Cornerstones of law libraries for an era of digital-Plus

Law Library Journal

Volumn 102, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 171-190

  Palfrey, John ^a,b  

^a Department of Law ^*  (United States)

^b HARVARD LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77953395374     PISSN: 00239283     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (73)

1. Charrettes allow stakeholders in a project to provide input and negotiate with the project planners. See Gerry Frug, The Geography of Community, 48 Stan. L. Rev. 1047,1104 (1996). 171
2. See generally Phillip C. Berwick, Academic Law Librarians in Transition: The Librarian as Educator, Trends L. Libr. Mgmt. & Tech., vol.16, no.2,2005, at 6.
3. See also Theodora Belniak, The Law Librarian of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: A Figuration in Flux, 101 Law Libr. J. 427, 2009 Law Libr. J. 24.
4. See Roy Mersky & Jeanne Frazier Price, Look, Ma, No Books-Opening Digital Legal Research Resources to Students and the Public, presentation at the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Information (CALI) conference (June 10, 2005), podcast and PowerPoint available at http://www2.cali.org/index.php? fuseaction=conference.ViewAgenda&eventid=l#goto2-8-5 (suggesting a building metaphor for new designs of online legal information). Consider also the concept behind the ABA's Bricks and Bytes conferences.
5. See, e.g., Am. Bar Ass'n Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, 2010 Bricks, Bytes, and Continuous Renovation: Law School Facilities Conference, http://www.abanet.org/legdecVcalendar/conferences/ BrickBytesContinuousRenovation/2010bricksandbytesfinal.pdf (last visited Feb. 1,2010) (conference program).
6. See Richard A. Danner, Supporting Scholarship: Thoughts on the Role of the Academic Law Librarian, 39 J.L. & Educ. (forthcoming April 2010), draft available at http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article= 2693&context=faculty-scholarship.
7. See Kendall F. Svengalis, Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual 2009, at 3 (2009).
8. See id. at iv. See also Kendall F. Svengalis, Legal Information: Globalization, Conglomerates and Competition: Monopoly or Free Market, PowerPoint presentation given at the Ass'n of Legal Administrators Annual Conference (May 19, 2009) (slide 18), available at http://www.rilawpress .com/ALA2009.ppt.
9. One might argue that strictly speaking, the act of placing faculty scholarship in an institutional repository is not "publishing" that information. From the perspective of libraries, however, the placement of articles into public online spaces such as repositories may well serve at least three key functions: providing access to the work; providing metadata about the work; and preserving the work, at least for some period of time.
10. Consider, for instance, the recent and ongoing curricular reforms in the first year programs at Vanderbilt and Harvard. See Jonathan D. Glater, Training Law Students for Real-Life Careers, N.Y. Times, Oct. 31, 2007, at B9.
11. See generally Toni M. Fine, Reflections on U.S. Law Curricular Reform, 10 German L.J. 717 (2009) (describing curricular reform efforts at U.S. law schools generally).
12. Carl A. Yirka, The Yirka Question and Yirka's Answer: What Should Law Libraries Stop Doing in Order to Address Higher Priority Initiatives?, AALL Spectrum, July 2008, at 28-32.
13. I suspect that anyone who has taught a first-year basic legal research course will have experienced this phenomenon. See also Kathryn Hensiak, Stephanie Burke, & Donna Nixon, Assessing Information Literacy Among First-Year Law Students: A Survey to Measure Research Experiences and Perceptions, 96 Law Libr. J. 867, 2004 Law Libr. J. 54 (reporting dismal results from a survey of law students).
14. See Most Revenue (The Global 100), Am. Law., Oct. 2009, at 173.
15. Ben W. Heineman, Jr., Law and Leadership, Lecture at Yale Law School (Nov. 27, 2006), available at http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/News-&- Events/HeinemanLecture.pdf.
16. See Heidi W. Heller, The Twenty-First Century Law Library: A Law Firm Librarian's Thoughts, 101 Law Libr. J. 517,521-23,2009 Law Libr. J. 28, HI 12-14.
