials to legal researchers, were distributed extremely broadly. A public library could purchase the materials it could afford and make them available to anyone. A law firm library could purchase a single copy of a treatise and not only make it available to all attorneys in the firm, but the could loan it to other firms, too.
The great revolution in legal research and publishing came not simply because online gave quick access to materials, it allowed publishers the ability to sell access to the materials based on a new paradigm: the volume of time the materials were used. This changed the landscape in fundamental ways by making publishers see the sale of online access to legal materials as the real way to increase profits. Essentially, the sale of online legal materials represents a second sale where libraries purchase online subscriptions to materials they already owned in print. And the sale of secondary materials is really a lease. Westaw and Lexis, as publishers sell two things: primary and secondary legal materials. Under this new paradigm in the present economic climate with shrinking budgets for legal materials, there is increased incentive for discontinuing paying for access to primary materials.
What all this means for today’s lawyers and libraries is that at some point we will be able to gradually discontinue our reliance on commercial publishers as sources for primary legal materials. Logically, this means that we’ll have to purchase less materials from Lexis and West. Sadly, while it may be the case that we won’t have to subscribe to as many titles as before, we will continue to pay them more, for less content.
This is how it will work. Even if we cancel the entire National Reporter System and all the annotated codes published by West, we will still need the indexes, digests and Key Numbers that they publish. Without West’s indexing system and catalog of secondary materials, legal researchers are lost. (Imagine sitting down at your computer and launching a service that has access to all cases ever published and inputing a query designed to retrieve all relevant cases on the subject of when a minor can commit to a binding contract. Would you really want every single case ever decided on the subject, or just the ones that are most influential?) As West and Lexis see their revenue decline from sales to primary materials, they will (and are) increasing their prices for access to their secondary materials to make up the difference.
The Revolution
Will increased access to free primary materials make libraries disappear, or become cheaper? It is unlikely that as demand for premiere versions of primary law, such as that available from Westlaw and Lexis declines, the cost for the enhanced, secondary materials will increase in order to account for the anticipated loss of revenue. Of course, part of the irony is that West has had decades to develop and enhance their primary offerings with annotations and cross references to encyclopedias, form books and treatises, such that it’s nearly unthinkable that someone can practice law with only access to free law resources.
For the last fifteen years, prices of materials have increased at rates steadily ahead of inflation or reason. The digital revolution, that once upon a time promised free access to legal materials, will deliver on that promise; it’s just that the free materials it will deliver, even if it comprises the sum total of all primary law in the the country at every level and jurisdiction, will amount to only a minor portion of the materials that lawyers need in order to practice law, and the public needs in order to understand it.
Monday, December 21, 2009
The Year In Law Libraries
The panel had some good comments on the year's biggest developments. And predictions.... the predictions are available in the chat room transcript, which you can find by clicking here.
I'll post more information about the show later.
I'll post more information about the show later.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Reflections on Conversation with Anurag Acharya, Google Scholar
Reaction to Google Scholar Legal Opinions and Journals (SLOJ) has been largely defined by our experience with extant legal databases. All online legal research tools that we're familiar with at present are databases filled with documents that we search using boolean operators or simple, character-by-character, word-for-word text searching. The main differences between, say, Westlaw and the ordinary "find" command when you search your documents or use Spotlight on your computer, is that Westlaw indexes the documents in ways that we take for granted. Things like proximity connecters, segment searches, etc., are all part of the indexing process and gives us extraordinary power to use the computer to conduct detailed and very precise searches of its database. Other vendors that we're familiar with use similar processes.
