Law Librarian Blog

"It Is The Way That Things Are": Your eBook reading is being mined for usage analysis

When one of my colleagues mentioned awhile back that he had just heard a news report about how eBooks are being mined for usage data by eBook sellers that is being shared with publishers my response was "damn I hadn't thought of that but it makes sense because it is doable." The source for this information was WSJ reporter Alexandra Alter's Your E-Book Is Reading You (updated June 29, 2012). A quick snip from Alter's story:

The major new players in e-book publishing—Amazon, Apple and Google—can easily track how far readers are getting in books, how long they spend reading them and which search terms they use to find books. Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook record how many times readers open the app and how much time they spend reading. Retailers and some publishers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented insight into how people engage with books.

eBook reading monitoring can go very deep as in (1) how long it takes to finish reading an eBook (2) what text a reader highlights, (3) what sections the reader skips over, and (4) whether a reader stops reading the book before finishing it in its entirety. Much but not all of the WSJ article focuses on how useful this data can to publishers to help them create books that will hold readers' attention better.

[Barnes & Noble vice president of e-books Jim Hilt] says that the company is still in "the earliest stages of deep analytics" and is sifting through "more data than we can use." But the data—which focuses on groups of readers, not individuals—has already yielded some useful insights into how people read particular genres.

(Emphasis added.)

I think we all know that just because this sort of data analysis is not focused on individuals it doesn't mean that data collection on eBook reading cannot track individuals. The first mainstream media report on eBook reading deep analytics I found was published in December 2010. See Martin Kaste's Is Your E-Book Reading Up on You (NPR's All Things Considered). In that episode, Cindy Cohn, EFF's legal director, warned that if the collected data is retained long-term the information could be subpoenaed to check someone's alibi, or as evidence in a lawsuit.

And it's not just what pages you read; it may also monitor where you read them. Kindles, iPads and other e-readers have geo-location abilities; using GPS or data from Wi-Fi and cell phone towers, it wouldn't be difficult for the devices to track their own locations in the physical world.

...

"Ultimately, this sort of thing scares the hell out of me," [author Steven] King says. "But it is the way that things are."

As law librarians should we be concerned? I think we should. I'm not sure the data is retained long-term by general trade eBook retailers but there is no doubt in my mind that collecting deep data of the Law eBook usage by WEXIS (and other vendors) for Law eBooks sold to individual consumers can be and hence likely will be, if not already is, collected just like all manner of legal search usage has been.

Our Law eBook publishers may make the case the general trade industry is making that such metrics will help them produce better enhanced law eBooks. For example, "[p]inpointing the moment when readers get bored could also help publishers create splashier digital editions by adding a video, a Web link or other multimedia features." Quoting from Alter's WSJ story.

With reader metrics Law eBook publishers can discover with some level of predictability what it takes to make an eBook a "best seller." Collecting reading habit metrics for Law eBooks can be crucial to the success of legal publishers who are crafting new normal sales models that are just as retail-centric as general trade publishers in the march towards No Touch eCommerce.

I seriously doubt our Law eBook reading users has even thought that their reading can be recorded and analyzed and that is doable down to the level of their user accounts. How do you think billing by user account is created on the fly? Law librarians know what is and has been going on.We know that database usage is mined and has become incorporated in crowd-sourcing, oops, I mean, usage metics for today's search engine designs.

Unlike the general eReading population, when attorneys are reading an eBook, they are typically doing so in their professional capacity. I seriously doubt data crunching vendor programming gurus and their Mad Men give this much thought. However, law librarians should be concerned about the deep data mining of Law eBooks reading.

UNC Law Library Director Anne Kleinfelder certainly does. See her When to Research is to Reveal: The Growing Threat to Attorney and Client Confidentiality from Online Tracking, 16 Virginia Journal of Law & Technology No. 1 (Spring, 2011) and Library Standards for Privacy: A Model for the Digital World?, 11 North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology 553 (2010) [SSRN].

The issues presented in both of Klinefelter's articles will be featured at Boston 2012. She will be presenting this year's well-deserved Distringuished Lecture Address.

Should Librarians Retire the Privacy Ethic?
Monday July 23, 2012, 2:45pm - 4:00pm in HCC-Room 208

Can we really protect library users from being tracked individually by database producers, search engines, websites, and mobile reader devices?   And does government access to this collected data undermine our PATRIOT Act advocacy?  Should librarians retire the privacy ethic and instead embrace the content, customization, remote access, cloud efficiencies, collection control, and safety benefits we can now purchase with privacy?

Klinefelter is also an organizer/presenter for the following Boston session:

Attorney-Client Confidentiality and the Law Librarian
Sunday July 22, 2012, 3:45pm - 5:00pm in HCC-Room 304

Attorney-client confidentiality is challenged by cloud computing, passwords that identify database users, vendor advertisements that identify subscribers, employer access to employee email, Internet Service Provider and web tracking access to online research activity, and some uses of social media. A Boston attorney with expertise in confidentiality and privacy law will outline the scope of ethical and legal requirements for attorneys and for the librarians and IT staff who support them. Participants will receive tips on how to support compliance with confidentiality requirements. A significant portion of the presentation will be devoted to audience questions in order to address specific concerns of those attending.

