Morgan Wilson: academic law libraries

gated information and the role of libraries

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 14:22:53 GMT

Recently I got access to digital cable – it’s not something that I pay for, but is a nice perk provided by my generous landlady. It made me realize that I am on the über-privileged side of the digital divide: hundreds of TV channels, broadband internet connection. I also have access to non-public material sites such as on Salon and AOL Then through my work I have Westlaw and Lexis passwords, and free interlibrary loans – within reason.

My point isn’t to brag, but I can say that I have access to a lot of stuff which is out of reach of less privileged people. Before I had access, I had no idea of the type of things that I was missing. I’m disturbed to see how effective technology has been in separating information from the haves and have-nots. Ten years ago in Australia, there was no pay-TV and barely a world-wide web (and what there was limited to educational and scientific purposes). The main sources of information were printed publications and the free broadcast media of radio and TV. I know printed magazines and journals have never been exactly cheap, but many of these were freely usable in public and academic libraries.

Is there any way of categorizing information as essential or non-essential information? I wonder if there are some types of information – particularly legal and governmental - which all people have a right to access and use in a free society. Especially when society says that ignorance is no excuse for not obeying the law and everyone has equal rights & duties in the political process, irrespective of their income. So does mean that everything else would be non-essential information – entertainment for which it is entirely fair that people pay for. I’m not sure if there’s a clear dividing line between what’s essential and what’s entertaining. For example, national (and especially local) news provide information without which it would be very difficult to participate in the political process, but they also contain entertainment sections. And if news is essential, then what about magazines or lifestyle programmes aimed at particular groups – women, men, different ethnic groups – these may contain more entertainment than news, but what news they cover might be the only way that their particular constituents access any news.

Another quandry is with the arts, sciences and other academic disciplines. If it’s in society’s interests that all people are able to make advances in the arts, sciences and other fields of learning, how is this possible if only elites have access to this material? Are we saying that only the elites – those with the means to pay for this material – have anything to contribute in these areas and that the poor deserve to shut out? Or do we think that great art can happen in a vacuum and that it is not necessary to know of what’s been tried before?

The point of all these unanswerable questions is that libraries are the buffer zones – or safety net, if you want a different metaphor – of the digital information divide. Fund public libraries adequately, and you won’t need to answer these questions about who is worthy enough to receive which information. Most importantly, libraries are no longer about books. They are just not about books, microfiche, videos, audio tapes, CDs, DVDs or online databases – important as all these things are. Libraries are repositories of information, in whatever form. In an ideal world (and I am allowed to be idealistic and naive sometimes), libraries would collect all useful information which has been broadcast (via TV, radio or the web) and is not otherwise available in fixed formats, such as tapes or discs produced by the broadcaster. </idealism>: Of course, this is not going to happen because of two big reasons. Firstly, libraries are currently too understaffed and underfunded to imagine adding this to their workload. Secondly, this would be against existing copyright laws.

missing out on the AALL conference in Seattle

Wed, 16 Jul 2003 05:16:07 GMT

My biggest regret of the summer is that I’m not attending the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries, which is currently taking place in Seattle as I type this. It would have killed me to go all the way to beautiful Seattle and just be in the conference venue – and not have any time (or money) to stay there a bit longer and go bushwalking (hiking). I don’t like the sort of travel that encourages people to ignore the differentness of place. And somebody had to watch the library here while most of my co-workers are away. Next year the conference is in Boston, somewhere I’ve also wanted to visit. I’ll make sure that I attend that conference and have the ability to explore that part of the world, if only a little.

P.S. One of my pet peeves is that all library professional associations are named after the buildings we work in. Would it be too shocking to have an American Association of Law Librarians?