Google, on the other hand, as a search engine, is unlike any other in our experience. There is really no full text searching going on. Google's search philosophy is very adequately discussed in James Surowiecki's, "The Wisdom of Crowds." Google does not really search cases or articles for the terms used in your query. Rather, it uses the terms in your query in a variety of ways. It will recognize which are names of parties, which are legal principles, or author's names, article titles, etc. It then uses it's vast network of data which links cases and articles together and returns results based upon frequency of linking and cross-referencing. This is a gross over-simplification, but it suffices to illustrate that the search results are not the objective kind of results that Westlaw, Lexis and others produce. Searching in Google is quite subjective by comparison. Not, of course, in the sense that it is anticipating or evaluating the meaning of the query and returning results accordingly, but in the sense that based on your query, the results returned are based on a document's popularity. The more times a document is cited, the more important the search engine assumes it is.
This approach to searching for law is completely different from other search engines and poses very distinct problems for legal researchers who are tempted to use it as a substitute for "Wexisberg". (Thanks to Greg Lambert for this new portmanteau of Westlaw, Lexis and Bloomberg.) When understood, Google will produce stunning results. The fact is, it does exactly what it says it does. Many criticisms of it as a legal research tool are based upon comparisons of it to Wexisberg, which is something like comparing apples and oranges.
This is not to say that Google SLOJ doesn't need to improve. There are many things that Google can do to make it more palpable to lawyers and legal academics. Clearly defining the content of the databases being searched for one thing. At this point, it all seems very mysterious.
Google, on the other hand, as a search engine, is unlike any other in our experience. There is really no full text searching going on. Google's search philosophy is very adequately discussed in James Surowiecki's, "The Wisdom of Crowds." Google does not really search cases or articles for the terms used in your query. Rather, it uses the terms in your query in a variety of ways. It will recognize which are names of parties, which are legal principles, or author's names, article titles, etc. It then uses it's vast network of data which links cases and articles together and returns results based upon frequency of linking and cross-referencing. This is a gross over-simplification, but it suffices to illustrate that the search results are not the objective kind of results that Westlaw, Lexis and others produce. Searching in Google is quite subjective by comparison. Not, of course, in the sense that it is anticipating or evaluating the meaning of the query and returning results accordingly, but in the sense that based on your query, the results returned are based on a document's popularity. The more times a document is cited, the more important the search engine assumes it is.
This approach to searching for law is completely different from other search engines and poses very distinct problems for legal researchers who are tempted to use it as a substitute for "Wexisberg". (Thanks to Greg Lambert for this new portmanteau of Westlaw, Lexis and Bloomberg.) When understood, Google will produce stunning results. The fact is, it does exactly what it says it does. Many criticisms of it as a legal research tool are based upon comparisons of it to Wexisberg, which is something like comparing apples and oranges.
This is not to say that Google SLOJ doesn't need to improve. There are many things that Google can do to make it more palpable to lawyers and legal academics. Clearly defining the content of the databases being searched for one thing. At this point, it all seems very mysterious.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Chat Room Transcript from 4 December 2009 BlogTalkRadio Show
I will be writing later about our conversation with Anurag Acharya, Chief Engineer of Google Scholar. Greg Lambert, Roger Skalbeck, Marcia Dority Baker and I had a wonderful 90-minute conversation with Mr. Acharya, and I think that I speak for us all when I say that the conversation was not only enlightening, but we were all very impressed with Mr. Acharya's charm, his sense of humor and the great delight he has in his work. Like I said, more on that later. For the time being, please feel free to peruse the transcript of the chat room. And, as always, remember that you can download the show on iTunes or from the show's website: http://blogtalkradio.com/thelawlibrarian.
A couple of notes about the show, for anyone interested: we had a record of 301 live listeners and 105 people in the chat room! Over the weekend, there have already been nearly 140 downloads of the show. Thanks everyone who participated. We've a lot of exciting shows planned for 2010. We'll be taking the holidays off, but plan to return on January 15. At that time, we'll begin our new schedule of recording/airing twice a month on the first and third Fridays of the month.
Until then, please, everyone, please have a safe and happy holiday season. And for all the crew at The Law Librarian on BTR, we'd love to hear from you your ideas and thoughts about how we may improve.