Clearing interest in the rise of Law eBooks offering from our major vendors is evidenced by the below-listed pre-Conference and Conference session programs featuring Law eBook vendor reps..

PLL Summit III Session
E-books: Is Colecting Vinyl Appropriate in the 21st Century?
Saturday, July 21, 2012, 2:30-3:15 p.m. at Marriott Copley Place

From the PLL Summit session announcement:

Are the new apps of e-books truly necessary/helpful for modern day research or are they a throwback to albums, eight-tracks and CD ROMs?  A panel of vendor representatives will share their perspectives on this rapidly changing medium.

Presentations by Scott Meiser, LexisNexis, Brian Kundeson, Thomson Reuters and John DeFeo, Wolters Kluwer Law & Business.

If you can only attend regular AALL program sessions, PLL is offering the following eBook session:

Law Firm Libraries: Your E-book Future Has Arrived
Monday July 23, 2012, 1:15pm - 2:15pm in HCC-Room 306

With little fanfare, LexisNexis has begun offering some content in e-book format (e.g., the color books such as the Redbook New York Civil Practice Law and Rules). Thomson Reuters has indicated court rules for New York and others will be in e-book format in the fourth quarter of 2011. The ABA and Apple have entered into a partnership to publish legal e-books for sale in the Apple bookstore. Visions of attorneys waving their Kindles and iPads in front of our faces demanding e-books have begun to haunt our dreams. So many questions come to mind: What will the functionality be like? How will updates work? Will attorneys want both print and e-book formats, and what will that do to our budgets? What happens when an attorney leaves, along with e-book content paid for by the firm? A panel of two firm librarians who have conducted e-book trials, and two vendors will talk about this experience, as well as what vendors are doing with regard to functionality, pricing, and administration.

Presentations by some (all?) of the above-listed Summit III vendor reps?

Clearly saving the dates and times for the above-listed "Should Librarians Retire the Privacy Ethic?" and "Attorney-Client Confidentiality and the Law Librarian" should be included in your AALL Boston 2012 schedule if you are attending Boston 2012 IMHO. [JH]

Federal Judical Center Publishes Managing Discovery of Electronic Information: A Pocket Guide for Judges

First published in 2007, the Federal Judicial Center has released a new edition of Managing Discovery of Electronic Information: A Pocket Guide for Judges (2012) by Barbara J. Rothstein, Ronald J. Hedges, and Elizabeth C. Wiggins.

This second-edition pocket guide helps federal judges manage the discovery of electronically stored information (ESI). It encourages judges to actively manage cases that involve ESI through early intervention and sustained supervision and to use the many tools available to them—case-management conferences and orders, limits on discovery, tiered or phased discovery, sampling, cost shifting, and, if necessary, sanctions—to facilitate cooperation among opposing lawyers and to ensure that discovery is fair, reasonable, and proportional to each case. It covers issues unique to the discovery of ESI, including its scope, the allocation of costs, the form of production, the waiver of privilege and work product protection, and the preservation of data and spoliation.

Hat tip to beSpacific. [JH]

Disappointed with Your Local Fireworks Display Celebrating the Fourth of July? There's an app to fix that

The Fireworks app for the iPhone or iPod Touch provides a means to craft your personalized Fourth of July Fireworks celebration. Apparently  you can choose from 15 locales around the world and synchronize that display with the music in your iTunes library. Nothing beats the traditional live performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture Finale for capping off the fireworks display for the 4th of July IMHO. See, for example, the below video which includes naval gunfire in addition to fireworks. For details on the Fireworks app and others, see Brad Spirrison's Celebrating apps for America on Independence Day. [JH]

PC Hardward Chart for DIYers

In case you are thinking about fixing or building your our PC. From Mashable. [JH]

Palfrey and Gasser's Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems

The co-authors of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (Basic Books, 2008) recently published a new book, Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems (Basic Books, June 5, 2012). John Palfrey, very soon to be, if not already, former Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School, and Urs Gasser, Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, gave a talk about their new work at Harvard Law School on May 30, 2012. The video can be viewed here.

From the blurb for "Interop":

In Interop, technology experts John Palfrey and Urs Gasser explore the immense importance of interoperability—the standardization and integration of technology—and show how this simple principle will hold the key to our success in the coming decades and beyond.

The practice of standardization has been facilitating innovation and economic growth for centuries. The standardization of the railroad gauge revolutionized the flow of commodities, the standardization of money revolutionized debt markets and simplified trade, and the standardization of credit networks has allowed for the purchase of goods using money deposited in a bank half a world away. These advancements did not eradicate the different systems they affected; instead, each system has been transformed so that it can interoperate with systems all over the world, while still preserving local diversity.