Music: Liz Phair, Liz Phair, Take a Look

summer work

Wed, 16 Jul 2003 04:55:42 GMT

(All of what I’m writing tonight is really one entry, broken into different paragraphs, but I’ve decided to separate it into separate postings.) Many bloggers take a summer break. I wasn’t planning on doing such a thing, but it happened any way – hence the lack of the standard announcement of light blogging. As I have mentioned before, the summer seems more busy for me in the law library. Although there’s less reference work, we are expected to do more in the way of summer projects. For me, I prefer the randomness of answering people’s questions – most of whom are very nice to work with. This isn’t to say that all of my summer projects are boring – but they are more work.

Working on getting EZProxy working in my library so that our users will be able to authenticate to the proxy server and then access our IP address restricted databases from anywhere.
Include entries (with working URLs) for our full-text electronic journals – chiefly available via HeinOnline – into our online library catalogue.
Make new floor maps of the library that can be put onto the library website and integrated into the library catalogue.
Work with other public services staff on a faculty services handbook.
Participating in an IT committee that is investigating portal solutions for the university web site as a whole.

Music: Liz Phair, Liz Phair, Why Can’t I?

my thoughts on government-mandated web filtering in public libraries

Wed, 25 Jun 2003 02:05:34 GMT

It almost goes without saying that I think that this decision is wrong. Another example of the US Supreme Court being split down the middle with Justice O’Connor being the swing vote that gave the conservatives another thin majority. I hope that history judges the Rehnquist Supreme Court as harshly as it judges Dredd Scott.

That said, I do think that this is a difficult issue. I don’t want weird people viewing porn and wanking over the keyboards where I work! It horrifies me how the most innocuous search term in a search engine -- or mistyped URL can lead to some very nasty results. This may sound like heresy to some librarians, but I don’t think the status quo was working well. Something needed to be done, but I think CIPA went way too far. It’s wrong to make everybody (meaning the less privileged teens & adults on the other side of the digital divide who can’t afford their own internet access) view the internet through the filter of what’s appropriate for a child. Even the Supreme Court admits this, but says that it’s sufficient that an adult can request to have the filters temporarily turned off. A commentator on today’s FutureTense (I must give a link to this Minnesota production) was correct when he mentioned how people will be very reluctant to ask library staff to have the “porn filters” turned off.

So I call on all adult library patrons to thwart this paternalistic Supreme Court decision to demand that filters be turned off when they visit their public library. Not so you can look at porn, but just so that you can use the internet that hasn’t been filtered or dumbed-down or bowdlerized (now that’s a word that’s due for a revival!). Any librarian worth her or his salt would be happy to turn off the filters for this reason. Don’t expect such a positive reaction if you actually are planning on looking at porn in a public library.

Whenever I get a minute, I should reread some jurisprudence. The law is only one means (the very official and blunt tool) for governing people’s behaviour. There are also personal ethics and social mores. I would hazard to guess that although most librarians would fight for your legal right to read anything you want, they would not be thrilled about somebody viewing porn in a their library or any other public place. Generally, social restraints are more pervasive but less enforceable than legal rules. That is why there is a danger when conservatives want all their social mores embodied in the law. There is a place for socially disapproved but legal behaviour. It is a murky area which is both a nasty cesspool and a helpful compost heap – which is fertile for humour, self-analysis and new ideas. Furthermore, there is something about the smell of this cesspool/compost heap which keeps the Borg of Conformity & Tyranny at bay. Because as soon as you want the law to mirror social mores – the first issue is who’s mores get chosen. Because that’s the thing, although a lot of social mores are held in common, they are not uniform. And although in a democracy, the majority has the right to do what it wants according to its constitutional powers, it would be very dangerous for a majority to use the its power to impose all of its social mores on everyone else – whether that majority happens to been in Parliament / Congress or the Supreme court.

interesting post from a LiveJournal about library cataloguing today

Wed, 18 Jun 2003 03:22:25 GMT

In the old days, Pre MARC [Machine Readable Cataloguing], it was common to have almost as many catalogers as reference people. Books arrived. You hoped for a LC-Card number in the back and if that happened, you ordered cards from the Library of Congress. Eventually most of them came.

If the book was new, you knew you had to come up with your own cataloging ...

