Law Librarian Blog

Is Internet Use Rerouting Our Neural Pathways for a Short-Attention-Span Culture?

Ah ... don't know. I thought my short term memory loss and short attention span were products of being an aging and decrepit Baby Boomer law librarian.

In his new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (W. W. Norton & Company, June 7, 2010), Nicholas Carr warns that Internet users may be sacrificing their ability to read and think deeply by habitual scanning and skimming of web content. From the product description:

The best-selling author of The Big Switch returns with an explosive look at technology’s effect on the mind. “Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?

Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.

Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.

See also Bob Ambrogi's How technology is rewiring lawyer's brains and what it means for CLE. [JH]

Friday Fun Part 2: iPhone Users Are Easy

According to OkCupid's study of smartphone users and their sexual history, iPhone users have had more sexual partners then BlackBerry users and Android users. From OkCupid's post:

Hat tip to Kristi Lee, News Director of The Bob & Tom Show. [JH]

Friday Fun: What This 3 Year Old Wants from Her Library

"Hurry up and get cracking." [JH]

"It's Good to be Tom Glocer"

Just about no one at TR Legal I"ve talked with face to face, on the phone or by email has not said at least once, "It's good to be Tom." This borders on mantra status but, you know what, I agree. It must good to be the CEO of a publishing empire. Here's why. Recently on what remains the only "TRI" web destination worth taking the RSS feed even though it is clearly indicated as being personal and rarely discusses business, Tom posted on his blog  that he is on vacation.

 I'm no Luddite, but the best way I can relax and also give my family my full attention is not to be reaching for my array of vibrating devices every 30 seconds.

Damn right and good for you, Tom. He adds

As a wise Frenchman once said, "the cemeteries are full of men who once thought themselves indispensable." I hope you all enjoy a good break.

In case you think I'm on a first name basis with the CEO of TRI, I am not so I'm taking no small amount of license here. But, what the heck because (1) it's just the blogosphere and (2) more times than not it takes an indispensable library staff to conduct business with TR Legal.

Yes, "It's Good to be Tom." I haven't had a real vacation in almost two years. At 57, I am way too damn old to be behaving like I was in my 30s when I didn't take a vacation for over five years at a time as a BigLaw firm librarian. During one particularly busy, billable hours, period, when hours could be billed, I didn't take a day off for about six months except for July 4th and Labor Day. Not complaining. I was much younger then and enjoyed the challenges of practicing my profession to "infinity and beyond" in a BigLaw firm. Nothing compares if you have the "killer instinct" and are prepared to test your professional expertise in this enviroment. Of course, you may end up with hypothyroidism like I have. But there's meds for that and they result in substantial weight loss, particularly for former circa-1980s "A-Types" like me.

Circa 2010 with little PTO for way too long, I'm toast after executing the following random illustrations and have been toast for several months. Do note,  I'm not alone because I work with one hard-charging crew -- three FTE library staffers colleagues who have been  putting in just as much effort, if not more, to help me  take care of business while earning subtantially less each pay period than I do. The old school work ethic is alive and well in our little county llaw lbrrary The measure of job performance is and has always been in my opinoin exhaustion regardless of whether you are a so-called "professional librarian" or not. When we all go home at the end of the day tired, we have done your job. If you don't, you are wasting space. Make room for someone who will by getting out of the way. Your supervisor will be delighted to accept your resignation.

Then there is my my long-suffering wife known to regular readers of LLB as "the blog widow." Plus lately I've been stealing a chapter from my late father's playbook who burned take-it-or-lose-it PTO by escaping a couple of hours early when he could. Well, he died at age 64 and that's only seven years from now for me. Tom is dead on. The "cemeteries are full" but then he does not have to conduct business with TR Legal day in and day out, now does he.

On Being Behind.  No doubt Tom has dragged his butt home to his family and dog many if not most evenings despite the TR Legal mantra. Perhaps, if the entire law library workforce (and, well, our association's executive board) did the same, we would only be one step behind TR Legal instead of 2-3-4-etc. It takes the entire law library community to keep up with some of the smartest people in the room.

What have we in our little county law library been up to lately? Just a sample. No particular priority because law librarians will know what that is priority is even if  some folks in the land of 10,000 invoices don't give a damn. They certainly aren't clueless.

• "Shedding West" in our little county law library by way of sending 100,000 pounds of print to the recycle center after evaluating our 40,000-plus print volume collection in a three month time frame and updating our catalog and serials records to reflect the Shed West Era in execution;
• Commencing negotiations for a Westlaw license renewal which may or may not happen because our sales rep and his district manager are up against the wall known as boilerplate language and corporate policy, even in this current economy;
• Identifying my kill list for print titles in my Westlaw PrintPack I couldn't cancel until the end of the license (coming up soon);
• Considering whether TR Legal's West Complete program for print is advantageous to my little county law library -- its does has some pluses vis-a-vis the straight jacket that is offered by LMA's but it most definitely isn't as good as the so-caled "50% discount" offered in WestPack. Alas, we are not inclined in this economy to entered into multi-year commitments for Westlaw or Westlaw with WestPack unless we have something called "flexibility." Lexis understands the word "optional"  and offers a 50% discount for online access to print subs per SOP. No negtiations required. TR Legal? Well, the Company understood cancellation at convenience of licensee in state-wide contracts.
• Watching out for the next opt-out TR Legal Columbia House Legal Book Club postcard. Well, not really. If I miss a postcard I'm thinking maybe our little county law library will neither ship it back or pay for it. Want a test case ... all future agreements with TR Legal may have to require Ohio as the jurisdiction just like State of Ohio contracts with TR Legal do.
• Responding to a voice mail message yesterday from" Namelsss" in TR Legal's Accounts Receivable that rattled off more numerals, phone number, account number, and two late as in not-paid invoices identifiers than speaking in alpha characters --- you know, English as in words! Do you know how many times I had to repeat the voice mail message to write down the phone number and account info --- I simply gave up on writing down the invoices. OK, so I am an aging and decrepit law librarian with almost no short term memory lelt but hasn't TR Legals's Accounts Receivables hear of something called email or is TR Legal so desperate for $$, Accounts Receivables has been instructed to dial the phone If we owe TR Legal, I have absolutely no problem paying the Company money owed if we messed up, and doing so ASAP but for god's sake put it in writing so we can check into it. Next time, I think I'm going to vaporize the voice mail message and wait for a "Second Notice mailing if the Copmany is still doing that. Since our County Auditor refuses to pay any late fees whatsoever, the folks in the land of 10,000 invoices will have to live with that or I'll cancel the title.