A couple of notes about the show, for anyone interested: we had a record of 301 live listeners and 105 people in the chat room! Over the weekend, there have already been nearly 140 downloads of the show. Thanks everyone who participated. We've a lot of exciting shows planned for 2010. We'll be taking the holidays off, but plan to return on January 15. At that time, we'll begin our new schedule of recording/airing twice a month on the first and third Fridays of the month.
Until then, please, everyone, please have a safe and happy holiday season. And for all the crew at The Law Librarian on BTR, we'd love to hear from you your ideas and thoughts about how we may improve.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Google Scholar - (Almost) Great Free Legal Search
Amazing. Google has made a giant step toward creating a practical search engine of legal materials. Click on the link above the check it out. Google's new Legal Opinion and Journals (LOJ) is not a Wexis, or VHPPLM killer. It is a game changer in the "free law," community.
Here are a few initial comments about it. First, it is still classically a Google product. By this I mean that they spend little time working on user interface. It is what it is. We tend to forgive Google for all it's faults because it simply has little competition and it's so quick, easy to use that the annoyances of the way the search results and options are presented to you are forgiven. It's quick and easy. Forget the clutter.
Second, it's amazingly snappy. Searches on any topic I threw at it, in any combination of databases were returned in the blink of an eye.
Third, the "How Cited," tab is fascinating and provides quick access to raw citation information on the case. Like everything Google, there's little help distinguishing one cite from another, but there is help. And the information provided is good. The speed of the Google engine can make drilling down to particulars very quick - even if it means that you have to wade through hundreds of cases. Clicking from case to "How Cited" tab, to case, one can quickly get lost, but if you keep your wits about you, you can learn some interesting things about the case you're researching.
Fourth, it is unclear just exactly what you're searching when you use Google Scholar's Legal Opinions and Journals, (GSLOJ). When you click on the Advanced Search link, you get choices of, "Search all legal opinions and journals," or searching only Federal opinions or individual state court opinions. State court opinions can be searched in any combination, just by clicking boxes and selecting the states that you want to search. Trouble is, there is no description of what library of journals is being searched, or what are the years of coverage for case databases. Do the Nebraska cases, for example, go back ten years, twenty, or two. It's hard to say.
Fifth, there are no statutes or regulations to be found in/on LOJ. What's with that?!
Sixth, you can't search only Law Journals. With the growing movement to develop digital commons, and to move law reviews to the web, it would be immensely helpful to be able to mine this vein of secondary material.
Overall, Google Scholar's new LOJ is a welcome entry into the free online legal research community. I don't think that West or Lexis have much to worry about, but LII, Justicia, et al, may have "competition."
What impact this will have on Law.Gov, "Free Law," and kerfuffles? This is certainly a game changer.
For the Official Explanation: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/finding-laws
Here are a few initial comments about it. First, it is still classically a Google product. By this I mean that they spend little time working on user interface. It is what it is. We tend to forgive Google for all it's faults because it simply has little competition and it's so quick, easy to use that the annoyances of the way the search results and options are presented to you are forgiven. It's quick and easy. Forget the clutter.
Second, it's amazingly snappy. Searches on any topic I threw at it, in any combination of databases were returned in the blink of an eye.
Third, the "How Cited," tab is fascinating and provides quick access to raw citation information on the case. Like everything Google, there's little help distinguishing one cite from another, but there is help. And the information provided is good. The speed of the Google engine can make drilling down to particulars very quick - even if it means that you have to wade through hundreds of cases. Clicking from case to "How Cited" tab, to case, one can quickly get lost, but if you keep your wits about you, you can learn some interesting things about the case you're researching.
Fourth, it is unclear just exactly what you're searching when you use Google Scholar's Legal Opinions and Journals, (GSLOJ). When you click on the Advanced Search link, you get choices of, "Search all legal opinions and journals," or searching only Federal opinions or individual state court opinions. State court opinions can be searched in any combination, just by clicking boxes and selecting the states that you want to search. Trouble is, there is no description of what library of journals is being searched, or what are the years of coverage for case databases. Do the Nebraska cases, for example, go back ten years, twenty, or two. It's hard to say.
