New Articles from Law Library Journal on Database Design and Open Access Legal Scholarship

Volume 101, no. 1 of Law Library Journal is out. Law Library Journal is published by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL).

Two articles in particular attracted my attention:

• Not Just Key Numbers and Keywords Anymore: How User Interface Design Affects Legal Research by Julie M. Jones, Head of Information Services & Lecturer in Law, Cornell University Law Library: "Legal research is one of the foundational skills for the practice of law. Yet law school graduates are frequently admitted to the bar without adequate competence in this area. Applying both information-foraging theory and current standards for optimal web design, Ms. Jones considers, through a heuristic analysis, whether the user interfaces of Westlaw and LexisNexis help or hinder the process of legal research and the development of effective research skills."
• Legal Scholarship, Electronic Publishing, and Open Access: Transformation or Steadfast Stagnation? by Stephanie L. Plotin, Reference & Williams Institute Librarian, UCLA School of Law: "This article uses a social shaping of technology perspective, which studies the complex interactions between technology and the culture of a discipline, to investigate the evolution of legal scholarship in the digital age, and to determine how the open access movement has influenced various forms of legal scholarship, particularly law reviews, their online companions, and legal blogs."

The complete table of contents appears on the AALL website.