Motto
‘The law library is your friend and companion throughout your degree. If you take the trouble to familiarise yourself early on with the resources and services offered by the library you will save yourself a great deal of time.’Footnote 1
Introduction
Academic libraries in the Netherlands form the heart of an extensive digital network which can function as a treasure trove for legal education.Footnote 2 They actively manage extensive information resources which can be consulted as data banks and digital collections through accessible portals. This accessibility is based on a plethora of licenses with major legal publishers. Publishers guarantee up-to-date information, user-friendly access and options for individual use. University libraries are essential for the creation of digital access to academic information.Footnote 3
This view of the situation may perhaps be a little optimistic, not in terms of the opportunities provided by university libraries, but with regard to the actual intensity with which they are utilised in legal education. Despite the fact that students are the exponents of the new web generation, the gateway to the virtual goldmine still seems to be firmly shut in their faces. At best, it is only slightly ajar. How has this situation come about? One important reason is that digital information seekers are still largely inclined to limit their searches to Google, instead of exploring academic information sources. It is also unfortunately the case that the acquisition of information skills is sorely neglected. The crucial questions are: how can the Web 2.0 generation be connected with the opportunities offered by university libraries and can legal education contribute to this?
Profiling the current users of law libraries
University libraries in the Netherlands cater for three types of professional legal users: academics, legal professionals (judges, barristers, corporate lawyers and other practical jurists) and law students. Knowledge and experience of using a legal library vary widely within all three categories and the search strategies required for a digital library differ from those used in a traditional, non-virtual library. We have restricted our focus to law. Law students will generally only come into contact with virtual libraries in the final phase of their bachelor degree. Today's degree courses give law students scant opportunity to really get to grips with the advantages and possibilities on offer from the extensive portals university libraries provide. No matter how skilled students are with web options, they seem to be unable to access the data banks managed by university libraries on their own initiative. This raises several questions:
• Is it necessary for them to be able to do this?
• Can the options that students do use, such as Google Scholar, Google Books, Twitter, Facebook and a wide range of e-books, be used to unlock the opportunities provided by libraries?
• Finally, how can libraries reach law students more effectively?
To use a digital library, the student must be aware of the web's possibilities as a communication platform. Susan Gibbons describes the opportunities offered by the web from a library perspective.Footnote 4 Gibbons has surveyed the entire range of possibilities and proposes that libraries should consider the virtual gaming world when trying to understand their relationship with students. This is an open attitude that well illustrates how an information broker can serve a ‘Net Gen Student’. She asserts that ‘the internet marketplace offers viable, easier, and more efficient alternatives to many of the traditional cornerstones of academic libraries. Each of these examples shows a technology that is allowing patrons to do things that in the recent past required a librarian's assistance or library resources to accomplish. If academic libraries are considered warehouses of information and academic librarians the gatekeepers of that information, then the internet may indeed be a disruptive technology for academic libraries.’Footnote 5 Academic libraries are in a phase of transition: on the one hand they must continue to fulfil their traditional roles, that of managing a collection of academic literature, whilst on the other they must break new ground.Footnote 6 In order to do so successfully, they must be constantly prepared for a process of change and must continue to seek alignment with new infrastructural knowledge technologies.Footnote 7 Academic libraries will have to develop a didactic concept in consultation with education providers if students are to profit from the rapidly expanding range of academic information options.Footnote 8 Information users increasingly demand more accessible information. Portals must therefore be organised in a way that promotes speed, clarity, convenience and readability, whilst still taking account of continuity and stability of form.
The demand for information
Legal data streams increase daily, with new items ranging from over 1000 ‘E-journals’ that can be consulted in an academic libraryFootnote 9 to swiftly expanding websites such as rechtspraak.nl, parlement.nl and overheid.nl. It is almost impossible to keep track of this rapid expansion. At first sight, traditional search engines seem to offer a solution, but the information they provide is not always usable because it depends so heavily on using the right entries, search terms and key concepts from the field of study or law pertaining to the search.