17. See Gene Koo, New Skills, New Learning: Legal Education and the Promise of New Technology (Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2007-4, Mar. 26, 2007), available at http:// ssrn.com/abstract=976646.
18. See Don Clark, Will Moore's Law Be Repealed?, Wall St. J., July 8,2006, at A2; Intel, Moore's Law, http://www.intel.com/technology/mooreslaw (last visited Feb. 3, 2010)
19. see also Gordon E. Moore, Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits, Electronics, Apr. 19,1965, available at http://download.intel.com/ research/silicon/moorespaper.pdf.
20. There is robust debate as to whether or not law schools in particular are keeping up with these changes. See, e.g., Posting of Paul Lippe to AmLaw Daily, Welcome to the Future: Time for Law School 4.0, http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/ amlawdaily/2009/06/school.html (June 22, 2009,14:31), and the many comments it elicited.
21. See Am. Ass'n of Law Libraries, Price Index for Legal Publications (6th ed. 2008), http://www.aallnet.org/members/price-index-2008.asp (available only to AALL members).
22. See Bonnie J. Kavoussi & Esther I. Yi, Faculty Voices Library Unease, Harv. Crimson, Oct. 28, 2009, http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/10/28/ library-libraries-harvard-resources (quoting Harvard University Library Director Robert Darnton).
23. See Patrick Meyer, Law Firm Legal Research Requirements for New Attorneys, 101 Law Libr. J. 297,320,2009 Law Libr. J. 17,171 ("Books are far from dead in the law firm setting").
24. John Seeley Brown & Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information, 173-174 (2000) (describing how some scholars reportedly sniff letters in archives for the scent of vinegar to track cholera outbreaks).
25. Roger C. Schonfeld & Ross Housewright, What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization (2009), available at http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/what-to-withdraw (click on link to "full document") (arguing that several large research libraries ought to commit to retain certain print collections even post-digitization, albeit in the context of journals).
26. See, e.g., Robert Darnton, The Case for Books (2009).
27. Consider the Web Archiving pilot project at Harvard University, known as the WAX initiative. Office for Information Systems, Harvard University Library, Overview: Web Archive Collections Service (WAX), http://hul.harvard.edu/ois/ systems/wax (last visited Feb. 3,2010).
28. See Interview: Ceilyn Boyd, Harvard Univ. Library Notes, Jan. 2009, http://publications.hul.harvard.edu/ln-1347/ceilyn-boyd.html (discussing a Harvard project to archive e-mail correspondence).
29. See Andreas Paepcke et al., Interoperability for Digital Libraries Worldwide, Comm. of the ACM, Apr. 1998, at 33, for an early discussion of the kinds of interoperability that will be necessary to make a sustainable digital ecosystem for library information succeed.
30. The observations in this section about usage patterns are drawn from data collected as part of the Digital Natives research project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University as well as from personal observations of the author in focus groups and teaching interactions with students at Harvard Law School. Findings from this work have been included in a book by the author and Urs Gasser. John Palfrey & Urs Gasser, Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (2008). There is far more work to be done, by those using social scientific and educational research methods, with respect to understanding these usage patterns.
31. See Ranganathan and Me (A Love Story) (And Manifesto), Posting to Sarah Glassmeyer, http://sarahglassmeyer.com/?p=241 (Nov. 11,2009,1:41 a.m.).
32. See Am. Ass'n of Law Libraries, AALL Ethical Principles (Apr. 5, 1999), http://www.aallnet.org/about/policy-ethics.asp.
33. See Access to Electronic Legal Information Committee & Washington Affairs Office, Am. Ass'n of Law Libraries, State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources (2007), available at http://www.aallnet.org/aallwash/authen-rprt/AuthenFinalReport.pdf. 30. W.at65.
34. Id. at 65.
35. See Schonfeld & Housewright, What to Withdraw, supra note 21.
36. See Katie Fortney, Ending Copyright Claims in State Primary Legal Materiak: Toward an Open Source Legal System, 102 Law Libr. J. 59,62,64-65,2010 Law Libr. J. 3,11 10,15-16 (discussing the successful campaign by PublicResource.org to end Oregon's claim of copyright in its statutes).
