The End of Scholarly Bibliography: Reconceptualizing Law Librarianship

Abstract

The death of Professor Morris L. Cohen raises the question of the future of scholarly bibliography. Has the information revolution with its digitization of data and its facile search engines transformed what once was a respected aspect of scholarship into a pursuit so specialized as to be seen as an antiquarian endeavor? In conjunction with this query, the history and status of law librarians is critically examined.

Defining International Law Librarianship in an Age of Multiplicity, Knowledge, and Open Access to Law

“…22 See Garavaglia (2011);AALL Research Agenda (2000), http://www.aallnet.org/committee/research/ agenda.asp, accessed 20 July 2010. 23 For a less optimistic view, see Berring (2011). maintaining access to legal information even for law libraries in affluent parts of the world (Haugen 2005, 473). To influence the resolution of these global issues, law librarians with international concerns must think harder about what they can do to facilitate free and open access to legal information.…”

Mapping the Achieved Values of Legal Reference Books onto the Digital Future

“…Trusting an authoritative mind has given way to the use of a great search engine." 26 As Susskind noted, even a great search engine is nothing compared to what we will see in the future. Therefore, on the one hand, Berring's statement of doom can be seen as too extreme; the traditional tools of research and reference cannot be dead yet.…”