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29 Legal Info. Alert 1 (2010-2011)

handle is hein.lbr/leinfal0029 and id is 1 raw text is: What's new in legal publications, databases, and research techniques Volume 29, No. 1 2010 r Contents The 21st Century Law Library Conundrum: Free Law and Paying to Understand It From the Editor New Sources Publishers 12 Index 12 The 21 st Century Law Library Conundrum: Free Law and Paying to Understand It by Richard A. Leiter For years people have been predicting the death of books and the general demise of libraries. The people who have been most passionate about them are those who stand to gain financially by their own predictions. And that's not to say that we haven't all benefited from digital developments in the world of legal bibliography. But in this past decade, we have seen some extraordinary techno- logical developments. It looks as if the world of law libraries may finally be at the cusp of a fundamental change in how we collect, organize and distribute legal materials. Primary Legal Materials For the entire history of our Western legal system, the publication of primary legal materials (cases, statutes and regulations) was intimately tied up with tools that help lawyers understand the law. In the 19th century, we saw the rise of the industrialization of case reporting when John B. West created the National Reporter System, a reporting service that systematically and promptly reported every published case that came from the United States judicial system. The process for collecting and publishing these cases was strictly objective and so efficient that the volume of reported cases made research virtually impos- sible without an elaborate indexing system, or some sort of key to finding needed cases. Thus West developed West's Key Number System that purported to index every legal issue decided by the courts. It was accessible through an encyclopedic digest system and served two purposes: reporting cases quickly and authoritatively, as well as providing subject access to the courts' rulings on specific issues. Over time, West's West Publishing Company was so successful at its business that it became the reporter of record for many jurisdictions. Even when a state published its own case reports, the West reporter versions were preferred because of the widespread distribution, reliability and speed with which they were published. None of these features could be matched by the official reports with which they had to compete. West also eventually tackled publication of state and federal codes with the same zeal. Although these were considered unofficial versions, the West Publishing Company (West) annotated codes became well regarded and authoritative. In some cases, The West codes were adopted as official versions. _ __ I continued on page 3

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