Abstracts

Prospects for the Australian Economy After the Global Financial Crisis

Saul Eslake

Australia has come through the global financial crisis in better shape than most other ‘advanced’ economies, and appears well positioned to benefit from the patterns of growth that are emerging in the global economy after its sharpest contraction since World War II, in particular those flowing from the rapid growth and industrialization of China and India.

Australia will nonetheless face challenges of its own in adapting to this emerging global economy, and in ensuring that the potential benefits are not frittered away, but benefit future generations of Australians as well as the present one.

Those challenges include the greater volatility in the international environment; the potential for sectors such as manufacturing, agriculture, tourism to be squeezed by a strong A$ and shortages of labour and capital; the need to reverse the past decade’s slide in productivity growth; and the escalating pressure on housing costs.  Australia’s growing economic dependence on China will also pose broader challenges for policy-makers.

Civil Liberties and Counter-terrorism: a Necessary Trade Off?

Waleed Aly

The passage of anti-terrorism legislation in Australia and elsewhere has caused substantial controversy. Nonetheless they remain popularly accepted on the basis that any erosion of civil liberties contained within them is necessary to respond to the threat of terrorism. The assumption in much law and policy is that security and liberty are in tension.

This presentation examines that assumption, drawing on the latest developments in terrorism, particularly as they affect Australia. It considers terrorism as a form of unconventional political activism driven by identity and symbolism, and asks what the implications of this are for counter-terrorism policy, particularly as they relate to the preservation of civil liberties.

The Roaring 2020s’ Information Professionals

Robert McEntyre - Director, Robert McEntyre & Associates Pty Limited, Sydney Australia

2020 has arrived.

A century earlier, the social upheaval known as the Roaring 20s began in North America and quickly spread to Europe. The spirit of the Roaring 20s was marked by a feeling of discontinuity and a break with tradition. Everything seemed feasible through the modern technology of the time

The corporate and government sectors in Australia and New Zealand were reshaped by the 2008-2010 Global Financial Crisis. Information services in these sectors were transformed as a result of:Ongoing globalisation and 24/7 operations

• Organisations’ requirements including cost management
• Changes in information industry vendors’ products and service delivery models
• Changes to education and training in information management
• The availability of information professionals with the required and relevant capabilities, and
• The availability of diverse information and communication technologies and tools including social networking.

Information service delivery models in the corporate and government sectors have encompassed library service closures, physical and virtual information services, value centres, prosumptive services, in-sourcing, embedded/co-located with clients, shared services, outsourcing, and client/product segmentation.

Information services and professionals in the 2020s’ corporate and government sectors are now very different. Law librarians no longer exist.

This paper presents 2020s’ perspectives on: 

1. The corporate and government sectors’ research and information needs
2. The characteristics and generations of information users in these sectors
3. Research and information service delivery models
4. Legal information professionals working in and/or for these sectors: their capabilities, education, training, location and availability.

The Coffee Effect - Social Networking and Some of its Impacts on the Legal Profession, Legal Scholarship and Law Librarianship

Mark Engsberg

Coffee – and coffee culture – took Europe by storm.  London’s first coffee-house opened in 1652.  Within a couple of decades, coffee-houses had become the centers of London social life.  Coffee houses were centers of vigorous conversation where pamphlets circulated, debates roared, and satires were composed.  By the mid-1700s, there were 550 coffee houses in London alone.  This phenomenon quickly spread throughout Europe and the New World as well.  

The coffee house was the springboard for modern culture.  The vigour of much literature, art, politics, industry and finance – all became possible and took their initial shape and trajectory in the unique information environment found in coffee houses.  This is what I call the coffee house effect.  The coffee house effect is a metaphor for some contemporary changes in scholarly communication brought about in social networking contexts.  When one examines the effect closely, one can see conventional print-based forms of academic authority making way for different, born digital forms of scholarly discourse.  More law students and law faculty – and members of the practicing bench and bar – are finding their voices online and staking out intellectual arguments and territories.   In general, social networking sites are arguably the locus for rapid developments in scholarly discourse, and contain direct implications for the future of law librarianship.  

Early English Law Reporting

Michael Bryan

The lecture will give a brief account of the history of law reporting from the twelfth century, when law reports were written on sheepskins, until the mid-nineteenth century, when the modern system of official, centralised law reporting was instituted. During this period law reporting was left to private initiative. The quality of law reporting was variable and the reporters themselves were sometimes highly eccentric. Nevertheless, the work of these reporters laid the foundations of modern law reporting and the achievements of the best of these reporters deserve to be better known.