Catalogers are a fraction of the numbers that Reference types are.

Do you still need to catalog some things originally? Sure. Is it a substantial fraction of what you buy? hardly. I know of one university with graduate programs that hits over 95% on OCLC. What gets reviewed gets bought. What gets bought gets cataloged. ...

I hire catalogers. It's hard. ... I train every new hire. I do more training than cataloging these days. and at the same time, I can't tell prospective students that they'll be able to find work cataloging when they graduate. Medium sized libraries with one cataloger are common. It's like waiting for a tenant to die so you can have their apartment in New York. [librarian50]

I'm both of these, as well as being an accidental blogger

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 13:06:54 GMT

Accidents Do Happen.

If you're not an Accidental Systems Librarian, perhaps you're an Accidental Webmaster. I'm sure one of your many hats is accidental.... [via beSpacific]

[The Shifted Librarian]

dissecting arguments for investigating library patron information under the Patriot act

Wed, 21 May 2003 06:56:16 GMT

ALA Aiding And Abetting Terrorists. Gerry writes "David Horowitz's FrontPageMag, dedicated to rooting out the fifth columns, left-liberals and hate-American conspirators among us, turns its withering gaze to LIBRARIANS.....
Please have some fun baiting true believers in the comments forum. "

At least they admit ALA librarians are not the quiet, unassuming stereotypes you see on TV and in the movies, but they go on to say while the ALA ostensibly wants to protect the First Amendment rights of all people to read what they want, they themselves seem to have not read the USA PATRIOT Act and its guarantees to protect First Amendment Rights. [LISNews.com]

Maybe it's my legal background, but I'm always interested in dissecting a controversy into the exact areas of disagreement. Although I heartily disagree with almost everything written in this article (authored by Paul Walfield), I find that it illuminates very clearly the differences in the two viewpoints.

"The idea is simple; terrorists use things like airliners against us. Now, we make it harder for them to do that by federalizing airline checkers, and putting marshals on planes and beefing up airline security in general. The Feds want to do the same for terrorists that use our libraries." Let's develop this argument a little further. The terrorists didn't just use airlines and libraries (allegedly) against the US - they exploited weaknesses inherent in an open, democratic society - freedom of association and movement, freedom of thought, and freedom to read. Let's cut to the chase - 9/11 wouldn't have happened in a police state without those freedoms. Does this mean that these fundamental human rights are to blame for the tragedy and must be curtailed? Of course, even John Ashcroft is not going to admit to that, but we live in an age of doublespeak. So instead of abrogating these freedoms, they attack the tangible institutions and professionals which protect these abstract ideas - in the name of patriotism and preserving the American way of life. The danger is that human rights expressed in the constitution become meaningless because there are no ways of protecting infringements of those rights by the executive branch of government.

"The librarians say they will not break the "sacred" trust between a patron and a librarian. The American Library Association seems to view this bond as literally sacred." This has to be the most offensive part of Walfield's article, the way that he scoffs at the idea of librarian's ethics in general, and librarian-patron confidentiality in particular. Without this confidentiality, we librarians could report all patron borrowing, reading and web surfing habits to the government - or sell this information to marketers. Everything you read will be on the record somewhere (but not accessible to you), and people will make inferences about your beliefs and security risks from this - without any input from you or any ways of fixing errors or erroneous assumptions.

"She didn't explain that when you take a book out of the library, you are giving up any right to privacy. The employees at Santa Cruz know what their people check out but will not allow our government to know the same ..." Does Walfield really think that because library employees might know what a patron is reading or borrowing, that patrons have given up all their rights to privacy? And that the government might as well know everything too? That's like saying that there's no such thing as medical privacy because doctors and nurses might know your medical information. Well, I'm glad that I can clarify that this is another reason why we emphasize librarian-patron confidentiality in our professional ethics. We know that this information is potentially very sensitive - not unlike medical records - and we take pains to be very careful with it. Library-patron confidentiality is not something which we invented after 9/11 so we could be a thorn in the side of the Bush administration and advance our left-wing agenda. My mother was an academic librarian in the 1970s and this was as central to librarianship then as it is now.

