Law Librarian Blog

Streamlining Book Metadata Workflow

NISO and OCLC have published a white paper entitled Streamlining Book Metadata Workflow, written by consultant Judy Luther. The paper analyzes the current state of metadata creation, exchange, and use throughout the book supply chain. Through interviews with over 30 industry representatives, Luther has created a book metadata exchange map illustrating the workflow and metadata exchange and has identified opportunities for eliminating redundancies and making the entire process more economical.

Hat tip to Resource Shelf. [JH]

PLI Selling Books in Kindle Format

According to the PLI press release, there are currently 67 PLI titles available on Kindle, covering such areas as business, corporate and securities law, banking and commercial law, intellectual property law, estate and tax planning law, real estate law, insurance law, elder law, and litigation. By year-end, the Kindle line will expand to over 100 titles. See Amazon listing of available Kindled titles. "Our average book is easily over 1,000 pages, and a number are multivolume sets, so you're talking about a lot of information," said William Cubberley, who oversees the PLI's publishing program. "You'll be able to carry an entire law library on your Kindle." Quoting from the WSJ's Amazon's Kindle to Sell Law Books.

Hard copy filing supplementation to PLI titles apparently will be replaced by the purchase of revised Kindled editions. "Users will be able to delete old versions of their texts and substitute new books," writes Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in the WSJ article. No word on pricing for the updated Kindled titles but annual print supplements typically run about $125. [JH] 

When There's No Print Edition, Do Readers Flock to Newspaper Websites?

Editor & Publisher reports on its analysis of what happens to a newspaper's web traffic once the print edition is dropped on certain days or eliminated completely. Is there a spike in online readership? Is the print product a necessary vehicle to drive people to the website? The article looks at traffic patterns at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, and several smaller newspapers.

Hat tip to beSpacific. [JH]

Caught in the Act: Elsevier Offers $25 Gift Card for 5-Star Reviews

Inside Higher Ed is reporting that Elsevier offered $25 gift cards for 5-star reviews on Amazon and Barnes & Noble to contributors of the publisher's new title, Clinical Psychology (On Amazon, note the 1-star review calling attention to the marketing scheme).

Elsevier's email:

Congratulations and thank you for your contribution to Clinical Psychology. Now that the book is published, we need your help to get some 5 star reviews posted to both Amazon and Barnes & Noble to help support and promote it. As you know, these online reviews are extremely persuasive when customers are considering a purchase. For your time, we would like to compensate you with a copy of the book under review as well as a $25 Amazon gift card. If you have colleagues or students who would be willing to post positive reviews, please feel free to forward this e-mail to them to participate. We share the common goal of wanting Clinical Psychology to sell and succeed. The tactics defined above have proven to dramatically increase exposure and boost sales. I hope we can work together to make a strong and profitable impact through our online bookselling channels.

George Tremblay (Antioch University) and a contributor to the work emailed his friends and colleagues his response to the offer:

As a contributor to an Elsevier textbook, I received the invitation ... You might want to reconsider any weight you accord to those Amazon reviews, considering the probability that at least some of them are being bought. I told them this one backfired, as I'd be forwarding it to a listserve of academic psychologists -- the very potential audience for the book (which I hasten to add, I actually do hope will succeed, but Elsevier should be ashamed of themselves).

Of course, Elsevier is now distancing itself from its stealthy marketing promotion. [JH]

Amazon Says "No" to Collecting Sales Tax by Closing Affiliate Accounts

Amazon has decided to end its business relationships with North Carolina and Rhode Island marketing affiliates by closing their accounts because both states have passed laws that require collection of sales taxes if in-state online-marketing affiliates get a sales commission by featuring links to outside e-commerce sites on their own websites. The decision has left indie booksellers looking for alternatives to Amazon. Details on the Wall Street Journal here and here. Hat tip to LISNews. [JH]

Simon & Schuster Will Sell Books Through Scribd

The market for e-books got slightly bigger today with news that Simon & Schuster will use Scribd as a distribution channel.  The company will make about 5,000 titles available.  They will be in a secure PDF format that can be loaded on a Sony book reader, but not Amazon's Kindle.  Scribd is one of several popular community document sites where users upload their own documents.  Simon & Schuster must see enough of a community mass to make their titles available this way.  That company and other publishers are looking to create a market for e-books before Amazon dominates it completely the way Apple does for music and players.  Amazon's strategy of a single price for all titles is right out of Apple's playbook, and one at which publishers chafe.  The Kindle is new enough as a reader, even in successive generations, to be subject to competition.  In fact, Scribd is planning an iPhone app that allows content to be read on that device.  Publishers appear to be proactive long before their counterparts in the music business in pushing alternative channels.  Kindle as a device certainly has its selling points.  It's elegant, it has a connection to the Amazon store which is part of the bundle, and it makes reading easy.  It is possible that web readers may be just as happy as reading a PDF, albeit one with restricted rights (no printing, among others) on a netbook or other device.  Simon and Schuster and the rest are probably counting on it.  [MG]

Product Development Thomson West-Style

Update on Rudovsky v. West Publishing Corp.