As Palfrey and Gasser show, interoperability is a critical aspect of any successful system—and now it is more important than ever. Today we are confronted with challenges that affect us on a global scale: the financial crisis, the quest for sustainable energy, and the need to reform health care systems and improve global disaster response systems. The successful flow of information across systems is crucial if we are to solve these problems, but we must also learn to manage the vast degree of interconnection inherent in each system involved. Interoperability offers a number of solutions to these global challenges, but Palfrey and Gasser also consider its potential negative effects, especially with respect to privacy, security, and co-dependence of states; indeed, interoperability has already sparked debates about document data formats, digital music, and how to create successful yet safe cloud computing. Interop demonstrates that, in order to get the most out of interoperability while minimizing its risks, we will need to fundamentally revisit our understanding of how it works, and how it can allow for improvements in each of its constituent parts.

In Interop, Palfrey and Gasser argue that there needs to be a nuanced, stable theory of interoperability—one that still generates efficiencies, but which also ensures a sustainable mode of interconnection. Pointing the way forward for the new information economy, Interop provides valuable insights into how technological integration and innovation can flourish in the twenty-first century.

[JH]

Tom Glocer on the Re-invention of Paper

Former TRI CEO Tom Glocer recently contributed a post to The Economist's Lean Back 2.0 blog. A quick snip:

While in my original post [iPad and Beyond, April 5, 2010] I accurately (but none too bravely) predicted future versions of the iPad would have 3G/wifi connectivity, a longer battery life and a better screen, we have not yet seen my bolder prediction of lightweight digital plastic sheets becoming the new print medium. This will come. As has often been noted, technology appears to evolve slowly in the near-term and then very rapidly over longer timespans as we consistently underestimate the compounding effects of incremental development.

While the iPad3 I use today is an impressive and enjoyable machine, it is but a hint of things to come.  Many await Apple’s entry into full screen home television – likely with a further evolved Siri voice control; however, I am still waiting for the re-invention of paper. That’s right, paper. What we call paper today has evolved over centuries from stretched animal skins to papyrus to wood paper pulp. It is lightweight, foldable, easily transportable, readable in bright light and relatively cheap. However, in its current “wooden” form, it is not immediately reusable, not searchable and comes with an environmental cost.

(Emphasis added.) For more, see Glocer's The iPad and the future of paper. Do note which new electronic publisher he has invested some money in.

Endnote. It appears that Glocer will be contributing additional posts to The Economist's Lean Back 2.0 blog. From What Is Lean Back 2.0?:

This Lean Back 2.0 blog aims to examine, discuss and track the impact that new digital reading devices, particularly tablets, are having on both reader behaviours and media businesses. Written primarily by Andrew Rashbass, chief executive of The Economist Group, it also includes thinking from commentators across the media, publishing, advertising and technology industries.

Why do we call this blog Lean Back 2.0? The print age created a Lean Back experience with reading as a solitary, ritual pleasure. The web age introduced Lean Forward as readers began to embrace information from multiple sources, actively researching and sharing content. Tablets and eReaders are driving yet another profound change in our relationship with content. They have made reading an immersive, lean-back experience again and created new opportunities to read. This is Lean Back 2.0.

[JH]

Are eReaders for Law eBooks Accessible?

On ALA's E-Content blog, Christopher Harris writes that "[p]eople with vision, dexterity, or cognitive disabilities need certain specific features, and ebook readers are all over the map in what they offer and how they offer it." He offers the following tips:

• For people who are blind, the text must be spoken aloud, and descriptions provided for images and graphs. Controls must be distinguishable by touch. (Some touchscreen devices now provide a way for controls to announce their function without activating them.)
• For people with low vision, the text must be high contrast and magnifiable ,or in a large, easy-to-read font.
• For people with cognitive disabilities, controls must be easy to use. Text must be able to be spoken aloud and highlighted as it is spoken.
• For people with dexterity impairments, controls must be easy to operate, and not require more than one action at a time, or complicated actions. Devices must be easy to lift, hold, and operate with one hand.
• For people with hearing loss, audible alerts and alarms should have a visible form as well. Any audio content should be available in text.

For more, see Making Ebooks Accessible. [JH]

There's an App Developer for That: Creating in-house mobile solutions for Thomson Reuters content by acquiring Apsmart

On June 8, 2012, Thomson Reuters announced it had acquired Apsmart. From the press release:

The Apsmart acquisition will improve Thomson Reuters ability to provide customers with mobile solutions that drive a competitive differentiation in the marketplace.

Mobile is an increasingly significant way in which professionals work and consume information. The acquisition of Apsmart will enhance Thomson Reuters mobile product creation, design and development, allowing the company to deliver even more expert-enriched content, news and solutions through the interfaces that professionals want on the mobile devices they use.

(Emphasis added.)

From Apsmart founder Rahul Powar's blog post:

Thomson Reuters is intensely focused on serving the needs of professional customers in the financial and risk, legal, tax and accounting, intellectual property and science and media markets. And as mobile becomes increasingly important to how professionals work and consume information, we’re uniquely positioned to help deliver Thomson Reuters expert-enriched content, news and solutions through the interfaces customers want on the mobile devices they use.

(Emphasis added.)