Fifth, there are no statutes or regulations to be found in/on LOJ. What's with that?!
Sixth, you can't search only Law Journals. With the growing movement to develop digital commons, and to move law reviews to the web, it would be immensely helpful to be able to mine this vein of secondary material.
Overall, Google Scholar's new LOJ is a welcome entry into the free online legal research community. I don't think that West or Lexis have much to worry about, but LII, Justicia, et al, may have "competition."
What impact this will have on Law.Gov, "Free Law," and kerfuffles? This is certainly a game changer.
For the Official Explanation: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/finding-laws
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.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Exciting Times are Coming: Check out Law.gov
It's rare that the buzz in the air is equal to the reality. I think that we're finally approaching a critical mass in activity to bring the movement to preserve, protect and distribute state primary materials to fruition that something may actually come of it. In addition to Carl Malamud's law.gov effort, LIPA, the Chesapeake Project, AALL's Authentication & Preservation of Digital Law Special Committee, and NCCUSL's State Electronic Legal Materials Committee, other initiatives are developing which, if coordinated, can actually help the nations law libraries breath easier, by freeing us of the necessity of having to pay for reliable primary materials.
West, Lexis, BNA, CCH and others should breath easy about these developments, too. What they have is more valuable than the primary law. Secondary materials are the things that help lawyers, researchers and scholars make sense of what the law is, and that's at least as important as having access to the law itself. Law publishers should be prepared for a major shift in their business plans: sale of primary materials is going to begin to shrink, and they're going to have to realize that their income is probably going to shrink some, too. But their sale of secondary materials should remain stable, even grow in importance and value as access to primary materials proliferate. [Note to commercial publishers: focus on the unique things that you bring to the table, scholarship, indexing, commentary, practice aids, etc., and forget about trying to convince people that your work dressing up free materials in fancy bindings is worth as much. It's not. It's nice, but let's face it, the Federal Reporter isn't worth nearly as much to researchers as Wright and Miller or the Key Number system!]
That is, unless the publishers continue their frightening practice of inflating prices of all their materials to such an extent that makes secondary materials virtually unaffordable altogether for libraries to purchase, update and hold. The present practice is for publishers to inflate the prices on print and secondary materials to make up for declining sales. As prices go up and libraries' revenues go down, law libraries can't afford any materials from big publishers; primary or secondary. In that case, we all loose.
Here comes the dawn....
West, Lexis, BNA, CCH and others should breath easy about these developments, too. What they have is more valuable than the primary law. Secondary materials are the things that help lawyers, researchers and scholars make sense of what the law is, and that's at least as important as having access to the law itself. Law publishers should be prepared for a major shift in their business plans: sale of primary materials is going to begin to shrink, and they're going to have to realize that their income is probably going to shrink some, too. But their sale of secondary materials should remain stable, even grow in importance and value as access to primary materials proliferate. [Note to commercial publishers: focus on the unique things that you bring to the table, scholarship, indexing, commentary, practice aids, etc., and forget about trying to convince people that your work dressing up free materials in fancy bindings is worth as much. It's not. It's nice, but let's face it, the Federal Reporter isn't worth nearly as much to researchers as Wright and Miller or the Key Number system!]
That is, unless the publishers continue their frightening practice of inflating prices of all their materials to such an extent that makes secondary materials virtually unaffordable altogether for libraries to purchase, update and hold. The present practice is for publishers to inflate the prices on print and secondary materials to make up for declining sales. As prices go up and libraries' revenues go down, law libraries can't afford any materials from big publishers; primary or secondary. In that case, we all loose.
Here comes the dawn....