The Legal Intelligencer's Shannon P. Duffy is reporting that a federal judge has refused to dismiss a defamation suit brought by two law professors who claim that West Publishing harmed their reputations when it falsely identified them as the authors of a poorly researched treatise update. For background, see LLB's earlier post, Cold Comfort for West in "Sham" Treatise Pocket Part Ruling.

According to the product description, The Complete CAN-SPAM Act Practice Guide: Including Regulations, Case Law and Related Statutes (Thomson West, 2008) "provides an in-depth analysis and explanation of the CAN-SPAM Act, implementing regulations, and case law, presented in a clear, well-organized manner. Helpful for both experts and novices, the text will enlighten this complicated area of law. The author's extensive subject knowledge comes from having won the largest damages award ever granted under the CAN-SPAM Act..."

According to Lance Burke's (Reference/Access Services Librarian, Elon School of Law) book review on AALL Spectrum Blog, "if none of your patrons are interested in this field, it is unlikely this book will be the catalyst that sparks their interest." Burke observes that only 91 of the 422 page text contains analysis by the author, Ian C. Ballon. "The longest chapter of the book, and unfortunately, the most tedious" writes Burke, Scope of the Act’s Coverage "discusses what types of businesses and messages are covered under the act.  While this information would be invaluable to someone who was interested in learning if a particular type of business is covered by the act, it does not make for interesting reading."

Sounds like Thomson West took what would have been an OK practitioner article publishable in an ABA journal, added 331 pages of filler  -- the CAN-SPAM Act and regs, state anti-span laws and court documents from one of Ballon’s CAN-SPAM cases -- and slapped on a $79.00 price tag. In other words, nothing new in product development. For a little more on product development Thomson West-style, see the above sidebar. [JH]

Miller's Submission Guide for Online Law Review Supplements

Submission Guide for Online Law Review Supplements [SSRN] by EvidenceProf Blog editor Colin Miller (John Marshall Law School, Chicago) contains information about submitting essays and articles to general online law review supplements. It covers 19 general online law reviews and will be updated on an annual basis and as law schools create new online law review supplements. See also Miller's blog post. Very helpful. [JH]

A First, On Demand and Short-Run Book Titles Exceed Traditional Book Title Production in 2008

According to Bowker, 2008 new book title production achieved an historic development in the U.S. book publishing industry because On Demand and short-run book titles exceeded the number of traditional book titles entering the marketplace for the first time: 285,394 On Demand books compared to 275,232 traditionally produced titles and editions. The press release also noted that the 2008 production of On Demand titles increased 132% increase over last year’s final total of 123,276 titles. This was the second consecutive year of of triple-digit growth in the On Demand segment.

The production of new law titles and editions in 2008 according to Bowker's statistical report reached 5,480 titles. [JH]

Protecting Your Scholarship: Copyrights, Publication Agreements, and Open Access

In the legal academy it's time to publish or perish, at least it is for those profs who take their teaching responsibilities serious enough to prioritize teaching higher than writing during the academic year. Timothy Armstrong (Cincinnati) has written a helpful brief introduction to publication agreements for nonspecialists. See his blog post and download An Introduction to Publication Agreements for Authors. Hat tip to TaxProf Blog.

Protecting Your Scholarship. On May 12, 2009, Kenneth Crews (Columbia) presented “Protecting Your Scholarship: Copyrights, Publication Agreements, and Open Access." Live blogged by David Weinberger here and video on Et Seq. The Harvard Law School Library Blog. [JH]

The Abercrombie and Fitch of the Legal Publishing World: Profile of West Publishing Company

Citypages (Minneapolis) profiles West Publishing in an ever so uncritical chamber-of-commerce success story way in Westlaw Rises to Legal Publishing Fame by Selling Free Information. But the detail-rich article is recommended reading and does report some interesting information, some of it known, some estimated by legal information professionals:

West makes its money by selling free, public information—specifically, court documents—to lawyers. On this simple model, the company raked in $3.5 billion in revenue last year, placing it on a par, sales-wise, with retail giant Abercrombie and Fitch. But its operating profit margin really impresses: At a whopping 32.1 percent, West outpaces that of tech giants like Google (19.4 percent), Amazon (3.4 percent), and eBay (20.8 percent).

...