Android Apps? I'm wondering if this acquisition means TR will enter the brave new world of Android apps. Android-powered devices are gaining market share but app development is floundering because of the many different devices and Android operating systems. See Yep. Developers Are Still Building For Apple’s iOS Over Android By A Factor Of 2-to-1. ("Fragmentation is still a beast. Unlike iOS where you might have to deal with the 4S, the 4, the 3G and the 3GS (or maybe a half-dozen models), Android developers generally need to support dozens of devices. Or if you want to go the extra mile, hundreds!")  

Clearly, TRI's acquisition means moble app development will be standardized across the multiple silos of the Company's operations much like one can expect from the Company's ProView eBook platform. [JH]

"Imagine a search engine that simply removed the top 1 million most popular web sites from its index. What would you discover?"

Hat tip to Slaw's Omar Ha-Redeye for calling attention to Million Short, a new search engine created by Sanjay Arora. Arora created what he calls "a discovery engine" late one Sunday evening! In The Anti-Google Search Engine, Ha-Redeye writes

The premise behind the site is that it actually removes the most popular sites from search results (top sites are removed, not necessarily the top web results). You can adjust it to remove the top million sites, all the way down to the top one hundred most popular sites online. The rationale is that many of the spammy websites that try to game Google are automatically excluded, potentially providing a more robust and insightful result. ... For legal researchers this could help unearth a treasure trove of more obscure legal web sites with legal commentary or case summaries that would be excluded in either high profile cases or in subject areas where there is a lot of competing but irrelevant information.

[JH]

Was Harvard Law School the First to Ban Student Use of Personal Portable Computers?

Two HLS students were not allowed to use their 25-pound Osborne 1 "portables" to take their final exams in 1982. See Evan Koblentz's Law Technology News story, Harvard Law School Once Banned Portable Computers. Is this the first recorded ban on the use of portable computers by a law school? [JH]

Penetrating the Once Impenetrable WEXIS Market: Fastcase's Android App for Legal Research as an Illustration

I don't know how many of Fastcase's 500,000 paid subscribers use Android devices but those who do now can use Fastcase's legal research app built for the Android OS. Yesterday, the Company announced the launch of the first legal research app for Android phones and tablets here. The app also may attract cost conscious practitioners who have not jumped on the iPhone-iPad bandwagon to Fastcase. Smart move.

Fastcase CEO Ed Walters was quoted in a paidContent article published the day before the Android app roll-out (no, not about the app per se). A snip:

Today, digital technology is letting Bloomberg Law scan and sort a vast pool of law that would once have taken decades to assemble. But while its tools rival those of the incumbents [WEXIS], there is also a bigger question of whether the industry’s underlying business model is still viable.

That business model is based on charging lawyers enormous money to access a tightly controlled pool of information is still viable. It is also highly labor-intensive. Fastcase’s Walters described practices like Westlaw’s technique of reading and annotating cases as a “relic, an anachronism from the age of print … they’re acting as if search engines never existed.”

Fastcase’s own model relies on using algorithms to rapidly sort cases and track precedents. The company sells retail subscriptions for $95 a month and also offers bulk memberships to state bar associations.

Companies like Fastcase are far from displacing the giants, but they do illustrate how technology is allowing not just Bloomberg but upstarts to challenge a once impenetrable market. At the same time, Google and the Cornell-based non-profit Legal Information Institute are making stacks of cases, patent histories and more available for free.

(Emphasis added.) For more, see Jeff John Roberts' Bloomberg’s big bite for billions of legal dollars (June 4, 2012).

Once WEXIS "owned" virtually 100% of the commercial legal search market. It is quite possible their combined market share will be reduced to 50-60% with BLaw, Fastcase and other search providers grabbing the rest of the market from them. [JH]

What is Touche?

Take a look:

For more, see Sebastian Anthony's Disney Touché turns everyday objects into multi-touch, gesture-recognizing interfaces on ExtremeTech. [JH]

Are Search Engine Results Protected by the First Amendment?

According to UCLA law prof Eugene Volokh the answer is "yes." "Google commissioned me to write this White Paper (“First Amendment Protection for Search Engine Search Results“), so I thought I’d pass it along. I wrote the paper as an advocate, and not as a disinterested academic, but I hope some of our readers might find it interesting nonetheless," wrote Eugene Volokh yesterday.

It certainly sounds like it will make for interesting reading. The paper quickly caught the attention of the media. See, for example, Wired's Threat Level post by Kim Zetter, Jeff John Roberts' paidContent post and Lance Whitney's CNET post for starters. {JH]

Kill or Keep Standing Orders: Performing a Little Old School Due Diligence (And who should hire contract lawyers if predictive coding is so smart?)

Will contract lawyers currently performing document review grunt work be fishing for new jobs soon? See Kenneth Anderson's Is Contract Lawyering Doomed by Algorithm? on The Volokh Conspiracy. For a little background on predictive coding, see Sharon D. Nelson and John W. Simek's Slaw post, What’s Hot in E-Discovery? ("The way most lawyers engage in traditional keyword searches is, as others have suggested, the equivalent of 'Go Fish.'").

