The pre-conference workshop focused on authoring with Lexis' Faculty Office, a Folio Views product. Sessions were structured for beginners and intermediate users, with plenty of hands-on training, and guidance from Lexis representatives available. Professors using the electronic casebooks from LEAP (Lexis-Nexis Electronic Author's Press) reported that the first year may not be the best place to introduce this format, and that the nature of the material may impact the usability of the electronic format. For example, the format may be better suited to UCC and statutory-type classes rather than Constitutional Law classes. Professors reported some installation difficulties and computer memory problems -- a 486 or Pentium with at least 8 mgs of memory is necessary. Electronic casebooks generally comprise four or more diskettes, so look for cd-rom distribution in the future, as local cd-rom drives become more common.
Lexis did provide electronic casebook training sessions for students in courses using a LEAP casebook. Students do not have to own the Student Office in order to use the electronic casebooks in Folio Views ( although I am now told that the Student Office will be available free of charge to students in the fall). These casebooks contain a portion of the Folio software. Students can highlight, make sticky notes, and generate an outline with the casebook. From what I can tell, the Student Office would allow the additional feature of linking between and among a number of electronic casebooks in Folio Views.
Interestingly, Washburn reported "having a bad experience" with the Lexis Folio people and they chose to use the Internet to do many of the things Folio offers. A casebook for Civil Procedure was put in electronic format with links to cases that were scanned into the database and links to the web. Listservs and newsgroups were also set up. They believe the Internet will be a better medium for electronic publishing than Folio Views.
Mac versions of the Folio Views software will be available in the fall for all the Michie casebooks converted to electronic format. The Web Retriever, an accessory to Folio Views, can be downloaded from the web site. Web Retriever goes out to the Internet and downloads specified information from a URL into a Folio database, retaining the hypertext links that existed on the Internet. A program link from within a Folio database may point to a URL, a CALI exercise, or anything contained on the network (i.e., a cd-rom).
A Mac viewer for CALI exercises will soon be available (Fall?). CALI is exploring Internet delivery of lessons and creating lessons in a quiz format similar to Jeopardy.
The West Educational Network (TWEN) is a Lotus Notes product. West does provide training to the students in a class using an electronic casebook, and students were able to print from the Westlaw laser printers. A Mac client is available for the electronic casebooks. An electronic version is shrinkwrapped with the hard copy of the casebook.
Little Brown is converting its casebooks to electronic format, using Folio Views. Little Brown has tailored Folio to its casebooks, and these casebooks provide jump links to both Westlaw and Lexis, and to word processing programs. They have created Custom Query Templates to facilitate the search for information within the "book." Students may purchase either the hard copy or the electronic copy for the same price. For a little bit more, they can buy both versions of the casebook. The electronic version is on diskette. The Teacher's Manual is also being offered in an electronic format.
Titles available for Fall 1996: Barnett, Randy E. Contract: Cases and Doctrine. Crandall & Whaley. Problems and Materials on Contracts, 2nd ed. Neumann, Richard K. Legal Reasoning and Writing. Singer, Joseph. Property Law: Rules, Policies, and Practices. Crandall, Douglas. Problems and Materials on Commercial Law, 4th ed.
Two Chicago attorneys, Mary Dicig and Joleen Willis, discussed and fielded questions on intellectual property law and electronic publishing and the Internet. David Nimmer (Nimmer on Copyright) has proposed revisions to the UCC which will address enforceable shrinkwrap licenses and liability for defective products, among other things. For a more enforceable copyright notice and license agreement on the web, the attorneys suggested that users be made to click on an "I assent" button before allowing them to proceed to the materials. In addition, all disclaimers should be conspicuous -- large print, contrasting type and color. Users will rarely click on a button labeled "disclaimer," and courts are unlikely to view such buttons as adequate notice. The presenters also said to be sure and always disclaim all implied warranties, especially the warranty of non-infringement and the warranty as to accuracy of data.
Judging from the response my co-presenter Elmer Masters and I received, Intranets are a hot topic for many law schools and libraries. Elmer spoke about the development of an Intranet at the Barclay Law Library at Syracuse University, while I focused on the development of the web site at Indiana University School of Law, Bloomington. We offered the audience a number of internal uses for a web site: staff calendar for vacation and sick time, a law school calendar for events and lectures, electronic job manuals and forms, an electronic version of the Washington List with search capability and a mechanism for ordering photocopies, and the use of Real Audio for lectures.
For those of you unable to attend the conference, be sure to visit
http://www.cali.org/96conf where you'll find many of the presenter's handouts and
slide presentations.