Archives for posts with tag: solutions

Legal research for the public: Connie, continued, and a slightly different open gov

November 1, 2011 //

It’s been an unusually inspiring day on the lawbrarian interwebz. This afternoon, Robert Richards retweeted an article of Connie Crosby‘s on Slaw that I had missed: “Legal Research Services for the Public: Looking for a Solution.” The premise is simple, but the implications are huge: how exactly do non-lawyers get legal information? There are plenty of obvious restrictions (don’t give legal advice, don’t expose yourself to uninsured risk, cost and availability of resources), but not as many obvious solutions.

As part of my job, I answer Ask A Librarian questions that come in through our online form. Content of these questions ranges from pro se litigants looking for help to legal academics to non-law academics, students, and of course, somewhat off beat but still legally related issues like who said “there’s a sucker born every minute,” and did they say it in a courtroom? I help where I can, and not where I can’t.

Where can’t I? This afternoon’s brief Twitter convo between Connie, Sarah Glassmeyer and myself has certainly made me think twice, ethically, about what’s giving legal advice and what isn’t. But, one solution I suggested was using a government’s own published resources on a specific subject manner to avoid the legal advice conundrum. For example, on more than one occasion I’ve received questions about old people in Florida, for Florida is full of old people. The Florida Dept. of Elder Affairs has a pretty good website, abundant contact info, and hyper localized information that I can direct people to from our form (because they have to fill out their address). Of course, all this comes after I say, “Regrettably, we cannot offer legal advice or solutions to specific legal problems. However, here are a few local resources that I hope will be of use to you…”

I’m going to put it out there that a percentage of folks that come to law libraries for help don’t necessarily need legal assistance as much as governmental guidance. In the U.S. at least, between multiple levels of government with overlapping responsibilities, it’s tough work being the governed. Rah rah federalism, but seriously: when someone is sending in an Ask A Librarian question to my Library of Last Resort about how to take care of their grandmama in Florida, something is amiss.

Connie talked about whether public legal help could become a viable business model with independent researchers. I wonder if it can be a viable business model as a website that helps people navigate the resources that are already present? Could the people running the site then market their services to state and local governments? “Let us index you, let us build you a better product, look at how great everyone will think Florida is.” I’m all for free Law (that’s capital L, serious law), and I think all that stuff needs to be made available–but I also think there are lots of folks who won’t be able to read it or use it once it’s out there. I see this public legal research thing as a combination of proper laws, cases, etc. and administrative websites.

People have web businesses all the time. Not even the craziest idea I’ve had today.

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Reverse vendor relations: I get all this crap for free, why aren’t more people paying attention?

October 29, 2011 //

In the shadow of Occupy Wall Street/DC/Oakland/wherever lies the the fledgling Occupy Knowledge movement, also known by it’s more common name, “Librarians Don’t Get On With Vendors.” A simple Google for “librarians and vendor relations” yields a list of hits that could have resulted from “difficult mother” or “I think my boyfriend is cheating on me.”

I don’t speak of it directly very often, but I work at the Library of Congress. It’s a pretty big, pretty nice library–lots of good stuff happening here. Arguably, one of the best things happening here is copyright deposit. In case you are unfamiliar with the law, check out Circular 1, and this handy dandy excerpt:

Yay, books! All for free, all for us, two copies of everything published here in the U.S. for our use, or disposition.

On Use: Collection policies vary from division to division, based on the importance of the title. But in my division, we tend to keep two copies of most law journals. We collect issues as they’re deposited, and we bind them ourselves. Sometimes, publishers will send us a nicely bound copy of an entire volume, even though they already sent us the loose issues.

On Disposition: Sometimes, more than two copies are deposited. Sometimes, we actually buy a copy, and still have two deposited. Sometimes we get extras from gift & exchange. Acquisitions happens. What do we do with the extras, beyond our keep decision? We pulp them.

Yay, recycling! But wait, you say: isn’t that terribly wasteful? Aren’t librarians fighting a war against high prices from unreasonable vendors? I mean, yeah. I hear they are. But none of them have approached me, or the Library lately to ask about cooperating, getting the knowledge out there. Plus the fight doesn’t directly apply to me; I lack standing.