Here's a thought. Perhaps some of our legal publishers will follow Bloomberg Law's example of hiring unemployed but experienced attorneys for editorial jobs. Sure beats hiring some kids straight out of law school to KeyCite old copy and then push the "send to manufacturing" button to spit out an "updated" pocket part or a "replaced" annual pamphlet edition. Under current legal labor market conditions, there is plenty of "supply" for cheap legal workforce needs. Hell, it might even improve editorial quality. This work can even be contracted out to stay-at-home editors.

Will, for example, Pangea3's job ads state "And other duties as assigned including but not limited to editing TR Legal publications"? For one recent once but no longer web store banner tag-lined "trusted legal resource from..." print title, we found 20 or so additional cases listed in the table of authorities and four less pages of text in the body of the work. I gave up looking for fresh edited content after comparing some 20 pages from last year's to this year's version. Didn't see any content changes but I did observe that this year's version displayed some quirky type format changes which pushed content around. A couple of pages later, I ended my page-by-page review because that was the only difference I had found. Of course, I probably should have compared the 550-plus additional pages but I got distracted by the kill-keep standing order question. 

I'm leaning towards "kill." Our practitioners can do at least as good a job checking latter case history and treatment as some nameless over-worked and under-supervised editorial assistant. Heck, our practitioners will even remember to check for and then will understand federal and state statutory changes. The only matter that awaits a final decision on my part is whether or not to kill each title one at a time or issue a kill order for all of them at the same time.

I'm thinking the latter because customer service reps are pretty busy dealing with Account Receivables requests over the fiasco caused by the acquisition of this title. It is pretty damn bad when well-meaning customer service reps who are trying to do a good job have to deal with "customer experience and education" like we mere customers do. (Note well current subscribers, once you get past the due diligence this Company's AR department wants you to perform for it, the post-acquisition subscription renewal rate has only been jacked up about 25 percent -- just might not be worth it.) Perhaps that company should have outsourced its due diligence? What if it did?

My hunch is you know the identity of the publisher and the poor souls dealing with their own AR department. Did I mention that the admitted incomplete examination mentioned above was for the latest annual pamphlet edition of a secondary legal title published by the folks in the Land of 10,000 Invoiced "New Editions"? Ah well, mailed print sale brochures from "TR Westlaw" for once "updated" loose-leaf print titles that have been pamphlet switcherooed now only indicate that they are "replaced annually." Only those loose-leaf titles that haven't yet experienced a format switcheroo carry the "updated" tag. But remember

"customer feedback ... clearly preferred the pamphlet [format] for updates for certain kinds of products."

 Perhaps "replacements" would have been a better word choice.

What does "new" mean? Perhaps TR's legal department issued a CYA directive to the Company's print ad copywriters. Hell if I know. Is "Replaced Edition" a more accurate tag than "New Edition" on WestMart page displays? To borrow from a Clintonian push-back, it all depends on what "new" means. For me, "new" means keep or kill a standing order. Since I buy many multiple copies of many annually "replaced" titles for our little county law library collection plus office copies for my statutory users, the time will come when it very well just may mean kill them all.

We're not just dealing with "replaced" editions of overpriced court rules anymore. Click on the "customer feedback" link above for some generalities about where this form of "predictive coding" is heading. [JH]

ALA TechSource's Workshop on Gadgets in the Library: First Session Starts Tomorrow

Jason Griffey will be presenting a two-part online workshop called "Gadgets in the Library: A Practical Guide to Personal Electronics for Librarians":

Session 1: Tablets and eReaders
Thursday, May 10, 2:30pm – 4:00pm Eastern

This session will cover the following topics:

• Why do we care?
• Operating Systems vs Devices
• iOS & Android
• Circulation & Policy

Session 2: E-Readers, continued and Future Tech
Thursday, May 24, 2:30pm – 4:00pm Eastern

This session will cover the following topics:

• More on eReaders
• 3D printing and hackerspaces
• Discussion on best practices
• Wrap up

Registration information.

Last week, Griffey posted Experiences Become Expectations on the ALA TechSource blog. One snip:

Our patrons are increasingly coming to expect that our resources will be available and easily used on their devices. Libraries are the democratizers of information. As information is increasingly amorphous digital content, we need to be familiar with the containers that give our digital bits form and substance. Being democratizers of technology, as well, ensures that everyone has the ability to use the latest and greatest in electronics.

NB: The ALA TechSource Editor's note:

This post is adapted from the introduction to Jason Griffey’s new Library Technology Report “Gadgets and Gizmos: Libraries and the Post-PC Era.” Jason revisits the technologies that he highlighted in his 2010 report. And he beats himself up a bit over it. Help him let go of the past; excuse him from predicting the future; and join him in discussing the gadgets your patrons are using today... .

Got webinars? ALA TechSource online workshops are fairly regular occurrences. Many, like "Gadgets in the Library" for example, IMHO are relevant to law libraries. It might be worth considering an ALA membership because AALL webinars on law library matters are few, far between, and not part of any discernible concerted effort to utilize 21st century communication mediums to offer programs on topical education and professional developments on a regular basis.

