I appreciate Blair's vote of confidence, but I am no SGML expert.
Ina's comments about law librarians and SGML have raised some questions,
though. Perhaps one reason that law librarians have been a bit behind
the curve with SGML is that image presentation of legal documents
is perceived to be less important than for documents in other
disciplines, such as chemistry or medicine. And the text retrieval
capabilities that SGML-tagged fields permit is taken care of in law
by the two on-line retrieval systems, LEXIS and Westlaw. Two
events should change this perspective.
First, there is a move toward information storage and retrieval
in local systems. If locally stored documents are in SGML format,
they can be searched by field or displayed/printed in image-like
format.
Second, law librarians are beginning to appreciate the image or
image-like delivery of documents. Law librarians have
traditionally emphasized electronic citation retrieval
(bibliographic access) over electronic document delivery. ("Locate
the case on-line, then photocopy it from the book/blow it back from
the microfiche.") Although electronic access provides incredibly
powerful citation retrieval, the document delivery capabilities of
the on-line systems have been lacking. Recently, however, Westlaw
has, for example, had the capability of providing dual column print
with imbedded graphics (the key symbol) that makes an computer-
produced print less distinguishable from a document photocopied
from a book.
One reason for slow movement to SGML in law is that, for
attorneys, the 'image validation' of the majority of primary legal
documents is the image of the proprietary reporting system of one
legal publisher, not the image of the public document as it comes
from the issuing agency. Because of this, attorneys have been
resistant to relying on print-outs that, for example, didn't even
look like court slip opinions, much less the cases found in the
books.
As librarians realize that the virtual law library requires
image or image-like document delivery, as well as tagged field
searching for citation retrieval, SGML will catch on. As you say,
SGML will ultimately dominate all document-based information
interchange and electronic publishing.
Jim Hambleton
Texas Wesleyan University School of Law
jhamble@class.org
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