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I agree completely with Ruth Fraley et al. on the sorry state of electronic
publishing in the legal industry. I would like to add something further. It
seems to me that the publishers are overestimating the computer skills of the
majority of their users. Sure we have those techie types out there that can
master any piece of software put in front of them. We also know about those
that are afraid to use the keyboard. The ones that really worry me, however,
are the ones that THINK they know what they are doing, refuse to go through
complete training because they know how to do legal research on the computer,
and then you find out weeks later that they are trying to use standard boolean
(( i.e. Westlaw/Lexis-Nexis)) search logic on a Folios database.
The developers need to provide more support for their existing products. We
don't need new features, we need better explanation of the existing features
that we can really use.
This makes me recall a chat that I had with a Folio VP (I think) at a
conference a couple of years ago. I tried to explain my many complaints with
Folio and narrowed them down to the fact that we are trying to do full-text
searching on a system that was designed for bibliographic (or other
short-item) records. His basic reaction was "research is research". I don't
think so. They need to put more users on the development teams. Sure, the
searches will bring you results, but are you getting the results you are
supposed to get. This is the law er are working with, not research reports
for high school students.
Are there any vendors lurking out there to provide us with some comments?
Anne K. Abate
Librarian
Dinsmore & Shohl, LLP
Cincinnati, OH
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