For an association that expends so much time, effort and money on its primary vehicle for education and professional development aka the 20th century model of annual meetings, it just might be worthwhile to reform our association's institutionalized focus because, well, it is the 21st century, right? [JH]

Value and Utility Propositions for Enhanced Law eBooks: Marx vs. the Other Guy

We all know that CALI's executive director John Meyer is a pinko commie (or commie pinko) and that CALI is home base for the Red Menace because "[o]ur premise is that if it's educational, you've got to give people the freedom to repurpose the material for educational goals. If anytime you have to ask yourself, 'Does this make us money,' then you're not really serving educational goals." Quoting from RIP pCasebooks, 1871 - 2021 (Do note John's comment to the post.) Now comes more commie open access propaganda from Elmer Master, CALI's Director of Internet Development:

The future of the book is the open web, not some platform silo. Only putting books on the web will unlock the potential of books and it is easy enough to do.

Legal information workers of the world unite! In The Future of The (Case)Book: Open and Closed Platforms, Elmer makes an important point:

Anything that you can do on the web, you can do with a book. As an author, reader, student, teacher, scholar; anything is possible with a book that is on the open web. The potential for linking, including external material, use of media, note taking, editing, markup, remixing are opened without the bounds of a specific reader platform. A book as a website provides the potential for unlimited customization that will work across any hardware platform.

This Marxist inspired argument does assume that locking down an eBook to one or more specific commercial platforms reduces the utility of the eBook. Nothing is stopping an author of an enhanced law eBook from citing to and linking to any source unless the commercial publisher and/or e-bookseller refuses to allow that.

Sound far-fetched? Seth Godin, the bestselling author of 13 books, reports that Apple

is rejecting my new manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams and won’t carry it in their store because inside the manifesto are [Amazon] links to buy the books I mention in the bibliography.

What if one of our commercial law vendors insists on substituting the vendor's database links for the worker's provided links to open source law? What if the author cites and links to secondary source titles not available in the vendor's database because they are published by a competitor?  Here's where the law eBook value proposition of bourgeois economics comes into play. We'll have to just wait to see how this plays out in the commercial enhanced law eBook space.

Watch out attendees of Some Assembly Required. I'm thinking a full-blown commie manifesto is coming. (Do note that the above link embedded in the word "manifesto" is to text provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.) The "men in black" at CALI's annual meeting this year may be agents of potential buyers of TR Legal's law school publishing division.

Customization as repurposing content for a specific educational purpose. Today's forthcoming eBook formats include enhanced capabilities for interactivity but, and not intending to put words in Elmer's mouth, I believe his most important point really is that the book-on-the-web offers customization opportunities for the course instructor who adopts the work and student end users. The key here is the open web where context can be provided with an Creative Commons license. In terms of instructional purposes, fair use may allow customization by scraping eBook content to tailor text for e-course packages profs create and enhance for a specific reading list based on utilizing all available e-content in all available forms. That, however, may not be as easy to do as the open web platform.

Of course, the licensing model for law eBooks may not even allow fair use for educational purposes by way of customization or current (as in not yet hacked) platforms that may make it damn hard to do so. While CALI is a corrective for for-profit ventures in this market space, the commercial publishers for law eTextbooks -- commercial casebooks, treatises and study aids -- in enhanced eBook formats will be the dominate product source for this market.

The other guy's name is Adam Smith. Despite CALI's noble goals, many (most?) law profs do like to get paid for their labor when they write law books. The greatest earnings potential remains in the distribution channels offered by our commercial legal publishers. Let's add that commercial publishers have put a lot more of the editorial production work on the shoulders of authors but they have not yet tasked them with eBook conversion coding.

Imaging, for example, the cringing experience of a IT staffer's reaction to a law prof who says "I want to unlock the potential of my new book by putting it on the web or eBooking it and I hear that is 'easy enough to do.' So I want you to create an e-commerce site on the web for my book or format the text for all eBook reader apps for me so I can sell it to everyone." Remember when law profs ask their tech staffs to create their powerpoint presentations for them? Is this next?

Law school IT staff alert! In the commercial space, there are p- and e-Book publishers you can send your law faculty to investigate. One that come immediately to mind is Tulane law prof turned indie publisher, Steven Alan Childress' Quid Pro Books.

Sure there are plenty of law profs who participate in CALI e-text publishing programs. They should be commended. Creative Commons permissions or an ownership model for commercial eBooks which allows repackaging of e-Content that does not consider customization to be a derivative work under copyright law may seem far fetched but my hunch is that some of our major legal publishers will eventually allow some sort of customization and not just for educational purposes. Doing otherwise eventually will be about as futile as one of our vendor's long ago attempt to stop photocopying based on copyright claims.

End note. With I had tip to Sarah Glassmeyer's tweet, there is another commie plot afoot in the education field. The first ever Open Education Week is taking place March 5-10 2012. The purpose is to raise awareness of the open education movement and its impact on teaching and learning worldwide.

This campaign might want to take a close look at the FCC and US Department of Education's “challenge to states and companies to ensure every K-12 student has a digital textbook within five years.”

