response to wren on west

Colleagues:

I have read the article in Wired Magazine and Christopher Wren's response. Mr. Wren made some statements in his letter that I felt needed a response.

He is quite correct in pointing out the distinction between pagination and citation, but he is too quick to dismiss the usefulness of public domain case and statutory information. I have worked as a reference librarian for over ten years, and rarely a day goes by that I don't deal with non-lawyer patrons who could be much better served by having access to this type of information. The advent of widespread public access to the internet, and the availability of search software on both personal computers and through various internet sites means that users no longer need to purchase both the search engine and the raw data from the same vendor in order to use it effectively.

Leaving aside the technical issues, there is a more fundamental issue: how does one value the right and/or need of ordinary people to have ready (inexpensive) access to the statutes, regulations, and case law that they are expected to follow? I believe that assuring widespread access to these materials should have a higher 'value' than whatever value is added by West Publishing when they paginate them. The emergence of new methods for delivering information offers an opportunity to address the legal information needs of persons outside the legal profession, but only if we are willing to re-examine existing attitudes about ownership and valuation of information.

Christopher Noe
Associate Law Librarian for Public Services College of Law Library; University of Idaho NOE[_at_]uidaho.edu
voice (208) 885-6521 fax (208) 885-7609 Received on Wed Apr 27 1994 - 19:39:53 GMT