N E W S R E L E A S E
American Association of Law Libraries
Task Force on Citation Format
In April, AALL President Kay Todd appointed a task force to
address the issue of citation formats, which has arisen
several times in recent years and in various venues.
President Todd describes the issue and her envisioned
response as follows:
"The issue has occasionally related to citations for
materials available only in electronic format; elsewhere the
question has related to a non-copyrighted form of citation.
Suggestions for change in standard citation format have
ranged from highly-complicated strings of characters to
simpler schemes.
"However, in all cases the question for the user of the
citation is how to obtain a version of the document that
will permit of the proper pinpoint citation to internal
references or that will allow retrieval of the segment of
the document that someone else has referenced. The
potential for a type of Balkanization to occur is huge, with
the legal community encountering vastly different formats
for references in a single document and finding it difficult
to obtain the document in a form permitting correct
citation.
"There is an opportunity now to affect the outcome of this
national dialogue. At the present time, Louisiana and the
Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals have adopted different
formats (the Sixth Circuit on a trial basis). The interests
of AALL members and the legal community suggest a simple
outcome. There are efforts being made by other groups,
including the American Bar Association, of which the Task
Force is aware, and in which it may wish to participate.
However, it my expectation that AALL's position and
experience uniquely suit it to a role in this dialogue, and
perhaps provide a means for divergent groups to discuss the
issues, and for the outcome to be one that will favor the
interests of users of legal information."
Member input is invited. The members of the Task Force are:
Lynn Foster, Chair, Carolyn Ahearn, Martha Dragich, Bruce
Kennedy, Marcia Koslov, William Lindberg (West Publishing
Co.), Graham Marshall (Butterworth Legal Publishers),
Frederick Muller (Reporter of Decisions for the State of New
York), Bob Oakley, Kyle Parker (Law Office Information
Systems), Rita Reusch, Kathy Welker, Virginia Wise, and
Monica Yunag (Mead Data Central).
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