And this is just TR Legal business! Forget about recent and on-going transactions with other major vendors.

Today's To Do List. What the heck, come December I will be shedding WestPack-tiles West's Bankruptcy Service Lawyers Edition and Norton's on Bankruptcy --- invoice paying law librarians know how much both titles' upkeep costs are -- because Matthew Bender's Collier's in the title to have if only one comprehensive service is needed (that would be us). But I will be ordering a multi-volume practitioner-oriented West bankruptcy "loose-leaf" title today -- talk about something that rarely happens! Why? Because (1) I can get about a 30% discount off list price right now; (2) it's last annual update was in June so our library will get the next annual update at no cost with the purchase, meaning, of course,  (3) I won't have to cancel it until this time next year. As most law librarians are well aware, the devil is in the details when it comes to transacting business with TR Legal.

Enjoy your vacation with your family, Tom. There is no doubt in my mind you deserve it. Upon your return, my offer to share a pitcher of beer still stands. I'll even pick up the tab for the first pitcher. After that, it's on you because I've heard that "it is good to be Tom." I am sure your success is well deserved while I earn in my current gig less than I made as a BigLaw librarian in 1987. But I've only got a 5-7 minute compute to work depending on traffic and every minute counts at my age. You, too? 

A Word of Caution About Some TR Legal "Loose-leaf "Services While Tom is on Vacation. Hello law library directors, tech services heads and everyone else who does not file West "loose-leaf" services. Have you noticed that TR Legal's "brand" of many of these apparent loose-leaf services aren't what most law librarians think of when they think "regularly updated, interfiled loose-leaf services."  It is becoming increasingly prevalent in titles West acquired over the years. This ain't your CCH looseleaf, the company that created this publishing format and set the standard for it. Yes, this is want happens when a law library director has to leave his office to go into the stacks because a publisher unrelentingly continues pricing itself out of the the print market.

For many West "looseleaf" servicies upkeep, you may receive pages with instructions to insert at the beginning of the binder a bunch of pages that is oh so reminiscent of pocket-parts and a couple of replacement chapters each year. In order words, no interfiled updating of content across the  entire publication. Of course, this saves cost to TR Legal and library filers love this but it creates the wrong impression for patrons who think these services follow the CCH paradigm. It's essentially a production process that looks like a looseleaf service but is basically a pocket-part one in disguise.

When I see this on a title-by-tile basis, and compare it to the editorial content, usage, cost and interfiling frequency of other major publishers, be they Matthew Bender, BNA or CCH, TR Legal usually gets tossed into my kill list and sometimes gets replaced withj another vendor's loose-leaf tile. I tend not to inform my colleagues immediately because of their less than delighted reaction to TR Legal's "this is easy if not all that current" filing approach but patrons come first. Atttorneys are  taught to "never assume" but they haven't been routinely instructed that this maxim applies to this publishing format, For patron purposes, perhaps the binders needs to be labeled "this ain't what you think it is." [JH]

Fundamental Themes from LAW.GOV Workshops: Public Infrastructure, Lowering Barriers to Innovation, and Providing Access and Developing Research Tools

An estimated 650 law librarians, law professors, government officials, judges and legal information industry representatives attended 15 LAW.GOV workshops held across the country earlier this year. The culmination was the recent release of  LAW.GOV's 10 core principles. See NLJ's Law document transparency project defines its terms. As Fastcase CEO Ed Walters points out in Why .Gov is at the *End* of Law.Gov: Effort Needs Innovators First, Then Government, To Thrive  a wide range of individuals representing diverse interests participated in LAW.GOV workshop sessions. Following up on LLB's On Extending the Outreach for LAW.GOV's Support: The Incubation Process Has Begun, this week we are featuring LAW.GOV. videos of some. [JH]

Fastcase's Ed Walters on LAW.GOV not trying to put Westlaw and Lexis out of business but is calling for the creation of a public infrastructure for electronic distribution of primary legal sources.

Tim O'Reilly on the importance of developing standards and platforms that by way of LAW.GOV will lower the barriers to innovation.

Vinton G. Cerf emphasizes that providing the means to access and developing research tools are also important. One step toward bridging the digital divide is making comprehensive access to primary legal sources at least available in public libraries. Another is providing no or low-cost tools for determining whether those resources are current and "good law," something I personally think will become available once the barriers to competition are lowered by viewing the production and bulk-distribution of official primary resources as a public utility that is necessary and doable in a civil society governed by the rule of law in the 21st Century

How the Events of 9/11 Have Affected the Legal Landscape in New York State: Pace Law Review Issues a Call for Proposals

The Editors of the Pace Law Review invite proposals from scholars, researchers, practitioners, and professionals for contributions to the Law Review's third annual issue on New York law, slated for publication in Spring 2011.

In the past, this book has examined a wide range of topics in New York law, including education, immigration, land use, and criminal procedure.  Next year will mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks.  Editors of the Pace Law Review encourage authors to consider how the events of 9/11 have affected the legal landscape in New York State.   For example, articles may address how 9/11 has influenced privacy, mass-tort, local security, health, and administrative law.  Additionally, the Law Review encourages authors to consider proposals on other recent developments in New York law, unrelated to 9/11, and what they mean for the State of New York.

