West Headnote Numbers Removed from Shepard's (?)

The following is an excerpt from a very interesting post from Out of the Jungle. Richard Ducey, Director of the Law Library at the University of Tulsa, reported a disturbing change in the functionality of Shepard's Citations:

I believe LEXIS/Shepard's is making a change to Shepard's with little fanfare with the expectation that it will fly below the radar at most libraries and offices. I thought I would alert you to this change in case you have not yet learned about it. Before AALL, I was working on an assignment for my class that included Shepardizing a Maryland Court of Appeals case. Upon Shepardizing (on LEXIS), I was unable to restrict by the West (Atlantic Reporter) headnotes as I have done many times in the past. Our LEXIS representative who was visiting that day also could not figure out why there was absolutely no display option allowing me to limit by West headnotes under the "Focus / Restrict by" feature. The West headnote option reappeared when I checked a couple days later. So, I was wondering what was going on.

I Shepardized Roe v. Wade and it looked like you could only restrict using LEXIS headnotes. The post suggests that West headnotes may disappear from the print Shepards as well. Have you heard anything about this? Feel free to post your comments.

Yolanda Jones, Villanova Law Library