37. Consider the lively debate prompted by a blog post published by Thomson Reuters and video of Robert Berring, professor of law at Boalt Flail School of Law at the University of California-Berkeley, about whether government and volunteer efforts to provide online primary law are likely to be sustainable. See Berring on Free Legal Information, Posting of John Shaughnessy to Legal Current, http://legalcurrent.com/2009/10/29/berring-on-free-legal-information (Oct. 29,2009).
38. See PACER, Frequendy Asked Questions, http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/faq. html (last visited Feb. 18,2010) (describing PACER's billing system).
39. See, e.g., Petition to Improve PACER, http://www.thepetitionsite.eom/l/ improve-PACER (last visited Feb. 18,2010);
40. Stephen Schultze, Open Access to Government Documents, presentation at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (Oct. 14, 2008), video available at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2008/10/schultze;
41. Want to Improve PACER? Sign the Petition, posting of Erika Wayne to Legal Research Plus, http://legalresearchplus.com/2009/06/15/want-to-improve-pacer (June 15,2009).
42. See OnDemandBooks, The EBM, http://www.ondemandbooks.com/hardware.htm (last visited Feb. 18,2010) (describing the Espresso Book Machine, manufactured for On Demand Books);
43. Amazon, CreateSpace, https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book (last visited Feb. 18, 2010) (describing Amazon's service, initially known as BookSurge and now CreateSpace)
44. Kirtas, Scan/ Print on Demand, http://www.ldrtas.coni/index.php?option- com-content&view-article8dd=398dtemid=68 (last visited Feb. 18,2010) (describing Kirtas's Scan/Print on Demand services, offered with partners such as Amazon and Lulu).
45. See World Digital Library, www.worlddigitallibrary.org (last visited Feb. 18, 2010).
46. See also Claire M. Germain, Legal Information Management in a Global and Digital Age: Revolution and Tradition, 35 Int'l J. Legal Info. 134,143-44 (2007) (discussing this effort in the context of the changing world of legal information).
47. 17 U.S.C. § 105 (2006).
48. See generally Fortney, supra note 31 (discussing the question of copyright in state legal materials).
49. See OpenNet Initiative, http://www.opennet.net (last visited Feb. 18, 2010), for a global survey of technical Internet filtering practices, listing more than three dozen nations that censor the information that citizens can see on the Internet.
50. Examples of this sort of schema can be found at Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Dep't of Justice, Justice Standards Clearinghouse, http://www.it.ojp.gov/default.aspx?area=implementationAssistance&cpage=1017 (last visited Feb. 18,2010).
51. History ought to be our guide, in terms of what to strive for and what to avoid in processes to develop technical standards. There is a rich technical literature about standards processes. Consider, for instance, the series of books called The Standards Edge. See The Bolin Group, About the Standards Edge Series, http://www.thebolingroup.com/standards-series.html (last visited Feb. 18, 2010).
52. One example from the library world is the MARC standard. Library of Congress, MARC Standards, http:// www.loc.gov/marc (last visited Feb. 18,2010).
53. Listen to one law student, on a blog, commenting on the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship: This is an interesting proposal. DePaul's legal writing department strongly focuses on book research-I just got full access to Westlaw and Lexis yesterday-and here, electronic-only access is being presented as the future. I'm of two minds here. I prefer book research to electronic-I was raised poking around in library stacks, I'm much better at it, and I think I will probably stick with it for the most part. On the other hand, it's pretty appalling with how many resources are wasted to maintain law libraries. My law school is directly across the street from John Marshall, which I visited for a networking event the other week. And it was strange to realize that these two law school [sicj are across the street from each other and have identical collections of digests, statutes, etc. spanning multiple floors. And we are both just a few blocks from the county legal library. That's a lot of space, a lot of money, a lot of employees, a lot of paper, a lot of electricity, etc. And let's be honest-a lot of those resources are also available electronically. Do we need print copies?
54. Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship, posting to Truly Educated, http://truly educated.blogspot.com/2009/03/durham-statement-on-open- access-to.html (Mar. 12, 2009). For more information on the Durham Statement, see infra note 50.