Proposals of no more than 500 words should be submitted to plr(at)law.pace.edu by September 1, 2010.  The Law Review welcomes proposals for articles, essays, and book reviews.  All proposals should include the author’s name, title, institutional affiliation, contact information, and should concern issues related to the subject-matter described above.  Book review proposals should also include: (a) the title and publication date of the book proposed for review; (b) a description of the importance of the book to the general topic; and (c) any other information relevant to the book or proposed review (e.g. the reviewer’s expertise or any relationship with the author).  Authors are also welcome, but not required, to submit a CV.  The Law Review expects to make publication offers by September 15, 2010.
 
Completed manuscripts will be due November 1, 2010. [JH]

AALL Vendor Liaison: The Hazelton Report

As you may know I am opposed to the vendor liaison position.  But I try to be receptive to different ideas and so when AALL published Penny Hazelton's report I read it with great interest. [Access on AALL website here.]  The first thing that struck me when reading the report and the accompanying materials was that AALL did not ask Ms. Hazelton to determine what specific actions would she recommend AALL taking regarding vendor relations.  Instead they asked Ms. Hazelton to make recommendations regarding "the potential usefulness to the Association of having a "point person" for vendor issues...." (Appendix A to the Hazelton Report: AALL Consultant: Project Description).  That says to me that the AALL Executive Board (or at least some of them on it) had already determined that this was what they wanted. 

Now this may surprise some of you but I found the Hazelton Report to be very thoughtfully written.  And I think Ms. Hazelton had a good understanding of some of the issues that would arise in the future with regard to the creation of this position.  And the result of that understanding lead her to make certain recommendations.  The problem is that the AALL Executive Board did not follow those recommendations.  And I think, at least in part, that is what lead to the fiasco of the Vendor Relations position.  Had AALL followed those recommendations and communicated with its members I don't know that I would have resigned from the CRIV Committee or been as opposed to the vendor relations position.  I, for one, might have been more willing to give it some time and see what developed.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  This is not to say that I am now in favor of the vendor relations position.  Given what occurred over the last year I don't see that AALL is going to change anything.

Okay, so what recommendations did Ms. Hazelton make?  Well, of course she recommended that AALL create a Library-Vendor Relations Advocate who would look at the relationships between libraries and vendors as they relate to information policy issues.  (See Conclusion to Hazelton Report). Her rationale was that nearly 40% of the membership does not feel that AALL effectively represents their views to vendors and that there is "the perception that AALL is reticent to question vendors or represent law librarians concerns because of fear of loosing vendor sponsorship of AALL activities." and that "AALL's relationship with its own members related to vendor issues is not strong." (See Hazelton Report Rationale Section).  Actually it was more like 37% percent of the 465 AALL members that answered the AALL Information Policy Survey.  What I would have liked to know was what were the answers to the two questions in the survey that asked the responders to explain why or why not AALL was effective in representing and communicating member issues in the information policy realm and what specific actions the responders would recommend AALL take regarding vendor relations.  Those answers have not been provided to the membership.  I suspect CRIV got favorable reviews but without seeing the answers cannot say for sure.

So what were the recommendations that AALL didn't listen to? (Below taken from Hazelton Report: Structure of Vendor Relations Representative Position, Relationships within AALL and Position Announcement Sections)

1.  Appoint an Advisory Committee to keep the new position fully informed of issues.  In the first year the Advisory Committee should include the Executive Director, AALL President, Vice President, Past President, CRIV Chair, Board Liaison to CRIV, and Chairs of ALL-SIS, SCC-SIS and PLL-SIS.  As far as I have been able to determine there was no such Advisory Committee.  The then chair of PLL was not on any such committee  and the chair of CRIV (at the time I was on it) never mentioned being on any such Committee.  In fact, in the Report of the Vendor Liaison submitted to the AALL Executive Board on June 15, 2010 it is stated that Executive Director and AALL President " ...serve as a team with the Vendor Liaison to continue establishing the practices and procedures for this evolving position."

2. The position should be in close communication with CRIV, Executive Director, Executive Board and AALL President.  The only thing I can say here is that the position was in no way in close communication with CRIV.  While there evidently were some phone calls between the Vendor Liaison and the CRIV Chair those communications were not shared with the CRIV Committee.  The first call involving the CRIV Committee as a whole and the Vendor Liaison didn't take place until April 2010, about 11 months after the Vendor Liaison was appointed.

3.  Ms. Hazelton stated "I don't recommend that this new position be a gate-keeper."(emphasis added).  She went on to say "In other words, AALL has already created entities that have vendor relations responsibilities.  These activities need to continue."  Later she further says "I don't see a significant change in the duties of CRIV if this position is created" and specifically mentions the web page, vendor visits and educational programming as continuing to be done by CRIV."  I can't emphasize enough that AALL totally ignored this and I had a front row seat as a member of CRIV,  I won't speak for anyone else on the CRIV Committee.  Everything I suggested doing (including writing an article to tell the members some details on WestlawNext) was met with a response of that is the vendor liaison's purview.  Site visits by CRIV?  Not possible since AALL took away the budget for those.  While Ms. Hazelton mentions the CRIV web page, the former CRIV Chair suggested a CRIV blog. Now thats become a blog to be edited by the Vendor Liaison.  If this is not a gate-keeper position then I don't know what is.

4.  Ms. Hazelton recommended that in the first year the new representative would create a plan of accomplishments which would include learning about current vendor relations issues and entities and visits to all the five major legal vendors.  In fact, she envisioned annual visits.  While it appears she talked with four of the five legal vendors, most of it appeared to have been specific issue oriented and most of it by phone. I, for one, think if AALL wants to have a go to policy person on vendor relations then the person should visit each and every vendor and learn more about their operations and meet their executives.  And if you look at the job description it doesn't state there will be travel to visit the vendors.  It mentions travel to the Annual meeting, chapter and other meetings.  I think if AALL was planning on the Vendor Liaison making site visits it would have said so.

