The Evolution of Law Libraries
The Practice
March/April 2019
Law libraries are essential arenas for innovation and research in the legal profession. The Harvard Library Innovation Lab, in particular, is pushing the boundaries of what a library can do.
March/April 2019
The Harvard Library Innovation Lab
This article shares Harvard Law School's Library Innovation Lab's mission, methods, and principles; highlights some of our present work; and tries to situate that work within the broader context of transformational change in law and libraries.
Sketching the Future
We share brief commentaries on four of HLS' Library Innovation Lab's sketches written by people who were instrumental in making them happen. We asked each of them a set list of questions to examine what the sketch was originally intended to do, how it came into its current form, and where it is going next.
Making the Law Computable
The Practice spoke with Jack Cushman, a senior developer at Library Innovation Lab (LIL), to talk about the Caselaw Access Project (CAP), an initiative to digitize every precedential case ever published by a U.S. court throughout its entire history and make it all free on the internet
Pausing the Internet
What is Perma.cc? Why is this solution coming from a law school library? Who is using it, and what does this mean for legal research? In the end, we are left with a portrait of Perma.cc—the service, the technology, and the people behind it—that offers a new vision for libraries, legal and otherwise, in the age of the internet.
Research on Research
Surveys of librarians and personal interviews would provide valuable information about the reasons for libraries’ choices, the full extent to which tools are promoted to users beyond mention on library websites, and the evidence of success or failures in experimenting with these tools.
Bill to Eliminate PACER Fees Introduced in Congress
PACER is a web database of federal court documents provided by the federal judiciary and intended to facilitate public access to electronic court information. Currently, access to these documents is subject to fees depending on the user, the type of file, and the quantity of those files accessed.
Leading Law Libraries
Michelle Wu, associate dean for library services and professor of law at Georgetown Law, recently sat down with Jocelyn Kennedy, executive director of the Harvard Law School Library, for a conversation on leading law libraries in the 21st century.
