I am quite familiar with the San Diego County Law
Library, and even more familiar with its North County
Branch, although I have not been to either in a number
of years.
As you probably know, the LA County Law Library --
which I have visited a few times in the past two years
mostly because of their foreign materials -- has a
contract with Loislaw.com that allows patrons free
access. (Another county law librarian has mentioned on
this list that his or her library's license also
allows such access; probably there are many such.) No
library can make Lexis or Westlaw available in that
manner; at least not in the U.S.
When I spoke with Loislaw.com reps at the AALL
conference in Washington they conceded the
significance of the absence of Fed.Supp. materials,
but said they were in the works -- as were some
specialized collections (bankruptcy? immigration? I
don't recall which).
It would seem to me that in the modern age, law
libraries need to make full-text searching available
to all their patrons, not just those who can afford to
buy access to Lexis and Westlaw with other people's
money. Probably the way to do this is with CD-ROMs.
For the moment, of course, Jurisline.com is a second-
or third-best alternative, and not a bad one by any
means, for the low-budget litigant or -- just as
important -- the person interested in researching the
law for its own sake. With Westlaw and Lexis
unavailable to many students in non-law faculties
(that's changing rapidly, apparently) but certainly
not to those engaged in self-study or private
research, I think county law libraries are failing in
their obligation if they don't keep such patrons in
mind. If hard copy volumes are retired in favor of
on-line services or CD-ROMs, not only will libraries
become hostage to cavalier and profit-centered policy
and pricing decisions, but the lay user is likely to
be completely excluded. Having looked at the
California statute that underpins county law libraries
in that state, it seems to me that their constituency
isn't (or at least shouldn't be) the lawyer, but the
court user.
(Of course nowhere else in the world but North America
is there such a thing as county law libraries.
Certainly not here in Britain.)
Andy Grossman
University College London, SLAIS
--- "Charles R. Dyer" <cdyer@sdcll.org> wrote:
> For everyone' information:
>
> Lois Law is a company that has been around about
> thirteen years. They put their
> data online by OCR scanning and limit their
> materials to just the official
> opinions and any headnotes added by the courts
> themselves. They also scan
> statutes and session laws. Their method of acquiring
> data avoids the potential
> lawsuit implications that arose from Jurisline's
> method, which was to download
> from CD-ROM's purchased from Lexis. Lexis contends
> that their license agreements
> should be a legal bar to Jurisline's building of
> their database. Jurisline
> contends that the information they use, the court
> reports, etc., were not
> copyrightable and therefore legal to use. The courts
> will decide. Lois Law, by
> borrowing from hard copy for its backfiles, avoids
> any licensing issues. As I
> understand it, both Jurisline and Lois Law update
> their current cases directly
> from the courts and legislatures, as do Lexis and
> Westlaw. Lois Law also has
> some licensing arrangements with Lexis. Lois Law
> also has some decent capital
> behind it. I would consider Lois Law a major player
> now.
>
> The San Diego County Pubic Law Library does not
> currently subscribe to Lois Law,
> and we do subscribe to Lexis and Westlaw. But Lois
> Law's lower pricing,
> especially for nationwide flat rate, makes them a
> serious contender for our long
> range plans to stop our hard copy collection
> efforts, especially for out of
> state materials.
>
> Charles Dyer
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