5.  Finally, in her conclusion Ms. Hazelton said "I strongly urge the Board to find additional ways to communicate to the membership about the perception of conflict of interest created by taking sponsorship funding while treating vendors with kid gloves."  While she said the survey didn't reflect this as a majority view she felt the minority view was strongly held.  She went on to say "...I fear that failure to take this head on will continue to undermine the best efforts of the Association on many fronts."  Looks like they ignored that recommendation as well.

While there is more information I would have liked and I think it was clear that AALL Executive Board wanted to create this position, I applaud Ms. Hazelton's considerable efforts and thoughtful recommendations.  Now if we could just get AALL to listen to the advice of the consultant they hired!

Caren Biberman

The Current State and Likely Future of the Commercial Legal Publishing Industry: The Effect of Open Access Innovation on the Industry's Core Market

An estimated 650 law librarians, law professors, government officials, judges and legal information industry representatives attended 15 LAW.GOV workshops held across the country earlier this year. The culmination was the recent release of  LAW.GOV's 10 core principles. See NLJ's Law document transparency project defines its terms. As Fastcase CEO Ed Walters points out in Why .Gov is at the *End* of Law.Gov: Effort Needs Innovators First, Then Government, To Thrive  a wide range of individuals representing diverse interests participated in LAW.GOV workshop sessions. Following up on LLB's On Extending the Outreach for LAW.GOV's Support: The Incubation Process Has Begun, this week we are featuring LAW.GOV. videos of some. [JH]

Outsell's David Curle, a publishing industry analyst, gave the following presentation on the legal publishing industry at the May 21, 2010 Chicago LAW.GOV workshop. After reviewing the market structure of the industry, estimating revenue generated by selling primary legal resources, and the impact the current recession has had on the major companies' core market, namely law firm and corporate instititutional buyers, Curle forecasts that open access innovation  will create new markets outside of this core market and that the products and services created there will push the major legal publishers to provide similar products and services because their core institutional buyers will be demanding them.

More Reaction to Google-Verizon and Net Neutrality

Fortune Magazine explains why wireless should be exempt from net neutrality rules.  The Register, normally a snarky publication, produces two in depth articles explaining how the Internet infrastructure changes over the last 3 years motivates Google's policy changes,see How neutrality locks in the web's 'Hyper Giants', and why it makes sense for Google to abandon utopian principles when it comes to regulating the web, and why we should have seen it coming.  See Google 'sold out the net neutrality hippies' in 2008.  AT&T has made a public statement on the Google-Verizon proposal, calling it "positive."  More details on that are in the Wall Street Journal.

For the "Google betrayed us" crowd, there are plenty of feel-good articles.  Try A paper trail of betrayal: Google's net neutrality collapse, from Ars Technica.  Then there's PC World's Tom Bradley, arguing that the agreement will cause a backlash requiring Congress and the FCC to do the right thing.  See Google-Verizon Pact Proves Need for Real Net Neutrality.  Then there is ABC News quoting any number of people who suggest that a tiered web would have horrible consequences.  See What Would a 'Private' Internet Look Like?

Funny story.  I was in a library science class at the University of Texas in early 1994 and we were required by the instructor to bring in examples of sites (including gopher!) on the then nascent public Internet.  I suppose it was an exercise to show the wonder of it all.  Mosaic was barely out of the gate at that ancient time.  One student showed the FTD flower site and was pelted with criticism because it was a web site that dared to sell something.  The nerve!  I chuckled to myself over that incident.  The public web was shepherded by the Department of Commerce, not the Department of Education.  What did they expect?  And the rest is (commercial) history.  [MG] 

What Is It Going to Cost Stanford Law to Become the No. 1 Law School in the Country?

Recently the dean of Stanford Law School, Larry Kramer, announced he intends to make Stanford Law the #1 law school in the country. While Dean Kramer did not explicitly refer to the US News Law School rankings that's the scorecard most folks will point to as "proof" should Stanford Law achieve the status of so-called "best law school" in the country. "U.S. News and World Report’s annual ranking of law schools overwhelmingly dominates the public discourse on how law schools compare to one another." Quoting from the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar's Report of the Special Committee on the U.S. News and World Report Rankings (July 15, 2010) "We believe that, for better or worse, U.S. News rankings will continue for the foreseeable future to dominate public perceptions of how law schools compare, and that there is relatively little that leaders in legal education can do to change that in the short term."

It's common knowledge that the way to improve a law school's ranking under the US News ranking methodology is to increase expenditures per student. In Can Stanford Be #1 in the US News Rankings? The Data, Bill Henderson reports the following:

My back of the envelope calculations suggest that a check for $350 million ought to be enough to produce enough endowment income [for Stanford] to eclipse Yale in the US News rankings.  This assumes that the money is used for things like books, more faculty, and higher salaries for everyone.  If the money is spent on student scholarships, however, Stanford would need a check for roughly $1.8 billion to be #1. Again, these are the idiosyncrasies of the dominant method of law school rankings.

Providing a high quality education at an affordable cost is not the way to improve a law school's ranking. From the above-linked ABA Special Report:

1. The current methodology tends to increase the costs of legal education for students. As a recent study by the United States Government Accountability Office has suggested, the U.S. News methodology arguably punishes a school that provides a high quality education at an affordable cost. Because low-cost law schools report a lower expenditure per student than higher cost schools, it is difficult for low tuition schools to top the rankings. A school that works hard to hold down costs may indeed find itself falling in the rankings relative to a peer that increases tuition above the rate of inflation each year. U.S. Gov’t Accountability Office, GAO-10-20, Higher Education: Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access (Oct. 2009).

2. The current methodology tends to discourage the award of financial aid based upon need. Because median LSAT score and median UGPA are so important to the current rankings, law schools have largely abandoned other measures of merit or need in awarding financial aid. This can have the effect of shifting financial aid to those students with LSAT scores that will assist a school in achieving its target median for rankings purposes. The result is that students with the greatest financial need often are relegated to heavy borrowing to attend law school.

