David and others:
Interesting question.
In reality, what will most likely happen is a proliferation of
available materials from existing sources, since the commercial
online services have in general neglected research issues in
favor of spending their pennies on more comprehensive holdings.
What I'd like to see:
--Increased electronic publication of legal and law-related
materials. Certainly the government is already poised to do
this. But it would seem to me that NREN and the falling cost of
CD-ROM publication would both be factors which argue for
increased self-publication by much smaller organizations or
individuals with particular expertise. So a radical
proliferation of sources is likely. "Burgeoning" doesn't even
begin to describe it.
--In line with this idea, offering of CALR materials from diverse
locations via distributed-database technology. Why only use
mainframes in Dayton or Minneapolis? Eventually someone will
come up with a relatively integrated interface to both major
online sources as well as to those materials available from other
services.
--Increased synergy between CALR front-ends and applications on
desktops. To some extent, the MS-Windows <> LEXIS Windows macros
are a simple example of how a CALR session manager can be made to
act as a "server" application for other apps running in a
multitasking environment. But I think we may come to think of
CALR services increasingly as "engines" used by other
applications and interfaces.
--The proliferation of sources and an "engine" approach to CALR
services will probably join forces and urge upon us some
automation of routine CALR tasks, beyond the present Eclipse-like
search. I would suspect that firms interested in reducing their
CALR costs may already be working on queued, "off-peak" batch
retrieval agents to grab stuff of interest to the many. Though I
don't know of anyone doing this, it's certainly within reach now,
and it would make a lot of sense in some relatively "vertical"
markets.
--The interfaces themselves will change. Lots of people have
been discussing for a long time, and have built, retrieval
"front-ends" which offer some feedback. It's possible that we'll
see something like this developed with particular substantive
areas of practice in mind, guiding the user toward richer veins
of material. Visual interfaces are also an interesting idea, and
one which I'm mulling over.
--I would fervently hope for some kind of uniform citation system
which takes into account both exclusively electronic, print, and
"mixed sources". But then I also believe those letters that tell
me I "may have already won" something :-).
There are about 2000 other ideas in this vein....
Regards,
Tb.
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| Thomas R. Bruce 607-255-1221 |
| Director, Educational Technologies FAX: 607-255-7193 |
| Cornell Law School |
| 481 Myron Taylor Hall tom@law.mail.cornell.edu |
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