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Law Firm Librarians Speak Out About the Real World
Last Thursday's BlogTalkRadio show was very informative. Particularly because we had a lively group of law firm librarians who were quite willing to share their ideas about the skills that law students/recent graduates lack. The firm librarians were Liza MacMorris, of Wilson, Sonsini, Mary Staats, of Farella Braun & Martel, Kathy Skinner, of Morrison Foerster, Sara Paul, of Paul Hastings, Camille Reynolds, of Nossaman, and Peg LaFrance of Orrick. (Many, many thanks to them all.) The message was loud and clear:
First, we need to be very focused on teaching students the value of secondary materials. To a person, they were very concerned that students understand that beginning research with an appropriate secondary source can save them not only a great amount of time in conducting their research, but it can save their clients lots of money, too, because it will mean more precise and more efficient online searching later in the research project. The group was also adamant in this regard that it doesn't really matter whether they are beginning their research with a secondary tool that is in print, online or otherwise. The consensus seemed to be that many firms were still keeping the key treatises and practice materials.
Second, we were admonished to spend more time instructing our students about cost-effective online research techniques. Things like strategic use of research trails, tabs, etc. The message here is clear, CALR in law firms is costly! And any techniques that can be used to reduce the costs is something to be strived for. Since we academics have no reason, let alone day to day incentive to utilize such things, we need to make an extra effort to do so. Here's a situation where calling upon our Wexis representatives to conduct specialized training in these issues. I know that I will be attending them, too.
Third, several of the librarians said that new lawyers and summer clerks need to better understand how to use the librarian. Many come in firms unsure what they can ask librarians, and, then fail to do so. Not only are firm librarians willing and able to assist with help on research products, but often they can help locate experts within the firm. For example, if someone is given the task of researching an issue, sometimes a firm librarian can tell the researcher that another attorney in the firm is either an expert in that topic, or has recently conducted similar research. That person may be the best place to start. The bottom line is, new attorneys and summer clerks shouldn't be shy about asking the firm librarian for help and advice.
Finally, there's been a number of requests for a transcript of the chat room discussion that consisted of nearly 80 participants.
Click here for a copy of that transcript.
In the meantime, I think that the discussion will benefit any librarian who teaches legal research. It can be listened to at the show's website, here, or it can be downloaded from iTunes here. Of course, you can click on the box to the right and listen to it right here, right now.
There's also a discussion begun at the show's Facebook page: http://tinyurl.com/nouem4/. Please feel free to join in.
First, we need to be very focused on teaching students the value of secondary materials. To a person, they were very concerned that students understand that beginning research with an appropriate secondary source can save them not only a great amount of time in conducting their research, but it can save their clients lots of money, too, because it will mean more precise and more efficient online searching later in the research project. The group was also adamant in this regard that it doesn't really matter whether they are beginning their research with a secondary tool that is in print, online or otherwise. The consensus seemed to be that many firms were still keeping the key treatises and practice materials.
Second, we were admonished to spend more time instructing our students about cost-effective online research techniques. Things like strategic use of research trails, tabs, etc. The message here is clear, CALR in law firms is costly! And any techniques that can be used to reduce the costs is something to be strived for. Since we academics have no reason, let alone day to day incentive to utilize such things, we need to make an extra effort to do so. Here's a situation where calling upon our Wexis representatives to conduct specialized training in these issues. I know that I will be attending them, too.
Third, several of the librarians said that new lawyers and summer clerks need to better understand how to use the librarian. Many come in firms unsure what they can ask librarians, and, then fail to do so. Not only are firm librarians willing and able to assist with help on research products, but often they can help locate experts within the firm. For example, if someone is given the task of researching an issue, sometimes a firm librarian can tell the researcher that another attorney in the firm is either an expert in that topic, or has recently conducted similar research. That person may be the best place to start. The bottom line is, new attorneys and summer clerks shouldn't be shy about asking the firm librarian for help and advice.
Finally, there's been a number of requests for a transcript of the chat room discussion that consisted of nearly 80 participants.
Click here for a copy of that transcript.
In the meantime, I think that the discussion will benefit any librarian who teaches legal research. It can be listened to at the show's website, here, or it can be downloaded from iTunes here. Of course, you can click on the box to the right and listen to it right here, right now.
