#LawRepositories - OER & Perma.cc - Glassmeyer & Ziegler
Sarah (@sglassmeyer) & Adam (@abziegler)
Sarah:
Assume the following are true:
P1: Access to information is access to justice.
P2: Access to justice is the responsibility of the legal profession.
∴ Legal professionals make access to justice happen by providing access to information.
3 Ideas:
- Data (the “raw" law)
- Information
- Knowledge
A lot of knowledge goes into our repositories, but not a ton of information or data.
3 Aspects:
- Content
- Container
- Conveyance
-
- Free repositories have been the subject of the talk
Information is Locked Away:
- Publishers are treating digital materials different from print materials.
- Copyright extension (in term and scope).
-
- Orphan work problem: 25% - 50%
- Format changes.
What does it mean to “pay" for content?
- Taxpayers pay for courts, professors, licenses.
Technology is available!
- Publish and distribute from the desktop.
Definition of Open Source vs. Open Access
- OS refers to the software
- OA refers to the content
What Open is NOT:
- Garbage
- “Given away"
- Forbidding
-
- Sometimes things under CC license don’t look “open"
Much of what is going on in law repositories is “Fauxopen Access"
OER / Casebooks:
- Removes barriers to education ($$)
- No more reinventing the wheel all the time
-
- Why do we struggle to teach “What Are Primary Legal Materials?" over and over?
- Public domain legal materials for:
-
- Law schools
- CLEs
- Paralegal training programs
Finding “Stuff" in Virtual Boxes of Crap:
- SSRN
- TWEN & Blackboard (or other LMS, I suppose)
- Published court opinions
It’s ok to start small! So...
- Don’t hide the license
- Make the document “re-mixable"
- Make lots of copies so people don’t have to hunt for it!
Adam:
Repos / Platforms / Networks
Harvard Library Innovation Lab: http://librarylab.law.harvard.edu/about.html
Law-Specific Projects:
- The Casebook (H2O Platform)
- Digitization Efforts (Caselaw & Special Collections)
Will discuss Perma.cc in depth today:
Link Rot (Perma.cc)
- https://perma.cc/about
- Links. Will. Break.
-
- (There was a great conference on this topic in October at Georgetown Law)
- Perma.cc is a simple web app. Resolves links to the very page the author intended to reference.
- But it’s also a code repository!
-
- Available on GitHub
- 85 law libraries acting as Perma.cc registrars.
- Perma is also a platform; recently released an API.
-
- Recently have built a small Word plugin, being tested now.
- Finally, Perma is a network.
-
- Institutional combination.
- Library mirroring.
Q&A Notes:
Law schools have chosen a commercial repository vendor. Is this a problem?
- Sarah says yes. Question is where the content is hosted?
-
- Cost a concern. Stability, too.
- Quarterly archive feature of bepress.
Progress on Perma box:
- Prototype has been created.
- Still being tested.
Perma workflow problems for law journals:
- There is no manual, but some folks have developed resources.
-
- Libguide at Boston College on it (link to be circulated)
- Audience noting resistance from journals
- Courts have different sensitivities.
-
- Links being created might be used to forecast an opinion.
That’s all, folks! Great conference!
-AK (@kirschsubjudice)