Information users are constantly switching between all these sources of information and must simultaneously keep pace with any system changes in the data facilities. They are barely aware of the credibility of their information providers. Besides there is little time for scrutinising the information on offer, let alone finding the time to reflect upon it. Disorientated web users keep clicking in search of more up-to-date information and are often satisfied if they find a hit that looks good at first sight. The current trend towards more information will increase, due to the continuing growth of texts, blogs and other integrated options.Footnote 10 Besides access to the ‘library community’, four other elements will become more important to library users: growth; the allocation of information; filtering and selection; and the application of digitalised information, will come to dominate their activities. They will increasingly tend towards having their own page, ‘My Library’, where their personal preferences will play an active role in managing content.
a. Growth
It is generally recognised that there has been a revolutionary growth in the amount of available information. The specialist academic digitalised publication media are also generating new fora at a steady rate. The list of e-journals available is growing rapidly. Academic institutions all over the world have disseminated new media in imitation of the digital magazines pioneered by Anglo-American academia. Blogs were relatively rare in the academic domain until recently, but have now become more numerous and influentialFootnote 11. At some point, libraries will also have to catalogue this source of information generically.Footnote 12, Footnote 13
Dutch academic libraries can be accessed easily by their own academic community, but it is more difficult for outsiders to use their facilities, even though the collection can almost always be consulted digitally. Loans must be made from the institution itself through inter-library loans. From a user's perspective, Dutch academic libraries have reacted effectively to the new digital opportunities. New buildings and renovations are proof that universities recognise the importance of high-quality information facilities. The renovation of Tilburg University's library, which, in 1992, was already one of the most advanced academic library facilities in Europe, recognised both the need for a digitalised, virtual lay-out, incorporating work spaces with access to internet and the library, as well as the need for spaces that could meet the changing educational requirements of both teachers and students.Footnote 14 The architecture of an academic library continues to be important. Technical facilities are not the only aspect that makes libraries an important place of learning; location, set-up, lighting, accessibility, service and the level of silence are also distinguishing aspects.
b. Allocation of information
The location and accessibility of stored information is growing in importance and libraries have a key role to play. In the first place, the accessibility of the collections under management is largely determined by library websites and portals. Clear references to categories of databases are essential in order to optimise use. Digital files must be given a fixed place in the system and therefore servers and other data storage systems must be permanently accessible. Webcasts, videos and podcasts linked to the legal field do not yet feature significantly in virtual libraries, but these information sources must also be assigned a place in academic libraries alongside You Tube films.Footnote 15
According to Harvard Professor, Darnton, streams of information will grow way beyond anything we can currently anticipate and users will need to be continuously aware of changes to the library system when looking for information.Footnote 16 In the future, it will be possible to manage one's own virtual library when looking for information, because data storage systems will be available in a miniature format which will enable users to store a digital bookcase. The exact type of information carrier is as yet not known, but it is clear that academic libraries will have to make provisions for granting more access to individual users and everything that this entails. Libraries will have to guarantee first-rate accessibility by updating information and managing flows of information. Competition with other information sources will accelerate this process of change and drastically alter the position of the academic library with regard to the allocation of information.
c. Filtering information
The ability to use information skills has become increasingly important. Students and employees will both have to take an active approach, making up their own minds as to whether the information they have found has any added value, and whether the descriptions are correct or innovative and adequate for the goal that they have in mind.Footnote 17 The filtering process no longer simply entails an evaluation of substantive information, but also requires an assessment of its original source. Libraries manage collections and provide access to the extension and management of the collection through their licensing policy. Library users normally weigh up information independently, within the scope of their research. In instances where the library has a wider reach in terms of depth and source knowledge new methods are available to support library users. The overwhelming number of available sources will mean that library users will require facilitation at an individual level more often.
d. Selection
Until now, the selection of sources for legal research was based primarily upon experienced knowledge of legislation and other legal databanks such as ‘General Administrative Law Act’, ‘Kluwer Arbitration’, ‘Opmaat’, or ‘Case Law collections’ and e-journals. The knowledge required to filter digital information for research purposes is different from the selection skills required to guide an educational project.
Library visitors are responsible for localising and validating information, but to make optimal use of the library, they need to be aware of all the technical possibilities on offer. For this reason, every academic library in the Netherlands runs an online course on using the library. However, experience has shown that although the dozens of students writing a thesis would often be interested in a guided tour or some individual help, law students hardly ever access this valuable tool during their study.
The search strategies within databases are also changing. Those seeking information first enter their search term into the database, then go on to screen the full text for the theme, topic or concept they are looking for. Which are the authoritative sources in the legal domain, especially amongst those of international origin? The systematisation and structure that libraries manage to attain cannot be judged solely on the basis of user data, but also on the quality of the information accessed.
The relationship between academic libraries and law faculties
In his ‘The Virtual Law School Library’, Pengelley described the transformation of the law library's role in legal education.Footnote 18 He thought that libraries would undergo continuous change and with Nicholas Terry he designated the institution as a ‘hybrid place’.Footnote 19 At the time of writing this idea seemed futuristic, but the changes that have taken place are on the point of definitively giving libraries a new virtual architecture. Thanks to the digitisation of information streams, the university library has become the centre of research activities for academics, lecturers and students, practically without anyone noticing. Access to the library has become virtually unlimited for members of the academic community. Both groups collaborate closely on forming collections and exchanging information about new opportunities, but when it comes to legal education, there is still a lot of catching up to do.