"[The Patriot Act] prohibits the government from doing anything that would infringe on an individual's First Amendment right." Yes, that's how the law is written on its face. But in effect, this protection is meaningless. It's up to the FBI to decide if they may be infringing on your first amendment rights. The only restraint on the over-zealous investigator is at a secret summary hearing where you will not be represented. Even if the secret judges do care whether an investigatee's first amendment rights are protected, it is very difficult for them to do so, because they are only told the would-be prosecutor's side of the story.

"Unlike our Founding Fathers, the ALA gives First Amendment Rights to "all individuals," presumably including non-citizen terrorists." LISNews.com commentor Daniel Cornwall pointed out that in fact Jefferson believed that the first amendment should apply to all indviduals "against every government on earth" and that he thought that the constitution was flawed for not stating this more clearly. 12 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson 438, 440 (J. Boyd ed. 1958). Also, while I don't like the idea that terrorists have human rights and may use these rights to cause destruction, it is dangerous to say that terrorists can never have any legal rights. What if you are mistakenly found to be a terrorist, and thereby lose all your legal rights? Including the right to appeal the mistaken terrorist designation? Mistakes happen all the time in any legal system, which is why there need to be procedures - natural justice at the trial level, procedures for appeals and accountability against abuses.

After discussing the ALA's resistance to the Patriot Act, Walfield gives a brief chronicle of the ALA's "left-wing agenda." Included in the ALA's list of sins is campaigning for more openess in government records. Towards the end, there is a mention of the ALA being upset at the destruction and looting of the National Library and Archives of Iraq. Of course this was interpreted that the ALA did not care about the safety of American troops. Forget the fact that the Ministry of Oil had been protected, or that the US Government had been warned of the dangers to Iraqi cultural institutions and chose to ignore them - and their international legal obligations as an occupying force.

I can't ignore Walfield's mention that the ALA's left-wing activism happens despite the organization's tax-exempt 501(c) 3 status. This struck me as a veiled threat which is so typical of these times. Yes, you still have freedom of speech, but if you express unpatriot/lefty views, we will try to punish you until you shut up!

what people in my home town think about libraries and librarians

Wed, 21 May 2003 04:05:49 GMT

How often do you use your local library. writes Paul McIntyre took to the streets of Hobart Australia recently and discovered overall most people perceived libraries as friendly helpful places with a diversity of systems in place to help the avid book browser ... [LISNews.com]

I just had to post this one. I grew up in Hobart, Tasmania and went to high school with Paul McIntyre. Although we weren't really friends, we hung out in the same circles for a while. I could barely recognize his voice - so much more of an Australian radio voice! Maybe it's also that my voice has changed from living in the US, a change which I stubbornly oppose.

procrastination is inevitable, so why can't it be about political and philosophical matters?

Tue, 06 May 2003 18:32:58 GMT

Getting High. Larry Solum really really really doesn't want you (that is, judicial clerks or law students) to read his most recent post. Apparently we're too immature, we don't have enough time, and we should be doing other things than worry about high and low politics. God forbid we lowly little students worry about such silly things like what makes a justice... [a mad tea-party]

Judge overturns school board's restriction of Harry Potter books

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 14:49:16 GMT

"Only in America" has been an informal part of the establishment of the Australian news media. This example from the Sydney Morning Herald is more serious than whacky, and ultimately it's good press for the U.S.

A federal judge ordered Harry Potter books back onto an Arkansas school district's library shelves, rejecting a school board's claim that tales of wizards and spells were harmful.
Ruling in favour of a fourth-grader's parents, US District Judge Jimm Larry Hendren today ordered the Cedarville School District in western Arkansas to put the four books in JK Rowling's popular series back in general circulation.
The district's board drew wrath from national free-speech groups for its June decision to require students to obtain parental permission to check out the books. The 3-2 decision, which overruled a unanimous decision by the district's library committee, came after a parent complained about the books.
The Harry Potter books have been assailed by some Christian groups for their themes of witchcraft. The American Library Association says the books were the most frequently challenged of 2002, but rarely did those challenges lead to restrictions or bans.

cataloguing ejournals in the exploded library

Wed, 02 Apr 2003 06:37:02 GMT

Library Catalogs: The Wrong Solution. By Roy Tennant, in Library Journal.

