This may have been discussed on the law-lib bboard before (I'm a recent
convert), but West has over the last five to ten years or so changed its
ancient policy of including EVERY relevant citation pertaining to a
particular point of law in CJS. Therefore, CJS is now considerably
streamlined from its earlier incarnations. Now, it's true that the goal
of including EVERY possible citation in such a work is in all reality
today absolutely impossible; however, West has been considerably less than
forthcoming concerning this change in policy. It could very well be that
West's editorial deletions are perfectly sane and well chosen, but for the
"completist" researcher, this is of course a bit disconcerting. If your
library has oodles of space (lucky you) you may wish to retain old
outdated editions in a space set apart from the regular set.
Contrariwise, you may wish to ascertain if some large library nearby
already has the practice of retaining old volumes.
A similar situation is in effect when West revises volumes of their
annotated codes, e.g. their completely new Illinois Compiled Satutes
Annotated (Smith-Hurd). Many annotations which West considered totally
peripheral or no longer relevant were deleted. Certainly for your home
state, you may wish to retain superseded volumes. Or you may order these
superseded volumes on microfiche (I think it's Hein who puts these out).
Hope this helps
FRANK DRAKE
Chicago
On Thu, 9 Dec 1993, Paul G. Mitchell wrote:
>
>
> A while ago, someone on law-lib discussed the seeming reduction
> in size (and probably the amount of the law contained there) of
> the revised volumes of CJS.
>
> Recently, I replaced the five "Appeal and Error" volumes with two
> new ones that are actually smaller in size than two of the earlier
> versions. Am I nuts, or what? Did I miss something? Lest the
> readers consider me concerned only with size, let me emphasize that
> I worry about content as well. It strikes me as odd that this
> topic would be reduced so much.
>
> Could someone clarify this for me?
>
> Thanks!!
>
> Paul G. Mitchell
> Marathon Oil Company
> (419) 421-3376 voice
> (419) 421-3578 fax
> da793@cleveland.freenet.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03/09/00 PST