There's also a discussion begun at the show's Facebook page: http://tinyurl.com/nouem4/. Please feel free to join in.
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....
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
Friday, April 03, 2009
Getting to the REAL Issues Regarding U Presses Going Digital
On March 25, Inside Higher Education ran an editorial by Scott McLemee titled, "A Change is Gonna Come." McLemee is obviously a bright guy and correctly parses the issues surrounding digital scholarship. He also presents a very balanced discussion of the pros and cons. I encourage everyone in the academy and in libraries to read the piece carefully.
I think that there IS a danger of University Presses becoming blogs. And my fears aren't related to my "luddite" orientation as a library and book-hugger. I am worried about scholars and researchers' ability to conduct research effectively and consistently with reliable authority.
The million dollar question is, Will future (near and far) readers of scholarly works be able to find the materials cited in them?
But the "nearer" term question is will monographs and articles published digitally be vetted as thoroughly as those published in traditional formats? McLemee points out that there is no logical reason that this can't be so. Obviously, modern scholarly journals and books can be subjected to at least as much editorial scrutiny as print versions of the same, and I think that the skeptics, instead of being "luddites" are simply looking for assurances that they will be subject to the same level of scrutiny. So far, those assurances haven't been forthcoming.
There is another issue that McLemee doesn't raise that gives me, as a librarian, the most pause about diving into this revolution with both feet: that is preservation. What guarantees are in place, or that can be put in place that will assure users that the material will remain the same as it was when published? One feature of print materials is that once it is printed and distributed, it is very difficult to change without issuing new editions of the work. (It's annoying enough when publishers make corrections from printing to printing....) When a work is published digitally today, how will a reader in ten years know that it is the same work? (I'm not even raising the question of whether the future reader will even be able to find and read the work born digital today.) I've heard all the arguments that print's no better. It can burn up, get soaked, be mislaid, etc. But so what? We do our best with whatever format we're working with. Digital formats can't give us any better assurances that it will remain more accessible or consistent than print. It's just in a "cooler", "hipper" format. And we have much less experience with digital than we have with print. We know how to care for print, and we know that it we take care of it properly it will last for hundred and hundred of years.
Skeptics aren't luddites, or obstacles to progress at all. We're cautious. We're careful. And I think that there's a chance that early adopters and technophiles will some day thank us.
I think that there IS a danger of University Presses becoming blogs. And my fears aren't related to my "luddite" orientation as a library and book-hugger. I am worried about scholars and researchers' ability to conduct research effectively and consistently with reliable authority.
The million dollar question is, Will future (near and far) readers of scholarly works be able to find the materials cited in them?
But the "nearer" term question is will monographs and articles published digitally be vetted as thoroughly as those published in traditional formats? McLemee points out that there is no logical reason that this can't be so. Obviously, modern scholarly journals and books can be subjected to at least as much editorial scrutiny as print versions of the same, and I think that the skeptics, instead of being "luddites" are simply looking for assurances that they will be subject to the same level of scrutiny. So far, those assurances haven't been forthcoming.
There is another issue that McLemee doesn't raise that gives me, as a librarian, the most pause about diving into this revolution with both feet: that is preservation. What guarantees are in place, or that can be put in place that will assure users that the material will remain the same as it was when published? One feature of print materials is that once it is printed and distributed, it is very difficult to change without issuing new editions of the work. (It's annoying enough when publishers make corrections from printing to printing....) When a work is published digitally today, how will a reader in ten years know that it is the same work? (I'm not even raising the question of whether the future reader will even be able to find and read the work born digital today.) I've heard all the arguments that print's no better. It can burn up, get soaked, be mislaid, etc. But so what? We do our best with whatever format we're working with. Digital formats can't give us any better assurances that it will remain more accessible or consistent than print. It's just in a "cooler", "hipper" format. And we have much less experience with digital than we have with print. We know how to care for print, and we know that it we take care of it properly it will last for hundred and hundred of years.