Pick a popular book and pretend you are a library patron. Choose three to five libraries at random from the lib-web-cats site (pick catalogs that are not using your system) and attempt to find your book. Try as much as possible to see the system through the eyes of your patrons[~]a teenager, a retiree, or an older faculty member. You may not always like what you see. Now go back to your own system and try the same thing.What should the public see?Our users deserve an information system that helps them find all different kinds of resources[~]books, articles, web pages, working papers in institutional repositories[~]and gives them the tools to focus in on what they want. This is not, and should not be, the library catalog. It must communicate with the catalog, but it will also need to interface with other information systems, such as vendor databases and web search engines.

[News Is Free: Popular Items] [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

My library (specifically, the consortium of which my library is a member) is in the process of cataloguing its ejournals. My tentative definition of ejournals are those journal articles which can be accessed in full-text via the databases which the library subscribes to, whether or not the library holds a print copy of the ejournal. It's my library's task to catalogue its collection of Hein-On-Line journals. The reason why we want these ejournals in the catalog is so that people can find them and access them. This is especially so when we don't hold the print version. In the meantime, we provide access via Serial Solutions. They provide us with a list of which particular ejournals can be accessed in the library, including the coverage dates and information like that. This information goes onto our website. I wonder if we will maintain our subscription to Serials Solutions once our ejournals can be found in the catalogue. I would hope so - although this may be very unrealistic in this year of library budget cutting. I agree with the above author that despite our best efforts, library online catalogues are not the easiest things in the world to use. That's why we need to give people other options for their searching. The library catalogue is, in a sense, a remnant of the unexploded library - a small area where the information has been ordered and arranged in a logical and systematic way. The trouble is that many people are used to the new combinations offered in the exploded library, and find the method underlying the traditional library catalogue to be foreign.

The biggest change is that now library users/patrons are beginning to have a choice as to whether they will use our systems or not. In the law library, the obvious alternatives are Westlaw and Lexis, with their full-text coverage, sophisticated searching capacities, extensive marketing & research & development budgets, not to mention their online & phone help. Already, many law students do research assignments relying on these services exclusively. Librarians could mention many reasons why this is not such a good idea, but that's not going to stop them, or prevent more from following in their footsteps. I wonder how many of our students will use our catalog to access our Hein-On-Line ejournals when they can just go into Westlaw's JLR database - even if Hein-On-Line offers broader & cheaper coverage in many respects.

tough choices for the Minneapolis Public Library

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 00:20:33 GMT

This morning by chance I listened to a discussion on Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning show about the funding crisis in Minnesota public libraries. This finding crisis was precipitated by the State Auditor arbitrarily classifying libraries as "non-essential services" and recommending that the Governor cut the state funding for these services. It's possible to hear this discussion with the RealOne player (scroll down to March 13, hour one). It was a very interesting discussion and it was gratifying to see how strong support which libraries are getting in the community - it's a shame that this support is falling on deaf ears at the State Capitol.

These problems couldn't have come at a worse time for the Minneapolis Public Library, which is in process of building a new central library building. Its old premises have just been demolished and it is currently renting a temporary (& inadequate) space until its new building is ready.