From 1996 to 2005, the price for initial editions of Thomson's legal books went up about 4.5 percent each year—just slightly above the increase in inflation, and comparable to LexisNexis's 4.2 percent annual increase for similar materials.

But during the same period, Thomson's price for supplementation—updates to the initial books after changes in the law occurred—rose 11.5 percent each year, far higher than both the rate of inflation and Lexis's increase in prices for the same service.

That explains in part how in 2005, even after electronic media dominated the market and comprised 57 percent of West's revenues, the company still got 43 percent of its revenues from print.

Isn't this long-standing pricing practice the reason why law librarians are looking first to West print title cancellations during our current financial circumstances, even when 50 percent discounts for some print title continuations are offered in Westlaw multi-year plan renewals?

The article includes a look at West's editorial process. "At West, every case goes through a 22-step editorial process. Multiple people work on each case, cross-checking each other's work to ensure that it is 100 percent accurate. Attorney-editors add searchable terms tuned to West's search engine." The process is partially automated using West's Categorization and Recommendation Engine (CARE). CARE suggests key numbers for new cases, identifies cases affected by a new decision, and performs a host of other tasks that freelance attorneys performed for West before its implementation, "but an army of 800 attorney-editors analyzes the cases, writes the summaries, and approves many of the recommendations that CARE provides."

Hat tip Jim Levy (Nova) on Legal Writing Prof Blog who credits Deborah McGovern, Nova's Emerging Technologies/Reference Librarian, for calling his attention to the article -- always a welcome acknowledgment for the current awareness services law librarians like McGovern routinely perform. [JH]

Law Review Trivia Question

The only state without an ABA-accredited law school is Alaska but there is an Alaska Law Review. Who publishes it? Did you know the answer without checking the bib record?

Hat tip to Eric Johnson (North Dakota) (answer on PrawfsBlawg). Check out Eric's use of wikis for collaborative course outlines for his torts, IP, and media and entertainment law classes. [JH]

Cold Comfort for West in "Sham" Treatise Pocket Part Ruling

In a federal lawsuit, law profs David Rudovsky (Pennsylvania) and Leonard Sosnov (Widener Law School) claimed that the December 2008 pocket part to their book, Pennsylvania Criminal Procedure -- Law, Commentary and Forms (West Publishing) was so poorly researched that it harmed their reputations because their names were prominently displayed as authors of the pocket part. Late last week, the authors were denied their motion for a preliminary injunction by Judge Fuller of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania because prior to the injunction hearing West Publishing has taken sufficient steps to remedy the situation. [text of Rudovsky v. West Publishing Corp.] From the opinion:

[D]efendants informed their subscribers that the plaintiffs had not had any part in the preparation of the 2008-2009 pocket part, and that the pocket part contained errors and omissions which would be remedied in the subsequent pocket part. Subscribers were also advised, in rather small print, that upon request, they would be given a financial credit against subsequent pocket parts.

Judge Fuller took notice of the quality of the pocket part produced solely by West's editorial staff in these words:

[T]he quality of that particular pocket part was not up to standard. Few, if any, relevant court decisions were included in the publication; and the reader was not informed that some cases cited in earlier volumes had since been reversed or modified.

It sounds about par for the quality of research one would expect from 1L students and should make us all wonder about the quality of work being generated in West's information factory.

All Is Not Lost for the Law Profs. The Legal Intelligencer reports that Thomson-Reuter's spokesperson John Shaughnessy issued a one-line statement that said: "We’re pleased with today’s result" but the ruling may still be a setback for West because Judge Fuller appears to support some of the authors' claims:

On the basis of the evidence thus far available, it seems clear that plaintiffs have established a right to some form of remedy – damages to reputation come to mind – but it would seem that the harm has already been done, and that, if plaintiffs do require further injunctive relief in order to complete their remedy, such relief would be just as effective after final hearing.

Might be time for West to write Rudovsky and Sosnov checks.

What About Base Volume Sales? The law profs may be losing income from lost sales at the moment. I have heard from one Pennsylvanian law librarian that she could not even buy a replacement copy of Pennsylvania Criminal Procedure -- Law, Commentary and Forms base volume from West at this time. Her blood-stained copy (returned from a jail library) is all she has.

Hat tip to The Legal Intelligencer's report on the injunction ruling and Legal Research Plus for a link to its text. [JH]

Steven Johnson Predicts That E-Books Combined With Markup and Pincites Will Lead to Social Tagging

Kindle and Google Books herald the transformation of book sales and reading, contends Steven Johnson in an engaging article in the April 20 Wall Street Journal, How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write. Johnson predicts that the Amazon e-reader and Google’s vast digital library, combined with machine-readable markup and a standard citation system that pincites to the paragraph or even sentence level, will lead to social tagging of subparts of millions of e-books.  Google’s search system and Amazon’s ranking algorithms will then foster discovery and ranking of those subparts.  Moreover, the handheld appears to enable easy impulse buying of digital texts.  According to Johnson, all of these factors should cause a huge increase in the sale of subparts of electronic books.

