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November 17, 2003
Hard Copy v. Electronic Research
Thomas O'Keefe, in his article "Navigating the Law: Case-finding Tools Beyond Lexis and Westlaw" (Legal Information Alert, June 2003), makes an excellent case for the usefulness of hard copy case finding tools. He also notes in his concluding paragraph that the strategy of using case finding tools along with online full-text searching can be a difficult one to promote because such tools are disappearing from library shelves. Why are such useful tools going by the wayside? I blame it on the online research vendors and their love affair with full-text searching.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of full-text searching. Been doing it all my adult life. Some of my best friends full-text search. But O'Keefe's points are well taken. Well-organized finding tools and secondary sources are worth their weight in gold. But this doesn't have to be a hard copy v. electronic version debate. Why not use the secondary sources electronically?
Perhaps because the ones that ARE available online are still not that easy to use online. The contents get thrown into databases, and users are expected to search them using full-text strategies more suitable for case law. That's quicker, easier and cheaper than evaluating how a tools is used, and defining an interface customized to the material. For example, one of the most common research tasks, finding a particular section of a book, is not always intuitive. The answer usually ends up being "do a search" to find the section.
O'Keefe talks about the benefits of controlled vocabulary. But many of the vendors aren't convinced of the value of controlled vocabulary, with several notable exceptions. Librarians have been begging for treatise indexes to be included online for years, and in some cases the vendors grudgedly comply, but often they don't see the need of an index when, after all, you can full-text search the book.
Some publishers heading down the right road. For example, my favorite implementation of a finding tools is CCH's Internet products. All the finding tools are linked on the main menu. Click on "Citation Search" and templates are provided to help you find the specific documents you're searching for. Could you conduct a standard full-text search to find something like an SEC release? Sure, but how much easier is it to use a ready-made template? One that lists all the different sources included in the publication! What a concept.
There are other issues. Secondary materials tend to be easily overlooked on the major online services, buried deep within the database directories. So how about suggesting these additional sources based on a user's search terms. Direct them to the resources that could be useful for them, even if they didn't specifically ask. After all, Amazon can do it!
Maybe that's the ultimate answer. Push the data to the user, and stop expecting them to know where to find it.
Comments
First, with respect to the article, I agree with you that publishers have a hand in the disappearance of print secondary sources, but I also think that we, the teachers, are partly to blame. Are secondary sources only available in print? To me it’s the hierarchical structure of the secondary sources that make them an important complement to database searching (and let’s face it, that’s their new role) rather than the format. I think we as educators have failed to realize that we are throwing ‘print’ secondary sources at students who no longer have a foundation for a print research system. As an example, I would suggest that the concept of an index to legal periodicals makes little sense to one has little or no experience with an encyclopedia and how that tool fits into the larger research system. We’re teaching students about print resources not about a system that includes print resources but may also be accessed online. They then get spoon fed free Lexis and Westlaw and soon print secondary sources are evil awful things that only lesser researchers use (or something like that).
I think we’d be better off teaching from a model that recognizes that anything beyond Google may be considered an imposition. Just as one can(should, must?) complement an internet search with internet subject directories, so too one can (blah, blah) complement legal database searching with hierarchically organized research tools (secondary sources) some of which are only available in print and some which simply work much better in print. I call this teaching research from the inside out. I’m hoping to put these ideas into print with some support in the Spring.
Posted by: Thomas Keefe at December 13, 2003 07:40 PM
First, with respect to the article, I agree with you that publishers have a hand in the disappearance of print secondary sources, but I also think that we, the teachers, are partly to blame. Are secondary sources only available in print? To me it’s the hierarchical structure of the secondary sources that make them an important complement to database searching (and let’s face it, that’s their new role) rather than the format. I think we as educators have failed to realize that we are throwing ‘print’ secondary sources at students who no longer have a foundation for a print research system. As an example, I would suggest that the concept of an index to legal periodicals makes little sense to one has little or no experience with an encyclopedia and how that tool fits into the larger research system. We’re teaching students about print resources not about a system that includes print resources but may also be accessed online. They then get spoon fed free Lexis and Westlaw and soon print secondary sources are evil awful things that only lesser researchers use (or something like that).
I think we’d be better off teaching from a model that recognizes that anything beyond Google may be considered an imposition. Just as one can(should, must?) complement an internet search with internet subject directories, so too one can (blah, blah) complement legal database searching with hierarchically organized research tools (secondary sources) some of which are only available in print and some which simply work much better in print. I call this teaching research from the inside out. I’m hoping to put these ideas into print with some support in the Spring.
Posted by: Thomas Keefe at December 13, 2003 07:41 PM
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