During the last decade, digitisation has meant that the gap between the library and legal education has increased faster than teachers were able to foresee. On the whole, the acquisition and practice of legal information skills is left to the students’ own initiative. A new curriculum strategy is needed to strengthen these skills in legal education.
Teachers at law faculties in the Netherlands are still not sufficiently aware of the changes wrought by digital technology and the boundless possibilities offered by digital libraries. The law curriculum devotes no more than a few hours to the realistic practice of information and research literacy. Anglo-American libraries have been swifter to embrace these new developments, and American legal librarians are nowadays assigned a teaching role more often than was previously the case.Footnote 20 This development is still in its infancy in the Netherlands.
One of the recommendations from the Harvard report shows that substantive co-operation is sorely needed, especially with regard to the development of research skills in students: ‘The Task Force has heard from numerous undergraduate students who came to the libraries relatively late in their program of study, as a result of either being unaware of the resources available or being intimidated by the sheer volume of resources. This problem might be alleviated by more consistently training students in the value and accessibility of the libraries as early as possible in their academic experience, perhaps even structuring a significant library presence during freshmen orientation. Another approach might be through the development of an undergraduate information research component.’Footnote 21 I don't think that the whole quote is needed.
Maybe the greatest problem faced by library and faculty is the fact that students are no longer accustomed to reading. According to Wolpert, reading books requires a thought process capable of encompassing an extended argument, and students no longer read in the way that we have been used to up to now.Footnote 22 Both organisations will have to find new ways in which to adapt the transfer of knowledge to fit a realistic and accepted way of studying. According to Veen and VrakkingFootnote 23 ‘Homo zappiens’ is gaining ground. Reading and studying are migrating towards digital media. Students will be able to access the university library from home using a direct internet connection. Extending this alignment to education will make it possible for the most recent phase of Library 2.0 to generate a place where functionality and network meet. Various core subjects in the law curriculum provide the perfect opportunity for combining research information literacy and knowledge transfer in the form of projects. The main added value seems to come from interweaving substantive material with source research and testing this in the final examinations.
Digitised sources and their use in legal education
Academic legal education in the Netherlands is gradually making more use of interactive forms of education and with the resumed introduction of training courts, more attention is being paid to legal skills, but libraries are still too distant from participation in education. Legal information literacy is being covered too late in the curriculum process. When looking for information, students must ask themselves which sources are available on the web and what quality criteria have been set for the information, or in other words, how academic are the sources? An academic library is not always required for this purpose. Anyone wishing to follow case law can find what they are looking for on rechtspraak.nl. Anyone who wishes to follow legislative procedures can find information at overheid.nl or regering.nl. More detailed information can be found on the website of the House of Representatives of the States General, where one click on ‘Parliamentary Papers’ will grant access to the Parlando databank.Footnote 24 These are two examples whereby anyone in search of legal information can operate independently without recourse to an academic library
The application of digital sources has been neglected in legal education in the Netherlands. This has not been deliberate, but few education providers are able to integrate the intensive guidance necessary for digital library use into their courses. The digitisation of education may be in its infancy,Footnote 25 but even at this stage, current generations of students must be thoroughly acquainted with the use of library web concepts. How should this be achieved? Some libraries have already invested a great deal in courses intended to help virtual library users.Footnote 26
Offering a course on using the library, integrated into a subject-related legal topic, early in bachelor degree law studies, could work very well, but this will not be enough to master the complexity of the library's information structure.Footnote 27 To achieve this, it will be necessary to align legal education pedagogy with the opportunities provided by the academic library. We believe it is essential to begin practising the required information skills early in the curriculum. The teaching of these skills should form an education unit (term, semester or stuvac) and a meta-legal subject that combines research skills with information skills might work even better as an in-depth introduction, as long as it will be examined. This would make the mastering of legal information skills a realistic preparation for writing a thesis. In the Netherlands, opinions vary greatly as to the position such a subject should occupy in the law curriculum: sometimes a start is made in the first year, sometimes this topic is dealt with during the final year of the bachelor study. Usually, it is offered as part of subjects focused on practising writing skills. It is hardly ever encountered as a separate subject integral to all three years of the bachelor degree.