Henderson ends his post with the following comment:

The legal profession, especially our students, have some big problems at the moment. And society's are even larger. The best law school is one that prepares its students to solve these problems. This requires a careful balance of innovative teaching and scholarship. The U.S. News rankings don't capture these metrics.  In fact, they obscure them and create incentives for truly destructive behavior. By and large the deans are trapped. From my own perspective, I don't think even one law school in the US News Tier 1 has reached even 10% of its potential to educate and solve problems. Too many one-professor silos. Too much ego.

That's the real lost opportunity cost. [JH]

Could An Open Source Ecosystem Be Constructed for Government Distribution and Publication of Legal Materials?

An estimated 650 law librarians, law professors, government officials, judges and legal information industry representatives attended 15 LAW.GOV workshops held across the country earlier this year. The culmination was the recent release of  LAW.GOV's 10 core principles. See NLJ's Law document transparency project defines its terms. As Fastcase CEO Ed Walters points out in Why .Gov is at the *End* of Law.Gov: Effort Needs Innovators First, Then Government, To Thrive  a wide range of individuals representing diverse interests participated in LAW.GOV workshop sessions. Following up on LLB's On Extending the Outreach for LAW.GOV's Support: The Incubation Process Has Begun, this week we are featuring LAW.GOV. videos of some. [JH]

This May 26, 2010 LAW.GOV workshop session at Google's Washington, D.C. office addresses open source procurement and standards. Could a reference implementation or open source ecosystem be constructed to help the many jurisdictions that produce American primary legal materials?

Co-Convenors:

• Vinton G. Cerf
• James Stogdill, Accenture

Participants:

• John Scott, Mercury Federal Systems
• Gunnar Hellekson, Red Hat
• Brian Behlendorf, Collaboration Advisor, HHS (Contractor)
• Ian Koenig, LexisNexis
• Mike Walsh, Government Printing Office
• Ed Walters, Fastcase

In the Federal Cloud: Google Apps for Government Get FISMA OK

From the Official Google Blog post: "We’re also pleased to announce that Google Apps is the first suite of cloud computing messaging and collaboration applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. General Services Administration." [JH]

The Google-Verizon Proposal Is Not The End of the Internet as We Know It

Google and Verizon were rumored to have cut a deal last week that would prioritize Google traffic over Verizon's network.  Not true, as it turns out.  Instead, the two companies announced a proposed "legislative framework" for net neutrality principles.  The full text of the proposal is available from the Google Public Policy Blog.  The basics include a general ban against traffic discrimination on wired networks, with some exceptions; transparency to consumers of network practices; and mechanisms for the FCC to enforce violations.  Wireless services would not be subject to the same regulations. 

The exceptions are for specialized services that come from developing technologies.  Examples from the Google Blog post include things such as Fios TV, access to health care monitoring, entertainment, and gaming.  Conceptually, interactive services consume heavy amounts of bandwidth.  Assume that a technology is developed that runs over broadband allowing a specialist to operate on a patient several thousand miles away using video and precise robotics.  Should that signal be subject to degradation because an intern fires up Bit Torrent on a computer in the doctors lounge?  Should the hospital create a dedicated line for such things?  Should that dedicated line run for the several thousand miles between the parties?  Is this the Internet?  Or not?

Some of the criticism directed against the proposal concerns whether carriers would develop services that run on private networks available by subscription.  It's as if the fun parts of the Internet would turn into cable.  That concern was succinctly expressed in the New York Times report on the proposal:

But some expressed fears that this exception could let companies bypass open-access regulations. For example, an online video start-up could create a competitor to YouTube that did not run on the public Internet and would pay for faster connections to viewers. As those types of payments grew, the access companies might have less incentive to invest in Internet capacity, pushing more content providers to these special services and creating alternative networks that look similar to cable TV.

That is true.  Isn't that what Hulu is doing now with its subscription service?  Isn't that what Netflix does now and what Blockbuster wished it would have done if it had the vision?  Of course these run over the Internet now.  In the current regulatory environment, which is effectively none (I'll come back to this),  there is nothing stopping Netflix from paying providers a fee to guarantee better access to its customers.  I'm not sure there is anything wrong with this in circumstances where all other access is NOT degraded in favor of Netflix (i.e., keeping other access the same as it was).

One argument that is always trotted out in net neutrality discussions is the fear that companies such as AT&T will degrade services to favor their own.  That fear has never been backed up by actions on the part of the company.  They offer U-verse television over the same wire that more or less supplies 3 and 6 megabyte Internet access.  To my knowledge, that signal is not degraded when someone turns on a TV and a computer at the same time.  That's because the pipe carrying IP television supports a greater bandwidth than that 6 megabyte top speed.  Tiered service and pricing, in effect, already degrades bandwidth artificially. 

Ed Whiteacre ran AT&T when he made statements to the effect that successful Internet companies should pay to use his pipes.  As obnoxious as he was about this, AT&T never attempted to implement anything remotely like this.  If the head of the company couldn't make it happen, who could?  On the other hand, if Netflix came to AT&T as I've suggested and said we'll pay you money to guarantee delivery of our product, and nothing that wasn't already available via the public Internet would be degraded, why can't Netflix do that?  AT&T demanding money to insure service is one thing.  Taking money from a third party company to provide better service is something else.  I think its called competition.

Another fear mentioned is that Internet providers will block legal applications.  Perhaps Apple not supporting Flash on the iPhone and iPad has slipped a few minds.  Flash is ubiquitous.  From ads, to videos, to whole web sites built in Flash, it's out there.  Apple took criticism for the move.  To my knowledge no one is investigating Apple because the company excluded the legal application of Flash from it's products exclusively licensed to AT&T.  Apple is under at least an informal investigation from the FTC because of its practices involving it's control of the ad market on its devices and the requirements that its developers use its own development tools.  But the outrage over the exclusion of Flash is mostly relegated to the comments sections of tech stories.