From Legal Pad to iPad: Mobile Content Delivery and the Law

Richard Gray

The prevalence of handheld devices is changing the way people access and use information. Given the strong history of legal content available electronically in Australia, this paper examines the current state of play in providing content via mobile devices. Although there are proven applications for other practitioner based disciplines, such as medicine, can the same be said of law? With an emphasis on academic law libraries and the potential for usage amongst staff and students of such institutions, this paper seeks to discover whether there is a desire, and indeed a possibility, for mobile content delivery in this discipline. By surveying academics and students, this paper seeks to assess the options of mobile legal scholars. With the sheer amount of information and text involved in the legal issue, what role will mobiles play in charting the future of legal content?

Cooperative Digitization Projects Among North American Law Libraries; A Tour of the Landscape in 2010

Jerry Dupont

Synopsis: The Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC) is a non-profit cooperative serving over 900 law libraries worldwide, most of them located in North America. LLMC segued into online law libraries in 2003 after 27 years spent reformatting over 105,000 volumes into microfiche. This paper discusses the models behind LLMC’s scanning programs; their design and funding.

In six years of scanning, LLMC has migrated over 50,000 volumes (over 2,500 titles in over 30 million pages) onto its online service <www-LLMC-Digital.org>. Most of this material was scanned at LLMC headquarters in Hawaii. However, LLMC soon realized that many rare or delicate books just couldn’t be shipped. So, while building its internal scanning capacity, it also began funding scanning partnerships, with LLMC equipment located in libraries holding desirable but immovable collections of law and law-related material. This paper discusses the various models for cooperative scanning projects established by LLMC since 2005, since some might work in an Australasian context.

The basic LLMC off-site program now operates in six libraries. Partner libraries and the current subject focus at each are: George Washington University Law Library (Civil Law), Saint Louis University Library (Canon and Civil Law), Los Angeles Law Library (former British colonies), Hawaii State Archives (Hawaiian Monarchy, Republic, and Territory); University of Hawaii Library (Pacific island countries), and Library of Congress (Native American, Haitian, and early Americana).

The paper then discusses the design and funding of two uniquely modelled cooperative projects. One, at Los Angeles Law Library, targets the California appellate court Records and Briefs; ca. 75,000 volumes. The other, with the Center for Research Libraries, initially targets legislative journals of the U.S. federal and state legislatures; ca. 15,000 volumes.

Finally, the paper describes two LLMC cooperative projects with large non-library organizations. The first, with Google, targets the appellate court Records and Briefs for all other U.S. jurisdictions; in total ca. 650,000 volumes. The second, with the non-profit Internet Archive and the U.S. GPO, targeting the latter’s Heritage Collection, is in the final stages of negotiation.

Ben Clemson

Mallesons Stephen Jaques has implemented a firm wide current awareness system built around RSS and open source software. This paper uses Mallesons' system as the context for a discussion of how RSS can help libraries manage their current awareness function. The paper discusses the requirements of an enterprise-level current awareness system before analysing the extent to which available RSS products meet these requirements. The issues around the implementation of an open source platform in a corporate intranet is discussed next, followed by a discussion of user requirements and the importance of granularity.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the importance of XML metadata to making RSS work as an enterprise-wide solution, and the extent to which publishers are assisting in the provision of standards compliant metadata.

Charting the Progress of a Custom-built Library: Designing, Building and Implementing Library and Knowledge Management Applications in SharePoint

Alison Jones

Imagine a law firm library where the librarian designs, builds and implements her own applications for the library and knowledge management service. Imagine how such applications could be tailored to the requirements of legal and administrative staff and then continually improved as staff’s information needs evolved.

Welcome to the reality of daily operations of the library and knowledge management service at Meyer Vandenberg, where all library applications are built within SharePoint. SharePoint is Microsoft’s content management software, which is emerging as key software for building and maintaining an Intranet.

Over the last couple of years, my voyage as a sole librarian at a medium sized law firm in Canberra has centred on discovering how I can use SharePoint to design, build and implement tailored library and knowledge management service applications in a law library. This journey has included realising new ways to engage with staff to ensure these applications truly meet their needs. This paper will examine the ongoing journey of discovery ensuring that these applications are designed to meet the needs of staff within Meyer Vandenberg.  

Common Goals in a Competitive Environment

Garry Cannon

Over the past 20 years Libraries have experienced a constantly changing landscape in technology available to them that could assist in the delivery of primary services. Library management systems, digital objects and access to disparate information resources to name but a few all combine today to create a virtual horizon where we are constantly seeking the next innovative delivery mechanism. 

Where does your Information Technology strategy fit within the wider goals of the organisation? Taking that question a step further how does the strategy you implement affect an industry?

