Colleagues,
By no means do I excuse the publication of bogus material; it's
reprehensible.But I see a greater issue here: yet another reason
electronic citators are preferable to paper ones. The publishers refuse
to revise and reissue corrected material because, presumably, they find
it economically inefficient. An electronic citator, of course, if and
when it contains errors of this sort, is cheaply and rapidly corrected
with a few keystrokes from an editor.
I know most of my colleagues wouldn't touch Shepard's in paper with a
ten foot pole, save for the few things with no electronic analogue
(e.g., session law coverage, exactly what Scott and Byron are
addressing!); I'm not the first to decide that relying on it in practice
amounts to malpractice. Thus, my thought is that Elsevier realizes it's
paper product is not long for this world and, while they will keep
producing it as long as enough people buy it to turn a profit (a
representative said as much not long ago in the CRIV Sheet, I recall),
they aren't going to put much, if any, resources into fixing these kinds
of snags because not enough of the consumer base knows or cares about
them. (The problem also illustrates why I teach students, where
possible, to use Shepard's, KeyCite, GlobalCite, and anything else they
can to cross check their findings.)
My question to any lurking representatives of Lexis would be: why not
make Shepard's online do everything the print versions can and then
everyone will be happier: publishers can fix errors cheaply and
consumers will have accurate, up-to-date citators?
Shannon Malcolm
Reference Librarian
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
142K Law Building
504 East Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820
Phone: 217-244-3044
Fax: 217-244-8500
slewism@law.uiuc.edu
"When you paint a lot of pictures, if you're any good, occasionally you
paint something great." - Steve Hogarth
________________________________
From: Scott Burgh [mailto:sgburgh@ameritech.net]
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 12:05 PM
To: Hill, Byron C.; law-lib@ucdavis.edu
Subject: Re: SHEPARD'S ERROR -- Are you monitoring the list, Lexis?
This is like the errors I pointed outed last month in Shepard's Acts and
Cases by Popular Name. They ran the wrong tapes and the 1992 changes in
Illinois law are still wrong and they refuse to correct it and hide
behind an intellectualy dishonest letter they sent me. But they have no
problem collecting the subscription fees while the integrity of the
publication is suspect.
Why don't you find the direct editor and raise the question of why these
amendments are omitted?
Scott Burgh
Chief Law Librarian
City of Chicago Department of Law Library
"Hill, Byron C." <BHill@bowditch.com> wrote:
A Shepardization for any amendments to Chapter 327 of
the Acts of 1979 in Massachusetts revealed no changes, through the July,
2006 supplement. Yet Chapter 327 was clearly amended by Chapter 380 of
the Acts of 2004 (see:
http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/seslaw04/sl040380.htm
<http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/seslaw04/sl040380.htm> ). This is a
troubling error by a resource I used to feel I could count on.
Byron Hill, Librarian
Bowditch & Dewey, LLP
Worcester - Framingham - Boston, MA
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