Skeptics aren't luddites, or obstacles to progress at all. We're cautious. We're careful. And I think that there's a chance that early adopters and technophiles will some day thank us.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Lexis and West are Losing Money? Oh My!
Weird. I just looked up Reed Elsevier’s and Thomson Reuters’ stock quotes for the recent past. In the case of Thomson, Yahoo! Finance’s charts only go back a couple of years, and in the case of Reed Elsivier they go back much further. If stock is any indication of anything at all, it’s the company’s profitability. And over the long haul, both companies are not doing well at all. The charts show a general decline. In the case of Reed Elsevier, it's about at the same place it was ten or fifteen years ago. Surprising? I think so. How in the world can companies with such great, vital products be loosing money?
Lack of foresight. They failed to create the next generation of information product when they had the means. They’ve stayed loyal to what they know: sell what you’ve got, and keep it that way! Instead of innovating and using the tools at their disposal and distributing their product with the greatest of ease, they have priced themselves and their products out of existence.
As Carl Malmud and others advocate for thorough and free distribution of all public information, and as technology and technologists rise to meet the challenge with elegance and facility, the Big Two (three, if you count Volters Kluwer) are marketing themselves out of existence despite a veritable intellectual gold mine in hand, the main things that make their products special: secondary titles, digests and indexes and compilations of all sorts.
The free public information movement will surely supplant the Big Two/Three’s ability to publish primary materials. But they can’t supplant their ability to publish the secondary materials that help us make sense of it all.
If the Big Two/Three go out of business because of poor business practices, bad judgement and lack of vision, God help us. I’m serious. If scholarship fails, (which is what secondary materials are, after all) then culture fails. When culture fails, so do civilizations.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think that our legal system is mighty important for maintaining order, and even if I think that it can stand with a tweak or two here of there; it’s worth saving and maintaining.
Somehow, the news that Lexis and West (and CCH) were loosing money sent a chill up my spine....
Lack of foresight. They failed to create the next generation of information product when they had the means. They’ve stayed loyal to what they know: sell what you’ve got, and keep it that way! Instead of innovating and using the tools at their disposal and distributing their product with the greatest of ease, they have priced themselves and their products out of existence.
As Carl Malmud and others advocate for thorough and free distribution of all public information, and as technology and technologists rise to meet the challenge with elegance and facility, the Big Two (three, if you count Volters Kluwer) are marketing themselves out of existence despite a veritable intellectual gold mine in hand, the main things that make their products special: secondary titles, digests and indexes and compilations of all sorts.
The free public information movement will surely supplant the Big Two/Three’s ability to publish primary materials. But they can’t supplant their ability to publish the secondary materials that help us make sense of it all.
If the Big Two/Three go out of business because of poor business practices, bad judgement and lack of vision, God help us. I’m serious. If scholarship fails, (which is what secondary materials are, after all) then culture fails. When culture fails, so do civilizations.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think that our legal system is mighty important for maintaining order, and even if I think that it can stand with a tweak or two here of there; it’s worth saving and maintaining.
Somehow, the news that Lexis and West (and CCH) were loosing money sent a chill up my spine....
Friday, January 16, 2009
Welcome Back to the Real World
It occurs to me that the future is finally here. At last week's AALS meeting, there was nary a word about "the future of libraries"! All library programs, meetings and discussions were actually about managing libraries, studying legal information and striving to improve services and collections. It was inspiring. I just hope that we librarians have gotten over our infatuation with speculating about how technology will impact us (which is nonsense, because no amount of speculation will change it's impact - it's a train going forward and we simply need to adopt it, adapt it and use it, as we've always done).
It's time to get back to business and work on developing theories and practices that help us cope with shrinking resources. The expectation is that we will continue to improve collection growth and development with less money. This means we have to be clever and knowledgeable about what it is we are collecting. I think that in many ways, we've wasted a lot of time in the last twenty years trying to predict a future, instead of studying the present.