55. See generally Anupam Chander & Madhavi Sunder, The Romance of the Public Domain, 92 Cal. L. Rev. 1331 (2004).
56. Thomas S. Hines, Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner xxi (2d ed. 2009).
57. This idea of defining the "foundation" of a law library in terms other than a base for the literal physical housing for the library is not novel. See Frank B. Gilbert, Duties of the Law Librarian, 2 Am. L. Sch. Rev. 85, 86 (1907) ("The foundation of every law library is in the statutes and the judicial decisions").
58. See SXSWi Day One-Rome, Sweet Rome: Ancient Lessons in Design, posting to Meg Kribble: Law Librarianship and More, http://biblioblawg.blogspot.com/2008/ 03/sxswi-day-one -rome-sweet-rome-ancient.html (Mar. 21,2008,10:21 a.m.) (containing notes on a presentation at the South by Southwest (SXSW) 2008 conference, which related lessons from ancient design practices to today's technological and information environment).
59. It is instructive to read the architectural criticism of recent library building projects and to imagine the types of (constructive) criticism of a virtual architecture. See, e.g., Ada Louise Huxtable, Libraries in London and Paris, in On Architecture 71 (2008).
60. Andrew Albanese, Harvard Mandates Open Access, Libr. J., Mar. 15,2008, at 16.
61. The text of the motion can be been in Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard Univ., Agenda, Feb. 12, 2008, at 3, available at http://www.fas.harvard. edu/~secfas/February-2008-Agenda.pdf.
62. See Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship (Nov. 7,2008), http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/durhamstatement (in which law librarians call for "law schools [to] commit to making the legal scholarship they publish available in stable, open, digital formats in place of print").
63. See Cornell University Law Library, Collection Development Policy (rev. Sept. 2007), http://Ubra17.lawschool.corneU.edu/WhoWeAje/Policies/CoUection- Development-PoUcy.cfm.
64. Many academic law Ubraries do post their coUection development poUcies on the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section web site. Am. Ass'n of Law Libraries, Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section, Academic Law Libraries' CoUection Development PoUcies, http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/ secure/Colldev/policies.asp (last visited Feb. 18, 2010) (accessible only to AALL members).
65. See Sarah Hooke Lee, Preserving Our Heritage: Protecting Law Library Core Missions Through Updated Library Quality Assessment Standards, 100 Law Libr. j. 9,13-14,16,23-25,2008 Law Libr. j. 2 11 19-23, 28-29, 52-56.
66. See Deborah Ginsburg, Meg Kribble & Bonnie Shucha, Inspiring Innovation: Planning Implementing and Evaluating the Web 2.0 Challenge, 101 Law Libr. J. 355,2009 Law Libr. j. 19.
67. See Amos Lakos, Evidence-Based Library Management: The Leadership Challenge, 7 portal: Libraries and the Academy 431,432 (2007);
68. see also Lee, supra note 53.
69. See Tracy L. Thompson, The World of Library Consortia: Collaboration and Resource Sharing in the Twenty-first Century, in Law Librarianship in the Twenty-First Century 210 (Roy Balleste, Sonia Luna-Lamas & Lisa Smith-Butler eds., 2007).
70. James Neal, the director of the Columbia University Library, has used the term "radical collaboration" to describe a shared effort between Cornell and Columbia libraries. Columbia and Cornell Libraries Announce 'Radical' Partnership, posting of Jennifer Howard to Wired Campus, http://chronicle.com/blogPost/ColumbiaCornell-Libraries/8627 (Oct. 28,2009).
71. See, e.g., Columbia University Libraries, About Borrow Direct, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/requestit/borrow-direct.html (last visited Feb. 18,2010).
72. Cornell Univ. Library, Press Release, Columbia and Cornell Libraries Announce New Partnership, http://www.library.cornell.edu/news/091012/2cul (last visited Feb. 18,2010).
73. Consider the design charrette process employed by United States Department of Energy as part of its green buildings efforts. U.S. Dep't of Energy, Net-Zero Energy Commercial Building Initiative, http://wwwl.eere.energy. gov/buUdings/commercial-initiative/charrette.html (last visited Feb.18,2010).