This ambitious plan “to help K-12 schools transition to digital textbooks” in the next 5 years is laid out in the Digital Textbook Collaborative. The plan builds on the FCC’s National Broadband Plan and the Department of Education’s National Education Technology Plan and includes “membership” from a range of technology companies, publishers, schools and associations—from Apple to Verizon, Blackboard to McGraw Hill, San Diego Unified School District to Freed-Hardeman University.

Quoting from Nancy K. Herther's Etextbooks Attracting Involvement of the FCC, Education Department, and Higher Ed. [JH]

The MIT School of Law Model: What if technology infusion alters the traditional curriculum?

Infuse, defined:

to cause to be permeated with something (as a principle or quality) that alters usually for the better

In Training students for the technology infused law practice of the 21st Century, Daniel Martin Katz, Michigan State Univ. College of Law, identifies a skills set law students will need to be competitive because they are in short supply: "technology, computational data analytics, finance, informatics, economics, accounting, human computer interaction, supply chain mgmt, etc."

To make our students competitive (hopefully thereby restore the Return on Investment associated with the JD) will require legal education to move away from its significant liberal arts / humanities bent and look more like polytechnic research and teaching operation... .

Conceptually, Katz calls this the MIT School of Law model.

I have argued that the arbitrage opportunity in the market for legal education is for an institution(s) the move toward an “MIT School of Law.” In other words, an MIT style institution would do just fine in the market for legal education (in the long run perhaps better than HYS? [editor's note, HLS?]).

If you are an employer – hiring a lawyer for the 21st Century – please ask yourself this question: do you want a student from an MIT Style institution or some sort of liberal arts school? Of course, the market will ultimately decide this question — but I would place my bet with an MIT style legal institution.

Katz underscores technology and high end data analytics skills as being in very limited supply. This sort of expertise infusion in the legal academy's traditional liberal arts / humanities curriculum dovetails nicely into the skill set of 21st century librarianship even if a total transformation to an MIT style legal education is fanciful.

The Challenge. "You, all of you, are the librarians of the future. Am I right? Is this the dawn of the great age of librarians? That's up to you," writes T. Scott Plutchak in Breaking the barriers of time and space: the dawning of the great age of librarians, J Med Libr Assoc. 2012 January; 100(1): 10–19 (highly recommended). See also Achieving the “Golden Age of Librarians” — An Ambitious Project of Deep Redefinition.

Looking closer to present day realities, if today's purveyors of professional legal services were to offer their full range of law practice solutions to law students nationwide at their typical wholesale pricing for indoctrination objectives, my hunch is that the current cadre of legal skills profs would need today's law library staff to help evaluate their utility for a "practice ready" legal skills focused law school education that is technology infused. [JH]

2012 CALI Conference Call for Speakers: Seeking people with strong opinions, great ideas, interesting projects and useful advice

Some Assembly Required is the theme for this year's Conference for Law School Computing (held at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego, Thursday – Saturday, June 21-23, 2012). Recently John Mayer issued a call for speakers, observing

For 22 years, the CALI Conference has organized its schedule at nearly the last minute in order to bring the most relevant and up-to-date presentations to attendees. This year is no different and we are looking for people with strong opinions, great ideas, interesting projects and useful advice.

(Emphasis added.)

The deadline for session proposals is Friday, April 6, 2012. In his call, John adds

We are going to use community voting to help with selecting sessions again this year. Your votes let us know which sessions you would like to see on the conference agenda. Starting on Monday February 27, 2012, voting will be opened and will remain open until Friday April 27, 2012.

Details, including how to submit a proposal for the 2012 CALI conference, are available in John's CALI Spotlight blog post.

One thing I miss by not working in academic law libraries anymore is not being able to attend CALI's annual meeting. While certainly not a techie, CALI conference sessions are always interesting because the speakers and attendees are actually engaged in the process of experimenting and implementing change. Could that be why CALI is seeking "people with strong opinions, great ideas, interesting projects and useful advice" to offer proposals for its annual meeting? Yup. [JH]

Thomson Reuters' OnePass-YourAss Scheme, Part Two: "There are times when verbal ingenuity is not enough."

Just because some OnePass account holder gets a pop up in WestMart's eCommerce online purchasing system which says in effect "I am authorized to make this purchase" doesn't cut it when Thomson Reuters has made absolutely no attempt to verify that statement. That OnePass account holder may think he or she is authorized to buy because he or she has this nifty OnePass user account but will learn that is not the case after racking up an institutional charge that results in an in-house "Banzai" meeting with this buckaroo.

"Hey, hey, hey — don't be mean. We don't have to be mean. 'Cause, remember: no matter where you go... there you are." Hell, even Amazon has a better system. I can buy something on Amazon, charge it to my personal credit card or established institutional line-of-credit account depending on well, you know, I am buying something for me or my library. I can also instruct Amazon where I want the stuff shipped as in to home or office and that ship-to is not tied to my billing selection. Of course, there is another solution. It is a bit extreme but in this Shed West Era of print cancellations and there being no sacred cows requiring both WEXIS search services, just kill off TR Legal search but remember you will also have to kill off all OnePass-ed "solutions" services, too.