As a result we've fallen behind the curve and are not well-equipped to deal with the future that none of us predicted: Publishers who no longer consider us partners in providing legal information to lawyers, students and the public, but who see us as consumers. Legal publishers are not trying to please users of legal information by providing quality access to material, they are trying to please share-holders. That means that the only thing worth producing is what will generate the greatest profit. This has fundamentally shifted the paradigm. Books, databases, reporters, online services, etc., are now all widgets.
The encouraging thing is that no matter what legal publishers do, legal information will still exist. What we law librarians now need to focus on is to find ways to continue to provide it to our patrons - without the help of publishers, if they choose to price those materials out of our libraries.
It's time to get back to business and work on developing theories and practices that help us cope with shrinking resources. The expectation is that we will continue to improve collection growth and development with less money. This means we have to be clever and knowledgeable about what it is we are collecting. I think that in many ways, we've wasted a lot of time in the last twenty years trying to predict a future, instead of studying the present.
As a result we've fallen behind the curve and are not well-equipped to deal with the future that none of us predicted: Publishers who no longer consider us partners in providing legal information to lawyers, students and the public, but who see us as consumers. Legal publishers are not trying to please users of legal information by providing quality access to material, they are trying to please share-holders. That means that the only thing worth producing is what will generate the greatest profit. This has fundamentally shifted the paradigm. Books, databases, reporters, online services, etc., are now all widgets.
The encouraging thing is that no matter what legal publishers do, legal information will still exist. What we law librarians now need to focus on is to find ways to continue to provide it to our patrons - without the help of publishers, if they choose to price those materials out of our libraries.
Friday, September 19, 2008
AALL "Blawg" Gets It Right - Mostly
While anyone can look back through writings of various technology naysayers and cautionary pundits of the past (including yours truly) and find warnings about how the rapid (and thoughtless, apparently) wholesale adoption of technology for publication of legal information, it's turning out to be much more complicated than that.
Simply taking snapshots of Agency websites won't capture the important information that we're loosing. In fact, it captures more useless stuff than valuable. After all, who needs to know how, say, the Immigration Office coded their homepage? The important stuff is what's at the other end of the links, the data. Knowing that a link to a report was present in an agency page isn't as important as the report itself. If that only exists as an html or other form of e-document and it's wiped out, who cares about the link?
As I've said a zillion times before, all important government information should be in e-format only as a secondary, back-up format. The primary format of everything that's important should be in print.
All e-formats, by their natures are ephemeral. Until that conundrum is solved, "preservation of electronic material" is an oxymoron.
Simply taking snapshots of Agency websites won't capture the important information that we're loosing. In fact, it captures more useless stuff than valuable. After all, who needs to know how, say, the Immigration Office coded their homepage? The important stuff is what's at the other end of the links, the data. Knowing that a link to a report was present in an agency page isn't as important as the report itself. If that only exists as an html or other form of e-document and it's wiped out, who cares about the link?
As I've said a zillion times before, all important government information should be in e-format only as a secondary, back-up format. The primary format of everything that's important should be in print.
All e-formats, by their natures are ephemeral. Until that conundrum is solved, "preservation of electronic material" is an oxymoron.
Amazon to Become "Content Provider"
If you listen to no other podcast and are interested in what's happening in the world of hi-tech, it should be John C Dvorak's "Tech 5". Subtitled, "The most important five minutes of your day," Dvorak covers all the latest tech trends with economy and wit. Occasionally, he even makes brilliant observations:
The September episode carries mention of a story circulating that day in which it is announced that Amazon was soon to become a "content provider." Dvorak makes the observation that that's precisely what Amazon is! People go to the website, look for music, books, whatever, and then Amazon packs the stuff up and sends it to the customers. Isn't that providing content?
Sheesh. Good point.
The September episode carries mention of a story circulating that day in which it is announced that Amazon was soon to become a "content provider." Dvorak makes the observation that that's precisely what Amazon is! People go to the website, look for music, books, whatever, and then Amazon packs the stuff up and sends it to the customers. Isn't that providing content?
Sheesh. Good point.
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