I said I would get back to the regulatory environment.  It comes down to this.  Since the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that the FCC has no legal authority regulate the Internet, there is nothing stopping companies such as Comcast (the subject of the suit) from degrading P2P transmissions as part of management and traffic shaping practices.  Congress did not step in to support the Commission or overturn the decision.  There is no law or regulation stopping companies from creating private entertainment, gaming, or other networks for a fee. 

Congress recently sent letters to the FCC, one signed by 74 House Democrats and another signed by 37 Republican Senators, telling the Commission to back off on attempting to implement net neutrality until Congress acts.  Previous Congressional action suggests that Congress is not in favor of net neutrality, not from any egalitarian view at least.  Democratic control of Congress, a more natural alignment of politics and progressive causes, hasn't changed that.  The Google/Verizon proposal, if adopted, creates light regulation that keeps wired broadband more or less in the status quo, with the FCC having authority to right the egregious wrongs. 

I think this context gave Google and Verizon the incentive to create their set of proposals.  It's easy to mock Google with its "Don't be evil" motto in light of its move with Verizon.  Don't be evil, however, doesn't mean don't be practical or don't be in business.  Both of them are companies that provide services.  They are actually advocating regulation that doesn't exist now.  President Obama was asked why there was no public option in the recent health care legislation.  He responded that there would have been one if it were possible to get it through Congress.  It won't be any different with some form of net neutrality.

I don't see different treatment for wired and wireless access to the Internet as a problem.  There is much more competition in wireless than there is in choice for wired Internet providers.  Bandwidth is limited in wireless, and competition offers better opportunity for innovation in that developing market.  Yes, wireless is the future as more individuals adopt mobile devices.  I don't see wired networks going away, however.  The arguments seem to imply that a wired home computer will shrivel up and die over time.  Mobile devices represent convenience, but they can't, in most cases, handle complex software tasks.  I don't see tablets, with their limited storage and memory changing that.  In any event, not regulating now does not foreclose regulating later, if it becomes necessary.  [MG]

SkyRiver Tech and Innovative Interfaces Seeks Access to "OCLC's Unlawfully Acquired Database" in Unfair Competition Complaint

In case you missed it and I certainly did until yesterday when I received this emailed statement from OCLC, SkyRiver Technology Solutions and Innovative Interfaces, Inc. filed suit against OCLC, alleging anticompetitive practices in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on July 29th (Docket No. 10-cv-03305-BZ) Download the Complaint here. According to the plaintiffs, OCLC is "unlawfully monopolizing the bibliographic data, cataloging service and interlibrary lending markets and is attempting to monopolize the market for integrated library systems by anticompetitive and exclusionary agreements, policies and practice."

Two more snips from the Complaint:

This case is about defendant OCLC's exclusionary agreements, punitive pricing, unlawful tying arrangements and its refusal to deal with for-profit firms in violation of the antitrust laws in order to maintain its monopolies and to destroy a new entrant in the market for library cataloging services in competition with OCLC. This case is also about defendant OCLC's entry into the integrated library systems market and its use of its monopoly power over its bibliographic database, cataloging service and worldwide interlibrary lending service to attempt to monopolize the integrated library systems market through unlawful, anticompetitive conduct and anticompetitive agreements that it imposes on its member libraries and its refusal to all for-profit firms to access its database for commercial purposes.

... This action is brought to obtain relief from the injuries suffered by plaintiffs, including access to OCLC's unlawfully acquired database, and for the benefit of all libraries, their patrons and consumers by assuring that competition exists in all aspects of electronic bibliographic data compilation and library systems and service.

OCLC states in its announcement:

OCLC’s General Counsel, working with trial counsel, will respond to this regrettable action by SkyRiver and Innovative Interfaces following procedures and timetables dictated by the court. This process will likely take months or even years, not days.
 
In the meantime, we want to assure the OCLC membership and all 72,000 libraries that use one or more OCLC services that these spurious allegations will not divert us from our current plans and activities. These include maintaining and enhancing existing services, pursuing an ambitious agenda in library research and advocacy, and introducing new Web-scale (cloud) services. Indeed, OCLC has been a global leader in providing cloud-based services for libraries since 1971, and the next generation of these services holds great promise for reducing member library costs.

See also Marshall Breeding's LJ report:

[The litigation] also represents the culmination of concerns expressed by some vendors and librarians that OCLC has used its tax-exempt status to behave not only as a giant library utility but a hard-nosed business.

OCLC Circa Mid-1970s.

Ah, to return to the good old days during the mid-1970s when I first saw OCLC's cataloging module in action and, as a Serials Technical Assistant in an academic library, was eagerly waiting for Serials to come online. It was something to behold.

Of course, we were also producing printed catalog card records back then that had to be filed but, luckily, that wasn't my job because I was too busy checking in serials the old school cardex way. [JH]

Who Owns the Law?

An estimated 650 law librarians, law professors, government officials, judges and legal information industry representatives attended 15 LAW.GOV workshops held across the country earlier this year. The culmination was the recent release of  LAW.GOV's 10 core principles. See NLJ's Law document transparency project defines its terms. As Fastcase CEO Ed Walters points out in Why .Gov is at the *End* of Law.Gov: Effort Needs Innovators First, Then Government, To Thrive  a wide range of individuals representing diverse interests participated in LAW.GOV workshop sessions. Following up on LLB's On Extending the Outreach for LAW.GOV's Support: The Incubation Process Has Begun, this week we are featuring LAW.GOV. videos of some. [JH]

This LAW.GOV session took place on May 25, 2010 and was hosted by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren and Congressman Dan Lungren.