I would like to address the above in relation to the development of software available for Libraries today.

A Binding Separation - the New Zealand - Australian Partnership of Free Aaccess to Law

Donna Buckingham

AUSTLII is the Australasian Legal Information Institute and began with the goal of collectively embracing the free legal resources of both Australia and New Zealand.   And that was how things stayed until the end of 2003 when the question ‘What’s in a name?’, asked at a LII meeting, led to the formation of the New Zealand Legal Information Institute.

NZLII was recognition that an indigenous identity might help in the quest to build more comprehensive access to New Zealand’s legal information.

Part of the drive to that discrete free-access online identity was recognition that New Zealand and Australia have a shared history, but a separate story of sovereignty.  Both began as colonies of Britain and, when Australia became a federation in 1901, there was opportunity for New Zealand to join.  It chose not to do so.  To use an image from Mäori, New Zealand’s indigenous language, it decided to paddle its own waka (canoe).   NZLII is another iteration of that drive to differentiate.

In 2003, NZLII supply was from five generators of legal information. Today, it hosts 42 databases, including both primary and secondary sources of law.  It is reliant on the commitment of a small group of volunteers, contestable funding on discrete projects from the New Zealand Law Foundation, and AustLII’s technical support and collegial guidance - without which it would not survive.

This then is truly a story of successfully ‘crossing the currents’. But that very success begs the hard question of NZLII’s long-term direction.  This paper explores the issue.

Moving From Teaching to Learning: The Use of the Online Quiz in an Academic Legal Research Skills Programme

Sara Roberts

This presentation provides an overview of the development and use of an online quiz as part of the University of Canterbury’s Legal Research Skills teaching programme. 

Each year around 500 students enrol in the 100 level Legal Systems paper at the University of Canterbury’s School of Law and the Library teaches them some very basic legal research skills as part of the tutorial programme.  After attending a librarian-taught legal research skills class, the students are tested on their knowledge by completing quiz that is handed in and marked by the Information Librarians.  This year for the first time, we have replaced this paper-based quiz with one that is completed online through our electronic teaching platform, Moodle.   We were hoping that the online quiz would have better learning outcomes for the students and that it would lessen our workload by removing the hours spent marking.  These rather conservative aims were fulfilled and in addition some unexpected benefits resulted.

The presentation will cover:

• the background and history of UC’s legal research skills programme
• why we moved to an online quiz
• what learning outcomes we are seeking
• the limitations of the software and implications for quiz design
• a demonstration of the quiz
• how it was received and used by the students
• future plans for this kind of learning

The Gen Y Librarian and the Future of Library Services

Kirsty McPhee

This paper will explore how the work habits and characteristics of the Generation Y librarian will impact and affect librarianship and information services. As the services and facilities provided by libraries continue to change at an unprecedented rate, is it possible to predict if the Generation Y librarian will be an invaluable asset or sound the death knoll for important traditional skills and services?

Uncharted Waters: 21st Century Challenges for the Law of the Sea

Karen Scott

The law of the sea is one of the oldest and most venerable areas of public international law.  The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea adopted in 1982 codified existing customary international law and created new law with a view to providing a “constitution for the oceans”.  But increasingly, the law of the sea is being challenged to deal with new sources of pollution (such as noise), new activities (such as marine geo-engineering) and new threats (such as maritime terrorism).  The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which the law of the sea is capable to responding to these challenges and, the extent to which these challenges are re-shaping or reforming the law of the sea itself. 

Learning from medico-legal complaints

Marie Bismark

Law and regulation play a key role in improving population health and the quality of health care services. The University of Melbourne’s “Law and Public Health Group” combines traditional legal research with tools from the fields of public health, epidemiology, ethics, and economics to help answer pressing questions in health policy. Recent projects include a study of complaints to the Office of the Health Services Commissioner.

Why do patients complain? What remedies do they seek and what remedies can they achieve by complaining to the Commissioner? What are the characteristics of complaint-prone doctors who have been the subject of four or more complaints? What are the benefits of, and barriers to, using medico-legal data to inform improvements in the quality and safety of healthcare?

Instantly assessing students’ legal research skills

Angela Allen

In 2010 the Librarians at the Walter Harrison Law Library introduced a new element to their teaching. The primary aim was to engage the audience more and to assess students’ knowledge and skills as they progressed through each class. Audience participation software, which has become affectionately known as “clickers” or “clicker technology” has been the key tool in achieving this aim. It has enabled the Librarians to establish which students have completed the set readings; to determine students’ level of prior knowledge; to instantly assess students’ understanding of the concepts that are taught during the class; to review teaching methods and to have fun in the classroom.