There’s nothing more free law than dumpster diving, people. Gift and exchange doesn’t cover this, and neither does the surplus program. Who wants to figure out a way to make a new program?

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Categories Collections, Law librarianship

My comments on the AALL Law Student Research Competencies

October 12, 2011 //

I was a law student not so long ago. About 4.5 months ago, actually. Who’s counting? My legal research class in 1L was pretty funny; it is also possible that I was already a law librarian. Again, who’s counting?

AALL has a set of Law Student Research Competencies and Information Literacy Principles that are open for comment (by members) until October 20. I recommend everyone who’s ever suffered through (which includes teaching) a 1L library research class to comment.

Here are my comments, re-posted for non-AALL types, and for people who can’t remember their password to login at AALLnet:

  • First, I agree with Holly’s comment: the ability to differentiate between levels of government is equally important as distinguishing between the branches.
  • Under the third point of Principle I on awareness of the cost of research, consider recommending competency in free, open sources as well as proprietary ones. [ Aside: Dear Congress, I heart FDsys, please keep funding it. xoxo, Meg ]
  • Under Principle IV, on effectively resolving a specific research need, there is no mention of understanding when to stop, or recognizing when research is complete. This could be included under the third point. Or, perhaps a fifth point, “Law students should recognize when their research is complete. When sources become self-referential, or repetitive, they should stop, and assess their findings with respect to the issue at hand.”

I would also like to note that on International Plain Language Day, the drafting of the research competencies left something to be desired.

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Categories Law librarianship

Aaron Swartz and page numbers: a semi-radical open access idea (that someone has surely thought of before)

July 20, 2011 //

Yesterday’s arrest of “internet folk hero” Aaron Swartz for downloading of 4 million+ documents from JSTOR (but not actually sharing them on the open interwebz–he hadn’t gotten that far yet) has gotten me thinking about what would happen if someone Swartzed Wexis.

Let’s focus on case law only. What do Wexis add to otherwise free, open legal opinions? Headnotes/KeyCite indexing, links to cited cases, one-click Shepardizing, sometimes a bonus chart of parties or something if it’s a complicated action… and standardized page numbers.

Now let’s be realistic about how people other than librarians use these features. Well, let me recount what happened in my 1L legal research and writing class, which was only 4 years ago, and I think pretty representative:

  • Headnotes/KeyCite: Instead of using these, people used natural language in West to find what they were looking for, copied the KeyCites, and then used the info from West to duplicate the result in Lexis, and finish the exercise
  • Links to citations: Well, ok, people did that
  • Shepardizing: Also a one click thing, but then people didn’t necessarily understand the strength of citation symbols, or that the symbols might relate to a point of law in the case totally unrelated to what they were looking for
  • Bonus chart: Never used until they were working for a journal, and asking me what they meant
  • Page numbers: Everyone uses page numbers. It’s how you make a citation…

In these days of full text search, what would happen if there were an alternate citation format that didn’t rely on West reporter page numbers, but instead on line numbers within the text of a case? Yes, you would have to pick a format, page size, font, font size, etc. But all of that can be done for pretty cheap/freeish. Then, we wouldn’t have to rely on reporter page numbers, there wouldn’t be any need to Swartz Wexis, plus we could stop trying to convince folks of my generation and younger that KeyCite is awesome (keeping library sorts employed, allowing them to stop plugging Wexis products indirectly, and making the teaching of legal research 5% less painful). There are plenty of free places to find case law. Even if each one created line numbers with respect to themselves alone, some new citation format could include the website so you can still pin point a citation.

Or, maybe I’m crazy. Hasn’t someone thought of this?

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Categories Law librarianship, Librarianship, generally

What to do with all those law school outlines (that doesn’t involve a controlled burn)

July 18, 2011 //

I was (not) minding my own business on Twitter this morning, and noticed John Mayer (of CALI) talking about textbook rental via Kindle and Westlaw’s program. I tweeted back about my professors’ tendency towards creating their own course material to avoid the added fluff for an added price anti-value of Wexis. Then, John introduced me to the most awesome thing I can’t believe I’ve never heard of until now: the CALI Legal Education Commons.