Speakers and Presentations:

• Honorable Zoe Lofgren, Vice Chairwoman, Committee on House Administration
• Honorable Dan Lungren, Ranking Member, Committee on House Administration
• Efforts Within Government To Increase Access to Legal Materials presented by Roberta L. Shaffer, Law Librarian of Congress, Library of Congress
• The Importance of Access to Legal Materials presented by Eugene B. Meyer, President, the Federalist Society
• Legal Materials and Our System of Law, presented by Roger Skalbeck, AALL Copyright Committee
• The Law.Gov Dialogue in our Law Schools presented by Carl Malamud, President, Public.Resource.Org

Opening: Reference Librarian, Univ. of La Verne Law Library

The University of La Verne has an opening for a reference librarian at the College of Law in Ontario, California (about 40 miles east of Los Angeles). Duties include providing reference service to students, faculty, and public patrons, team teaching in legal research courses, and maintaining the library’s web site and Facebook pages. The position requires a J.D. and an M.L.S. or equivalent.
 
For a complete position description and application procedures, please visit the University’s Human Resources web site at http://laverne.edu/hr/employment-opportunities/admin-professional-jobs and apply for position 3055.

More on That Google Book Count

Ars Technica is reporting that Google's estimate of books in the world is "bunk."  Why?  Because Google used notoriously bad metadata in distinguishing between titles, editions, and other variations on a work.  Google blames the libraries where the metadata is sourced.  Not so fast, critics say.  Bibliographic records for older works may have incomplete descriptions, but they aren't populated with data that's plain wrong.  There are examples, and they are available here, and here.  Google, for its part, opened up on how it acquires and processes metadata at an ALA Forum held last January. 

Google, though, still has problems when it gets inconsistent data from libraries and other sources.  That's not a surprising as it sounds given that Google relies more on machines than physical people to make sense of data.  It was when Google announced Legal Opinions and Journals as part of Google Scholar that it became known that as few as 3 people actually run that operation.  Add library records that have legitimate variations in metadata and other bibliographic descriptions and its no wonder that Google metadata can be all over the place.  There are no teams of catalogers pouring over book records in Mountain View. 

So, when considering the actual number of unique titles/editions in the world, Google's finite number of 129,864,880 books as of August 5th, 2010 will settle drunken bar bets, but not much else. I'll add the question, is this a number even worth knowing?  [MG]

Casebook Rentals and Thoughts on E-texts

Over the weekend, Joe H. and I exchanged some notes about West offering to "rent" casebooks. But there was no mention of providing the same to the professor who assigned the casebook. Not only can students rent their print casebook, but they will obtain immediate access to the e-version of the casebook. I will be honest and say I didn't know that TR was renting books, nor did I know TR was making all of its casebooks available in digital form. 

 Apparently, someone has figured that if you rent your casebook you will save 38% or more than if you buy it. So, for example, Dressler and Thomas' Criminal Procedure: Principles, Policies and Perspectives, 4th retails at (gulp) $178. If you rent it, you pay $22.50 per month until you return it. 

  I wonder if $22.50 a month is enough to get law students to return a book on time? I'll have to watch that and think about raising overdue fines. So it does seem like it would save a student money - and they get an e-version too. More on that in a minute. 

 So what does West get out of this? Probably, they are tired of loosing out on the secondary casebook market. I saw my sample title on Amazon available in very good but used condition for $110. So that could really pile up. The rental program could recoup some of that lost revenue. 

From the students' perspective, it is an attractive deal. You get an e-version of your casebook. You are allowed to mark up and highlight your print rental (I don't know how that works for West but they claim you can do it.). Access to your e-version terminates when you return your rental print version. And, you don't have the hassle of putting your used, marked up casebook on the market for resale. 

What I do find weird is that you have to rent the print version to gain access to the e-version. As far as I can tell, you cannot just rent the e-version. Perhaps they still need to guarantee a market to their authors. Also, the e-version is not kindle, nook, ipad or any other eye friendly e-reader gadget. You just download it to your computer. So, it looks like they haven't really put any extra investment in this product. They just let you download the PDF to your computer. 

 And, what is even odder is that there does not seem to be any effort to integrate the casebooks with their TWEN pages. 

Take a page from Blackboard. Last month, Blackboard announced that it would partner with a major publisher and two major e textbook vendors to make it easier for Blackboard users to access their digital materials directly through the Blackboard interface. The program will allow users to search for and assign readings in e-books directly from the Blackboard course page. It can't be long that Blackboard will partner up with long time partner LexisNexis with the same idea in mind. Ot at least I hope so. Think how much more convenient a web course could be if the readings can be loaded directly into the course web page or attached to other mashed-up content? 

So far, I haven't seen any effort by Lexis to rent casebooks or provide e-versions of their texts in e-reader friendly or nonfriendly version. Frankly, e-textbooks have not been terribly successful in universities - though I think this is a temporary situation. Authors have to become more creative and knowledgable about how to synthesize text and other media can work together for a better learning experience. A fully realized e-casebook may even take the place of a course page. 

CALI's e-Langdell's crowdsourcing project for e-textbooks for law is a great start. It will be interesting to see how TR and Lexis develop their e-textbook markets. I would like to see them integrate the casebooks into their course management systems, and perhaps provide some author support to help authors take advantage of the technology available. And,it will also be interesting if you are crossing platforms. Let's say you prefer the Blackboard course management system but prefer to use a casebook published by West. I am jumping way ahead, but what will happen in that situation? Or, what if you are using a completely different course management system?

If someone from CALI is reading this, I am wondering if e-Langdell resources can be folded into course management systems like TWEN, Blackboard, Moodle, Sharepoint or whatever might be used at various institutions. 

E-casebooks are just beginning to capture attention in the legal publishing market. It is unlikely that it will go away as the primary market for digital materials becomes even more adept at learning in this type of environment. I just hope the major players here put together a good product that can be used in multiple formats. (VS)

Welcome to the New "Customer Experience and Education" from the Folks Who Brought You Unsolicited Shipments of New Titles They Deemed Valuable Additions to Your Collection

I received our first opt-out postcard on August 5th from TR Legal.  You receive an opt-out postcard for a new West title yet?