The introduction of the clickers, proved complementary to the summative assessment that is used to evaluate students’ legal research skills: an online quiz.  Over the past three years an online quiz has been imbedded into the first year undergraduate LLB course, Legal Method.  The quiz has been written and designed by the Librarians. The quiz has evolved during the three years and now comprises 30 multiple choice / true-false style questions, worth 15% of students’ final grade for this course.

This paper explains in more detail how the clicker technology was employed during the legal research skills classes, the success of the in-class assessment and the benefits and drawbacks of implementation and use of the clickers. This paper will also explain the process of designing the quiz; writing the quiz questions; the results achieved by students and the success of the quiz as a summative piece of assessment.

AustLII: Thinking locally, acting globally
Graham Greenleaf

AustLII's Australasian service is the testbed for new developments which are then implemented in AustLII's international services (WorldLII, AsianLII and CommonLII), and often also adopted by other LIIs with which AustLIIcollaborates most closely.

This presentation focuses on the most important new developments taking place on AustLII in 2010, including redevelopment of the results interface to integrate it with LawCite; expansion of LawCite to include law journals, law reform reports and treaties; large scale expansion of AustLII content both horizontally (comprehensive current caselaw and legislation sources) and vertically (historical collections of legislation, case law and legal scholarship); versions of legislation at different times; and content-specific Libraries involving virtual databases. Other new developments in the pipeline will be mentioned including RSS and other feeds, and user-generated content/contributions.

How these developments are then adopted by AustLII's international projects and collaborating LIIs is then explained, in the context of the overall aim of a global network of free access legal information. Some new international projects will be previewed.

Cross Tasman Currents – Approaches taken towards the provision of official on-line sources of legislation in Australia and New Zealand 

David Noble/ Liz O'Donnell

From early 2008 New Zealand has had a Crown-owned website and database providing free access to legislation for New Zealanders and others: End of voyage or merely one port of call in developing an authoritative “official” electronic source of legislation?

This paper explores the process by which New Zealand provided access to legislation on-line and what problems arose in a jurisdiction which had no existing Crown-owned database of legislation. It will report on the current progress towards “officialisation” of the content and the back-capture of historic and repealed legislation within a fiscally constrained environment. Even the final harbour of   “official” status looks less than safe in an age of “data mash-ups” and “wikis”. How can governments ensure that legislation accessed from their official databases is securely identified and preserved as authoritative? Why should we worry?

The Australian Government is well on its way to creating an authoritative online archive of all its legislation. But what exactly does that mean? In this presentation Liz O’Donnell will outline the evolution of relevant legislation and systems, the current state of affairs, and the opportunities and challenges that still lie ahead.

Matthias Liffers

Since the shift to client-server computing from mainframes, it has been the dominant paradigm in how enterprise software and data are stored and managed.  With the advent of cheap broadband, cloud computing is proving itself a cheap, efficient and – most importantly – safe and secure replacement for venerable client-server computing.

In this presentation, Matthias Liffers will be exploring different aspects of cloud computing and how they will impact the way we create documents, manage our files and make sure they survive disaster.

Matthias will indulge in some personal speculation about the future of computing and the life of data.

Accompanying Matthias will be some gadgets for show and tell during the Conference Closing Drinks at 17:00. You will have an opportunity to play with them and discuss them with him.

The Public's Right to Know: Media Access to Court Documents and Information
Prue Innes/Peter Gregory 

In 2008 Australia’s Right to Know Coalition published its report examining the issue of what constitutes reasonable grounds for placing restrictions on the publication of information associated with court proceedings. This session will summarise the main findings of the report especially in regard to needless frustrations (in 2008) when trying to obtain court information and discuss developments since the release of the report.

The Law and Practice of Censorship
Judge Bill Hastings

The author reflects on a decade spent in charge of censorship in New Zealand.  The paper explores assumptions that the law makes about the influence of words, images and sounds, particularly those that describe, depict or otherwise deal with sex, horror, crime, cruelty and violence in a manner likely to injure the public good.  The paper will also explain how the guarantee of freedom of expression in the Bill of Rights Act influences the application of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act to a variety of content in a broad range of mediums.

To know what the law says is only part of the story; to know the whole story requires knowledge of who applies the law, how the law is applied, and what the law is applied to.  The extent to which law can provide an answer to the challenges posed by digitisation and the internet is addressed.  Censorship myths and stereotypes are dispelled with statistics and anecdotes. 

Finally, clips will be shown to demonstrate how and why public involvement is essential to the maintenance of a credible and accountable censorship regime.  The clips will be classified no higher than R16.