Because of this funding crisis, there is the possibility that the size of the new building will be scaled back or its construction delayed. It is ironic that one of the reasons why the old library building was inadequate and did not age well was because of similar funding short-cuts which were taken when it was built - according to Kit Hadley, the new director of the Minneapolis Public Library, who was the guest speaker on today's Midmorning show.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has provided good coverage of this issue. Here's a brief chronology -

*The Minneapolis Public Library faces a $25 million shortfall in its operating budget over the next 10 years
*Columnist Doug Grow: "No one, Minneapolis leaders say, could have predicted that Minnesota would elect a governor who would smile kindly, then slash such programs as Local Government Aid. LGA money has accounted for 43 percent of the library's operating budget, according to Laura Waterman Wittstock, chairwoman of the Library Board."
*Q & A with Kit Hadley: "Think about the library's role in democracy. Every country has a police infrastructure, but not everyone has free information."
*Editorial: "the downtown [library] project was once conceived as part of a four-block development, which then was reduced to two, then to a single block, then without a planetarium -- and now even the bare bones may not survive."
*The Minneapolis Public Library's finance committee rejected Kit Hadley's plan to close four branches. The library's funding shortfall will addressed by across-the-board cuts.

it's good to see "do more with less" being challenged, but this is a very risky game for a library

Tue, 11 Mar 2003 06:33:10 GMT

Hawai'i state librarian under fire from state Senators who cut her budget yet bristle at her cutting library hours. [ thanks brandon ]

[librarian.net]

journalists and librarians and information disintermediation

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 03:24:35 GMT

Scott Rosenberg's piece about the Davos reporter who got caught saying what she really thinks. [Scripting News]

I hadn't heard about this particular row (American readers might want to substitute flap or controversy for "row"). I found Scott's post more interesting for its discussion on the role of journalists in this world of blogs and information disintermediation. If journalists have a role in "digging out" what certain public figures "really think" about particular issues, I wonder if there's a parallel with librarians... Something special about the good old-fashioned face to face interaction between a librarian and the library user is that it often helps the library user clarify what she or he was really looking for in the first place. Of course, this can also happen over the phone - although it seems more difficult. I can't even imagine Virtual Reference software could put the spontaneity and free-flow of real conversation into toneless text messages. Maybe I'm wrong here.

Legal Mac

Mon, 24 Feb 2003 06:02:30 GMT

Finding US Code sections quickly with your Macintosh - Larry Stanton of Legal Mac blog has created an AppleScript that allows a user to input the title and section of the United States Code, then, after clicking the "Display" button, the default browser opens to a Web page with the requested statute displayed. It is available for download. Great job, Larry! [Ernie the Attorney]

article in Searcher about the digitial divide in legal research

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 06:00:26 GMT

Slashdot has reported (& discussed in typical Slashdot style) an article in Searcher magazine by Melissa Bar called "Democracy in the Dark: Public Access Restrictions from Westlaw and LexisNexis." It is a very interesting and well-written article that highlights the important issue of public access to the law.

In my biased opinion, this article has one major flaw, which is that it seems to totally ignore the role of law libraries - particularly academic law libraries and court libraries. I can only speak for the academic law library where I work. Although we mainly exist to serve our students, faculty and alumni, we never turn anyone from the public away who needs help with legal research. We are trained to help people find what they want or need without crossing over into the area of unauthorized practice of law. At the risk of blowing the profession's own horn too much, I say that the the assistance of a good law librarian - who is armed with a standard collection of printed materials and the resources available on the "free web", including the Legal Information Institute, West's FindLaw and LexisOne - will usually do a much better job for the pro se patron than free access to LexisNexis or Westlaw. The printed sources aren't all bad. They are very strong with the older materials, which Ms. Barr uses as an example, and they make it more difficult to fall into the full-text infoglut trap - where the few pearls are hidden in a tonne of garbage.

Law libraries should do a better job of communicating all this to public libraries. I know that some of the professional associations, including the Minnesota Association of Law Libraries are already doing some work in this area.

None of this is to say that I don't have my issues with LexisNexis or Westlaw - or think that they're perfect, altruistic companies. But now there are more free electronic alternatives (or cheap ones, like VersusLaw) available for legal research. They don't have the all the fancy bells & whistles of Westlaw or Lexis, but they still offer the public access to primary legal materials that would have seemed unthinkable 15 years ago.