I've been wondering when my little county law library's automatic enrollment in the Columbia House Legal Book Club was going to start. This, you may recall, is TR Legal's response to law librarian complaints about the Company's practice of sending unsolicited shipments of new titles West deemed so important to law library print collections that they trumped fair business practices and law librarians' own professional judgment on collection development matters. Back in May, no law librarian I know and, based on the emails I received, no law librarian who read the above-linked LLB post had yet seen one of the opt-out postcards Anne Ellis, Senior Director of Librarian (Marketing) Relations, referred to in response to then CRIV vice-chair Rob Myers' request that TR Legal cease its practice of sending unsolicited shipments without consent.

Our first opt-out postcard had a return-by date of August 20th (see below), otherwise the title would be automatically shipped. As explained in the accompanying "Dear Colleague" letter from Bob Azman, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience & Education:

We understand that our customers' time is valuable. Our goal is to provide only the products our customers want and need. If you do not want to receive Ohio Federal KeyRules, please let us know before August 20, 2010 to avoid delivery.

(Emphasis not added.)

Of course you can return the title to Eagan at TR Legal's cost if you don't want what TR Legal thinks your library needs should you fail to open your junk mail in a timely manner as defined by TR Legal, excluding, also of course, any costs associated with library staff time spent doing so including but not limited to packing it up for shipment using the hoped-for saved shipping box it came in, labeling the box, plus watching out for the title's appearance on a monthly statement, a credit for same on a follow-up monthly invoice if paid or a refund check which depending on how rigorous your institution's accounting requirements are may require staff time to track down the payment you made before you can deposit the refund you received. I should be calling this post "Vendor Experience & Education" but I digress... .

I won't nitpick over whether "before August 20" per the letter and "by August 20" per the postcard have the same meaning. However, because this new title covers court rules, I do hope its editorial quality for court filing deadlines is better than this mailing. The title is, after all, "all the information you need for a filing -- in one book!" It's just one damn good thing I wasn't on vacation when this notice arrived because opening junk mail is last on my To-Do list when I have a backlog of mail waiting for me.

Dear Colleague, is it OK if I send back any titles to your attention should I miss a reply by (or is it before) deadline because my junk mail stack is so high I failed to open my next Columbia House Legal Book Club mailing in a timely manner? One of your assistants won't mind wasting his or her time, right? You see, after reviewing my pile of shipment notices, invoices and statements from the Company, I've usually had enough with TR Legal mail.

Yes, I Opted-Out. How could I resist the offered "34% discount off retail." Well, for starters, neither the postcard nor the cover letter specified the retail price or the discounted price for Ohio Federal KeyRules or for  the "CourtRules/KeyRules combination," whatever that is. If TR Legal really understood that its "customers' time is valuable," don't you think this pesky little detail is important for making a buy-not buy decision? Nor does the mailing give any indication of publication frequency or state explicitly that you have entered into a standing order for future editions of Ohio Federal KeyRules. Well, OK, I think we can guess the answer to the standing order status.

I'm not wasting any of my time looking any of this information up by or before August 20th.  If I ever want this regurgitation of print content our library already has, I know how to order the title and want my rep to get a sales commission once I know exactly what it is going to cost our library, how frequently it is published and whether I have entered an on-going commitment. Thanks for allowing me to return the title if it doesn't suit our library's collection needs, but  I, for one, will never be checking the "Please send me" option on the postcard without knowing what any of these new titles are going to actually cost my library until I open an invoice. I also won't be stopping whatever I am doing to call customer service to find out this information by or before some stipulated deadline on a postcard.

Apparently to TR Legal's mindset, a deadline driven consent-to-ship does not require this degree of specificity. In my opinion, TR Legal continues to violate AALL's fair business practices for legal publishers principles. Here's a thought, how about a big, bold green (as in "go" or as in "revenue") checkmark symbol indicating "new title" displayed in print sales catalog mailings sent to libraries instead of all this. I, for one, do look over TR Legal print sales catalogs when they arrive on my desk. They even take priority over junk mail.

What's up with 34%? Not 30% or 35%, exactly 34%. Did some outside consulting firm inform TR Legal that either the Company had to double the number of copies at a set price like some "As Seen On TV" infomercial or offer a 34% discount to trigger sales? Maybe 34% is just the Senior VP of Print Pricing's favorite number? Remember the 34% price increase for West's Supreme Court Reporter advance sheet subscription? More likely, it is the favorite number of TR Legal's Senior VP of Profit Margin.

What the heck, unlike "As Seen On TV" infomercial pitches, at least shipping and handling is "free." By the way, considering the toil and trouble Anne Ellis has to deal with day in and day out, isn't it time she be promoted to Senior VP of something. Got room on the sixth floor? In the parking lot? But I digress again... .

Ah, Customer Experience & Education?The last time I received a boilerplate letter from Bob Azman was about six months ago. At that time he was Senior VP of Customer Service. Now he's Senior VP of Customer Experience & Education. Congratulations, I guess. New division, department, whatever? Or has TR Legal just given up on customer service and decided it was time to rebrand the vendor-buyer relationship?

Who thought up "Customer Experience & Education," and what altered state of consciousness was he, she, or everyone in the chain of command that had to stamp their collective approval on that name? Since customer experience and education is more from TR Legal to customers than it is from customers to the Company, one can easily imagine how the meetings started ..."well, no one is buying the partnership rhetoric anymore so we can't use that... ."

96.4% of law librarians who participated in a recent LLB poll simply want new product literature from TR Legal without any strings attached, without involuntarily becoming members of TR Legal's Columbia House Legal Book Club, without this brand of customer experience and education from the land of 10,000 invoices. To paraphrase from the "Dear Colleague" letter,  as a "current [insert West series] subscriber law librarians do not want to be scheduled to receive [insert new West title]." Quit wasting law librarians' time; where's the cancel my book club membership checkbox? [JH]

Last Call for LLB Poll: Tell Us Your Opinion on AALL Special Interest Section Fees

Here's the link to participate in LLB's AALL SIS fees poll.  Thanks in advance. Caren Biberman