LEC lets you upload material related to legal education (in an impressive array of formats), and share it with the world. So far, I see lots of presentations and multiple choice. My goal, to be completed in the next couple of weeks, is to pare down my outlines from school into useful-to-people-other-than-Meg information only, remove any potential copyright faux pas, and post them all on LEC. Right now, their Maryland coverage is non-existent. I am going to change that.

Bonus free law CALI coverage: the Free Law Reporter. I searched for my favorite of all Maryland cases, Sy-Lene of Washington v. Starwood Urban Retail (in which parking by employees of a lingerie store is discussed–brevity is the soul of wit, and ladies’ under things). Alas, the case is not there, but two cases that cite are available.

I’m so excited. Today has been a roller coaster of access to law emotion. First, I was totally bummed about AALL’s new antitrust policy, but now I am really happy for these new (to me, at least) free law resources. Plus, only a few more days until AALL. Whew.

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The yo ho ho factor

July 6, 2011 //

Maritime law is one of the oldest and most established areas of law in the world, all over the world. Since the days of the Sea Code of Oleron, we’ve known what to do about incidents on the high seas. Modern maritime law is embodied in a few documents, one of the most important being the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). 162 countries have signed on to UNCLOS. Guess who hasn’t? The United States.

Here is a handy definition of piracy from UNCLOS (Art. 101):

Piracy consists of any of the following acts:
(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of
depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the
passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed:
(i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or
against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;
(ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place
outside the jurisdiction of any State;
(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or
of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or
aircraft;
(c) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act
described in subparagraph (a) or (b).

As we pick up random Somalis in the future and detain them on Navy ships for months on end, if they’re on the high seas, outside of territorial waters, wouldn’t it be handy to have the protection of UNCLOS? Call them pirates. After all, pirates are hostis humani generis, and there’s a pretty good argument that terrorists might be too. Stretch that yo ho ho factor out and put it to use. One might need it when other due process issues arise…

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How to collect Kindle-only titles

June 24, 2011 //

My mister’s brother, brilliant jurist-to-be Scott Kuhagen, sent an email the other day recommending a book called My Trials: What I Learned in Immigration Court. It’s one of the first immigration titles of this kind written by a former judge, Hon. Paul Grussendorf. Bender’s Immigration Bulletin even picked it up in the June 21 edition. I’m really looking forward to reading it, hearing his solutions for U.S. immigration problems and the role of judicial reform …

…on my Kindle. And only on my Kindle.

Scott and I had an exchange about how to buy the book and share it, but ultimately decided that will most likely be me physically loaning him the Kindle, or him downloading Kindle for PC and me sharing that way. But now, I’m curious about how libraries like my own will collect Kindle-only titles. (Lending seems to be under control.)

We get a fair amount of stuff via copyright deposit. I’ve done a short bit of research on e-book deposit, and it looks like the Office has/had a program called CORDS for Copyright Office Electronic Registration, Recordation, & Deposit System. But, it also seems that program isn’t operational, but perhaps was at one point. I suppose e-book authors just deposit as usual, per Circular 1.

Ok, I know how print items get from the Office into our collections. But how do e-book only items get from the Office into our collections? I did a quick catalog search for the only 2 Kindle-only titles I’ve purchased so far (my new immigration title, and Tyler Cowen’s Great Stagnation, for he was a professor at my alma matter and the best ILL patron of all time ever)–nothing there. Are we going to print, bind and collect these titles? Not collect them because we don’t have LC-only Kindles? Inquiring minds want to know.

My solution:

  1. Have a collection of Kindles for each LC class, at least copies 1 & 2. These are Kindles for storage purposes only, not for lending. Let’s use Kindle for PC/Mac for that.
  2. Have said Kindles in shelf list order, and works downloaded to them accordingly (ok, shifting will be a pain, but this is a solution in progress)
  3. Also consider printing the Kindle-only works, for archival purposes only. You never know when some bit of library technology will go the way of the floppy disk.
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Categories Collections, Librarianship, generally
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