So here we are. Once upon a time, West reps were selling CDs to individual attorneys that showed up on their institution's billing account without prior approval from whomever actually had the authority to spend the institution's $$. Then billing to West institutional accounts was restricted. Now TR Legal is stealing a sales tactic from the bad old days and applying it again.

"Treat us good, we'll treat you better. Treat us bad, we’ll treat you worse." I'm thinking TR Legal believes most institutional buyers just won't be won't be paying much attention to their OnePass-YourAss system. Bull. In these times of close monitoring of spending, even a $12 charge to a library account gets spotted. Of course, not all institutional buyers pay that much attention or are as knowledgeable in how Thomson Reuters tries to conduct business until the Company gets caught.

Today's TR ProView eBooks will end up being just like yesterday's CD-ROMs. When we invoice-playing institutional buyers see statements that include the $$$ charges for unauthorized purchases (plus their multi-years commitments to and good 'til cancelled licensing terms) by way of OnePass-YourAss all hell will break out again.

"In my experience, nothing is ever what it seems to be, but everything is exactly what it is." Hello TR Legal, we know you really meant it when you told lawyers in a nutshell that they needed their heads examined if they know their law librarian's name a couple of years ago. We know the marketing objective to increase sales is to sell directly to the attorney (pBooks, eBooks, even, god hell us, perhaps someday personalized WLN plans in institutional settings) by way of WestMart. Hell, I've got no problem if any attorney foolishly wants to spend his or her money to buy one of your products or services but I seriously doubt any institutional buyer wants that personal purchase to become an institutionalized expense.

I offer three off-the-top of this aging and decrepit Boomer-Gen law library director reasons:

1. There is no verification mechanism in place;
2. Institutional buyers just might want to make volume purchases at a discounted price; and
3. You know damn well, no institutional buyer representative wants to start his or her week off with the following to-do list.

Monday:

• OnePass Account Holder Jim Smith's license for X is set to expire. Does he want to keep it? What is the price inflation rate?
• OnePass Account Holder Bob Daleo's licenses for X and Y are set to expire. Does he want to cancel one or both of them? If not, what is the price inflation rate?

Tuesday:

• One Pass Account Holder Mike Suchsland's license for A is set to expire. Does he want to keep it? What is the price inflation rate?
• Remember to check with OnePass Account Holder Peter Warwick to see if he still wants us to shell out for SuperLawyer or has simply forgotten about that.

Wednesday:

• Check to confirm that Friday's request that former OnePass Account Holder Tom Glocer's account and all things tied to his account has been vaporized.
• One Pass Account Holder Mike Suchsland's license for B and Z is set to expire. Does he want to cancel one or both of them? If not, what is the price inflation rate?

Thursday:

• One Pass Account Holder Deirdre Stanley's licenses for C, D, X, Y are set to expire. Before checking with her, log into her account to see if her license for A was vaporized because Jim Smith thinks it is too expense although Mike Suchsland "loves" it. (Note to self: did we get a credit?)
• OnePass Account Holder Jim Smith's license for C and E are set to expire. Does he want to keep them? What is the price inflation rate?

Friday:

• Check (again) to see if the glitch to Jim Powell's OnePass account has been fixed yet.

"A battle won is a battle which [Thomson Reuters] will not acknowledge being lost." TRI's year-end financial report and webcast about that starts at 8:30 AM (Eastern) tomorrow. I doubt any of the execs will be highlighting this OnePass-YourAss scheme to guarantee a revenue stream for its cash cow, TR Legal.

Of course, I could be wrong. They just might be that arrogant to still think TR Legal's US legal customer base really, really needs what TR sells so their customer base will swallow OnePass-YourAss. Hell, someone may even follow the well-scripted response that "we've surveyed our customers and they think this is great!"

"Know that, as in life, there is much that many have looked upon but few have seen because, as my father told me and his father told him, you will come to learn a great deal if you study the insignificant in depth." The investment community knows that. Remember folks, what really matters to the investment community isn't one-off revenue. It's all about organic growth of recurring revenues (read subscriptions and licenses). TR Legal paid the price for maintaining its historical rate of print supplement price inflation during what is known as the work-in-progress Shed West Era.

TRI's OnePass-YourAss scheme with its tie-up to institutional accounts, its multi-year commitments to its coming line of ProView eBooks designed to be sold to individual attorneys with that later-on standing order component and the automatic eBook price inflation rates we will see in a couple of years, is designed for one and only one reason. That reason is not "consumer surplus," an economic term of art for consumers happy to get more than what they expected. Nope, the strategic objective here is increasing its lost revenue stream for recurring revenues. However...

"Those in a hurry show only that the thing they are about is too big for them."

[JH]

ABA House of Delegates Vote in Favor of Supporting the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act

Resolution 102B, supporting UELMA, was approved by a voice vote, "though a significant number of delegates voted nay," reported Debra Cassens Weiss in the ABAJ News. Did the youngsters shout down the oldsters? Well at least it passed. As the ABA report that accompanied the resolution stated:

UELMA addresses the critical need to manage electronic legal information in a manner that guarantees the trustworthiness of and continuing access to important state legal material.

[JH]