LLRX is not being updated, for the time being

Thu, 13 Feb 2003 02:49:42 GMT

LLRX Takes an Indefinite Break ... (11 Feb) LLRX co-editors Sabrina Pacifici and Cindy Chick announce that LLRX will take a break, but will remain available "without any updates at this point." The home page refers readers to beSpacific, Sabrina's law and technology news Weblog. I'm sorry to learn that LLRX will no longer publish new articles (at least in the immediate future). I also think that Sabrina and Cindy deserve a virtual round of applause for their invaluable contributions to the legal and library professions. [TVC Alert]

This is quite sad. LLRX is a great site for legal research & scholarship. Its new content will be sorely missed. I hope that this is only a temporary hiatus.

can powerpoint slides get in the way of communicating to an audience?

Tue, 04 Feb 2003 03:41:51 GMT

Kill PowerPoint. After having relocated my teaching to the Vienna State College of Education in recent years, it now seems as if I'm back teaching at Vienna University next semester. As part of an introduction to methods course, I'll be teaching a class on presentation techniques tentatively titled "PowerPoint, Websites, Weblogs -- And Then What?"

Part of my aim is to actively discourage students from using PowerPoint -- an issue recently brought up by John Naughton in his Observer column (see also his weblog), where he says,

Under the guise of empowering people to tackle the difficult act of public speaking, PowerPoint reduces it to the rhetorical equivalent of painting by numbers - not to mention reading out words and phrases which their audiences can perfectly well read for themselves.

After all, "presentation skills" is not about knowing how to operate a piece of software. It's about compiling and arranging information, and then communicating it in such a way that people not only listen, but understand and remember.

And yes, I will be talking about weblogs, too. After all, the title says so. [The Aardvark Speaks]

the losing battle to debunk the full-text myth

Wed, 29 Jan 2003 13:43:08 GMT

Is more information always better?.

"We're throwing masses of full-text information at the students, and it's overwhelming them," says Steven J. Bell, library director at Philadelphia University, in an interview published by The Chronicle of Higher Education today. (The interview was a follow-up to an article by Mr. Bell in this month's issue of American Libraries.) His point rings true in many of my own experiences, both interviewing students and coping with my own research quests. I want to get a full copy of his article, as well as the article he mentions from College & Research Libraries News.

His words imply a larger challenge: Are we able to balance research that is helped along by human beings with research that is accelerated by automated search technology? Is automation winning the game? He mentions a "full-text fixation" among students who will only use databases (the Web included) that give them the full page or full article or full book. With full-text resources out there, why bother with citation databases? Why make the effort to walk to the stacks? Why take the time to ask a reference librarian to help find a subset of journals that cover a topic, when it's easier to get what looks like a pile of texts on that topic by plugging in a few keywords?

[Lisa Guernsey's Weblog]

For the next 2 weeks, I and the other reference librarians at my library, will busy be teaching the basics of using Westlaw to our first year students (we did the Lexis training in November). We'll be giving a demonstration of the full-text JLR database of law journals. We take pains to mention that the JLR database does not contain every law review article ever written - not even all the recent ones. We also try to empathize that full-text searching is the most difficult type of searching and that human-indexed databases such as the Index to Legal Periodicals and LegalTrac may give them more relevant results (hence, less information overload) from a broader pool of sources. But it's hard to interest them in this two-step process, especially when Westlaw offers free printing and spends millions on marketing themselves to law students.

using google or vivisimo for legal reference questions

Wed, 29 Jan 2003 13:05:16 GMT

Free Net Search Engines vs. Westlaw & Lexis.

Are free Internet search engines like Google ever better places for legal research than paid services like Westlaw and Lexis? More.

[Internet Tools for Lawyers]

It's curious to see how the generational differences can work here. One of my older colleagues, whom I greatly respect as a reference librarian, will usually turn to the library catalogue first. Alternatively, he will know of a great reference book off the top of his head. Thirdly he will use Lexis or Westlaw.

