September 23

Law library collection survey

My research covers intersection of legal information, libraries and access to justice. In order to gain a better understanding of the information available to members of the public via law libraries, I have crafted a survey that will hopefully give me some insight into the collections available.   I hope you will consider taking 10-15 minutes to take this survey. It can be found at:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1aqW2HHvbYOdLV_1KlCFCPFPvGvdGrsXCSbGVKiXJ758/viewform

 

Thank you very much.

 

Category: meta, methodology | 1 Comment on Law library collection survey
September 23

Regulations Data Collection

Last, but certainly not least, I’m ready to survey regulations.   I think this one may be the most heartbreaking of the Big Three, since (a) regulations exert a lot of control on people’s day to day life and (b) I’m suspecting that the government publication of these may end up being the official version more often than not and yet done in a way that will not lend itself to research or preservation.  Like, with the case law I finally accepted the fact that it was done for press inquiries and I could let it go (LET IT GOOOO…) about how inadequate it was.  But these regs are going to be for keeps.

I think my data points are going to be very similar to the stuff I collected about codes.  To wit:

  • Name of official version of code
  • Publisher of Official Code
  • Online version URL
  • Is online version official?
  • Statement of officialness?
  • Format of Online Version
  • Publisher of Online Version
  • Use restrictions on Online version
  • Statement of Copyright
  • Current year only or archival versions available online?
  • Code archive or regulation
  • URL of Archival versions
  • If archival versions available, how far back?
  • Bulk download available?
  • Search capabilities – none, basic, advanced/filtered
  • Update schedule?

Am I missing anything?

 

Category: methodology, regulations | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 21

Information Poverty

There’s a joke that goes “librarians like to search, everyone else like to find.”

Listen, I didn’t say it was a funny joke.

Anyway, I do love searching.  But I love it even more when I find the right term to search by, which happened this weekend.  It turns out that there is term for the “justice desert” concept that I’ve been kicking around.

Information poverty.

I thought it up on Sunday morning while watching Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC.  (A show which I highly recommend, btw.)  I did a quick and dirty google search and lo and behold..it’s an actual term of art for the concept I’ve been kicking around.  So boo for not being able to be the “originator” but yeah for more literature to review.  And double yea for more confirmation that this topic hasn’t been beaten to death and written about.

As an aside, I do find myself in the weird position of wanting to share everything I learn as I learn it but having a fear that I’m going to get scooped if I reveal too much?  I know I’m just being paranoid, because who else wants to research and write about this topic?  I dunno.    Just suffice it to say that working in the open can be hard sometimes, mentally and emotionally.

Category: methodology, research | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 4

Case law data collection

Next up on data collection list…case law.  This is going to be ugly.  Here are the data points I think I’m going to be collecting for the state supreme and appellate level cases.

  • Court Name
  • Official print publication for cases
  • URL of online cases
  • Official or Unofficial
  • Statement of Officialness
  • Format cases published in
  • Vendor neutral citation?
  • Current Year or Archival Versions Available?
  • URL of Archive
  • If Archival versions available, how far back?
  • Bulk Download available?
  • Copyright Claims
  • Use Restrictions

Am I missing anything?

Category: case law, methodology | LEAVE A COMMENT
August 28

Codified State Statutes

First things first…I’m going to try and get my arms around what the current crop of law published online by the creating government looks like.    Seems simple enough, right?    Actually, I don’t think it will be too bad.  Just tedious and, if the few websites I looked at today are any indication,  heartbreaking.

I’m going to stick initially with just basic primary state level material – codes, case law and regulations.  (Although with case law, I think I may go county by county – all 3143 of them – so that for later data manipulation I can get everything with the correct state and federal jurisdictions.  Because I just know even without looking into it that federal and state judicial districts will not overlap nicely.  BUT ANYWAY.. enough about cases for now. )  At this state level investigation,  I’m also going to include DC and the inhabited territories, so that brings us to 56 geographic entities for codes and regulations.

So what are the data points I’m going to collect?  I think I came up with a good balance of COLLECT ALL THE DATA and things that are actually important to know.  Since I don’t have a final product firmly designed for this outside of using it for research and comparison, I may have erred on the side of “collecting too much” but if I’m going to spend time on this, I want to make sure that I’m Doing It Right.  As you can probably tell, my list has also been greatly informed by the recent problems with the Georgia State code.    Here are the data points I’m going to collect for codes.

  • Name of official version of code
  • Is official version annotated or unnannotated?
  • Publisher of Official Code
  • Online version URL
  • Is online version official?
  • Statement of officialness?
  • Format of Online Version
  • Publisher of Online Version
  • Use restrictions on Online version
  • Statement of Copyright
  • Current year only or archival versions available online?
  • Code archive or session law archive?
  • URL of Archival versions
  • If archival versions available, how far back?
  • Bulk download available?
  • Search capabilities – none, basic, advanced/filtered

Am I missing anything?

 

Category: codes, methodology, states | 1 Comment on Codified State Statutes