Johnson’s views seem to accord with the function of most legal books, such as treatises, reference works, CLE course handbooks, and article collections, respecting which reading one or more subparts is the most common use.  Most scholarly publishers and many legal publishers have already adopted this sales model to some extent.  Johnson’s article also underscores the great value for e-commerce and knowledge dissemination of an open, machine-readable e-book citation format that can function as a unique identifier for each book subpart.  That suggests a possible, pivotal role for the AALL Universal Citation system, combined with semantic markup.  The AALL System is discussed at the site of the former AALL Citation Formats Committee and is now the charge of the AALL Electronic Legal Information Access & Citation Committee (ELIACC). [Robert Richards]

Top Five Academic Pubishers in Law

The "top five" academic presses in legal scholarship according to Brian Leiter's recent poll:

1. Oxford University Press

2. Harvard University Press

3. Cambridge University Press

4. Yale University Press

5. Princeton University Press 

Details on Brian Leiter's Law School Reports. [JH]

300,000-plus Headnotes Reclassified

Thomson West is reporting that its West Key Number System® underwent some significant editorial changes recently including two new digest topics, Privileged Communications and Confidentiality, and Protection of Endangered Persons. Complete revisions of four topics, Convicts, Prisons, Disorderly Conduct and Products Liability were executed. Breach of the Peace was deleted because it is now incorporated into Disorderly Conduct. Plus and I quote "minor improvements in many topics" including many changes in topics such as Counties, Criminal Law, Indians, Infants, Negligence, and Process.

The editorial changes resulted in the reclassification of more than 300,000 headnotes. Tentative plans for 2010 include the addition of a Water Law topic and substantial revisions in such topics as War and National Emergency, Weapons, Workers' Compensation, and Zoning and Planning.

Can't wait for the invoices. [JH]

The Best Academic Publishers in Law?

Brian Leiter (Chicago) is running a poll to determine which academic press publishes the highest quality legal scholarship. The poll ends March 31, 2009. [JH]

Amazon Gets Evil About Using Kindle to Read Non-Amazon Purchased Mobi-coded Books

Igor Skochinsky wrote a script that takes a Kindle serial number and translates it into the corresponding Mobi device ID so that any legally purchased Modi-coded book could be read on a Kindle. He posted a guide at mobileread.com that gave detailed instructions on how to use the script. The reaction from Amazon was predictable. The company issued takedown demands. The moral of the story, Kindle is only for reading Mobi-coded books bought on Amazon. Hat tip to Public Knowledge. [JH]

Times Tidies Up Tuesday's Mistrial Tweet

(Yes, I'm really going overboard with the T's.)

Ron's and Gretchen's posts indirectly alerted me that sometime after my post at 5:47 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, the NYT changed the headline on this article from "Mistrial by iPhone: Juries' Web Research Upends Trials" to "As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up."  Other than the headline, and nine or perhaps 10 minor editorial changes in the middle of the article, it appears to be the exact same story as yesterday.  I wouldn't believe my eyes, had I not printed a copy of yesterday's version before I posted, and therefore had it available to compare.

I wonder how often the Times does this, and how many of the edits might be substantive rather than stylistic.

I think the second version of the headline is much more accurate.  And much less likely to draw fire from Apple's legal team. [RG]

The Future of the Book Business According to Thomson Reuters Chief Scientist

What is the future of the book business? Sounds like it is e-books in Peter Jackson's (Chief Scientist and Vice President, Thomson Reuters) WestBlog post, And maybe e-books locked into proprietary software at that because Jackson references his personal use of Kindle several times in the Thomson West blog.

Is this a hint of things to come? Will West opt for Kindle-ing its law book catalog exclusively with LexisNexis Matthew Bender choosing the Sony Reader platform? Doesn't make economic sense to go with just one reader but you can bet they won't go open source.

Jackson closes his post with "In the future, the book is no longer a product; it’s a service." Now, he means something like Amazon's e-book store and Kindle user services but someday it may mean maintaining servers for proprietary software-based  e-books like libraries did with CDs in the 1990s or depending on commercial vendors to provide Internet access to law library e-book collections for titles that may not available on Westlaw or Lexis, or loaning readers to patrons who cannot afford or do not what to own Kindles or Sony Readers. I guess the use of PDFs isn't realistic but maybe reader apps, Adobe's PDF reader, will be offered so the titles are not device-dependent. [JH]