If I come across a more challenging question, I will often turn to Google first. It's a very quick way of giving me ideas for better search terms in the catalogue or Westlaw or Lexis. I find it particularly helpful for finding books when I'm missing a piece of crucial information about the title. There have been several instances when a law student has spent an hour searching in vain for something in Lexis or Westlaw (which would be horrifyingly expensive in "real world" Wexis billing), and then I find the document in a minute or two with Google or Vivisimo - my other favourite search engine.

I guess my point is that web search are a very helpful supplement to the more established research methods, but you would be most unwise to rely on them exclusively.

"Databases" and other problematic library terms

Tue, 31 Dec 2002 05:44:57 GMT

Uhm.... Here's an interesting webiste for library usability experts: Library Terms that users understand.

The purpose of this site is to help library web developers decide how to label key resources and services in such a way that most users can understand them well enough to make productive choices. It serves as a clearinghouse of usability test data evaluating terminology used on library web sites, listing terms that tests show are effective or ineffective labels. It presents alternatives by documenting terms that are actually used by libraries. It also suggests "best practices" for reducing cognitive barriers caused by terminology.

One of the surveys published on this site shows that in Arizona the following terms were not understood by library users:

Catalog
Index
Resources
Databases
Reference

Uhmm... I think I see the problem. I just hope they understand the term "library". [via etcetera] [The Aardvark Speaks]

I've been experiencing this issue personally while redesigning my library's web site. Apparently some of our students have "no idea" what a database means in the library context. This is concerning that section of a library's web site which links to resources like Lexis, Westlaw, Hein-On-Line, BNA, CCH, RIA etc. A part of me would like to think, well, they're here to learn, they should learn what a database is! But then I wonder if that's the right attitude, and that if libraries don't make themselves as accesssible and inviting as possible to their users/patrons, they will begin to lose users to inferior fee-based services which do a better job of marketing (like Google Answers).

the politicization of the library profession

Tue, 26 Nov 2002 04:31:00 GMT

- " Former congresswoman and one-time presidential .... - " Former congresswoman and one-time presidential candidate Pat Schroeder is hardly a Washington novice, but she took a political drubbing recently from the unlikeliest of foes: a bunch of librarians."

"Schroeder, who now heads the Assn. of American Publishers, had the temerity to publicly criticize libraries for their stance on copyright laws and for distributing free copies of electronic books and articles that publishers are trying to sell. Schroeder's spokeswoman made matters worse by complaining about the libraries' "radical factions."

"Librarians pounced. They roasted Schroeder for "library-bashing." They confronted Schroeder at public appearances, demanding an apology. They wrote to lawmakers en masse to complain."

"Eventually, Schroeder raised a white flag and backed away from her comments."

"The lesson? Don't mess with librarians these days." (from The LA Times - Thanks Cyndi for the submission) [Library Stuff - Updated daily by Steven M. Cohen]

This is a very interesting article.

"If we are going to provide these funds, how will they be used?" asked Rep. Charles W. "Chip" Pickering Jr. (R-Miss.), one of the chief sponsors of the Internet filtering bill that libraries blocked. "Will they be used to promote a radical, extremist social agenda? Libraries are like Mom and apple pie. Why would they want to squander their goodwill and good reputations to get involved in issues like child pornography?"

Politics is a dirty game - and I think librarians have surprised themselves (and their opponents) by getting their hands dirty lately. This isn't all good, but it's essential, otherwise the profession might as well be prepared to roll-over & die - as it inevitably becomes irrelevant to its ethics and the public. Everybody would be more comfortable staying out of the fray, but that would be letting the Content Cartel and the forces of paranoia set the agenda.

Every profession or industry is politicized to a certain extent. An apolitical profession is a like an innocent lamb that trusts in the goodness of the world. I used to work in the credit union industry - which is in virtually constant political/legal strife with the banks. The important thing is that you don't have to be partisan to be politcal.

I also had to post this one so that I could flout the L.A. Times' regressive anti-linking policy.