A closer look at new developments
Darnton was not the only commentator alert to the hybrid status of libraries in the United States.Footnote 28 The initiators of Yale's Information Society Project (ISP)Footnote 29 also refer to the imminent transformation. They see a confluence of book digitisation projectsFootnote 30, attention to user-generated content, and social networking applications as the harbingers of these changes.Footnote 31 If the library was the natural centre of the American university law school, current information developments are showing that these libraries have a lot to think about. They will have to reformulate their objectives and mission statement over the next five years. The law library has almost become a virtual central point. Today's students are using their library's virtual options almost exclusively. This means no more physical visits, fewer loans, and an increased number of digital consultations. Full-text systems make it possible to consult and download texts via internet, without the mediation of librarians. Without anyone noticing, library facilities have been given another meaning and, primarily, another objective. If, until recently, libraries were citadels of learning where ‘the knowledge came ordered into standard categories which could be pursued through a card catalogue and into the pages of the books’Footnote 32, this is now changing rapidly. So, despite all the adjustments that have already taken place, the law library will not escape a thorough reorientation.Footnote 33 Today's students are inadvertently challenging academic libraries to change both policy and implementation.
In its Report of the Task Force on University Libraries Harvard University concluded that now, in the ‘digital age’, libraries must adjust their structure in order to transform current information developments into a library system capable of creating maximum access.Footnote 34 This change must entail a rationalisation of policy to facilitate ‘the manner in which all parts of the University collect and provide access to materials, and orient its focus more clearly toward ensuring access, as opposed to the current default model of building collections by acquisition.’Footnote 35
5.2 Content integration via multilateral search engines
Access to library sources will be one of the most important themes of the next few years. In addition to the problems concerning intellectual property rights, copyright and the monopoly positions of publishers, access to information is a subject that will determine the agendas of universities and faculties, who will have to adopt a more active approach than they do currently. All too often they lag behind developments and can give little or no shape to policy because they are not united.Footnote 36
Internal changes, such as the accessibility of library portals and the place occupied by advanced search engines also require consistent attention. The current tendency is to develop multilateral search engines, whereby content can be requested from a host of specialist data banks and external information channels simultaneously. Consequently, library users must have a more extensive knowledge of subject-related entries. Users will need more advanced and comprehensive knowledge than they would if they were just consulting databases with traditional search engines. Libraries will have to manage and systemise personalised data storage. This will enable them to maintain an overview of accessibility, adjust search strategies to meet demand and optimise information disclosure for each area of law. Using such an advanced search system will make the use of source acknowledgements even more important. Distinguishing the sources is more complicated in a multilateral system than in a traditional search system. Users must be aware of the fact that the material retrieved by content-integrated search methods is a pre-selection that they must evaluate separately. Nonetheless, content integration is the next step towards professionalisation for academic libraries in the Netherlands
Mastering legal information literacy: the necessity and demand for a practical interpretation of the curriculum
Traditional forms of education, such as lectures and tutorials, are less suitable for practising complex library search strategies as they tend to be given to larger groups. Practising a digital method step-by-step requires time and patience and can only be achieved in small, active study groups. Assignments must be related to what the students are currently learning. Students must also be mentally prepared in this respect. All too often, teachers report a lack of motivation because the exercises do not serve any related pedagogic objective. Teachers should pay more attention to the information gap that has opened up. Students who have not received an adequate introduction to the doctrines of the area of law that they are currently studying will be unable to conduct a wide enough search through the available information. Digital methods require much more discipline than traditional search methods, where there is time for assessment and evaluation. Links can also lead to unnecessary digressions.
One way to create an effective learning situation for the mastering of information literacy is for students to solve questions and assignments simultaneously with the teacher. In addition to already existing interactive web courses, it is important for core subjects from the law degree course to incorporate library assignments into their legal educational material. Digital search commands are particularly well-suited to enabling students to realistically integrate subject-related educational assignments with knowledge of the literature pertaining to that particular area of law.
The curriculum options within the Bachelor/Master structure are limited. The current curriculum is overloaded with legal knowledge subjects, while there are few real competency subjects. Furthermore, there is scarcely any room to implement changes, as each change to the curriculum necessitates a choice. Few faculties dare to replace knowledge subjects with competency subjects, but the study of law, whilst primarily an academic study, should combine a focus on theory with practical preparation for a diverse range of careers. To accomplish this, it is necessary to integrate knowledge of the library with legal subject-related knowledge.Footnote 37
Legal information literacy as part of the curriculum will have to play a greater role in Dutch legal education in the future because technological developments in the area of information transfer must be embedded more deeply in legal education.
Legal library education: the basis for professional legal practice
Libraries can also generate new, interactive teaching formats by restyling their own range of instruction formats to guarantee alignment with continuously changing digital opportunities. A workshop lasting several days, held during the transition from the bachelor to the master phase, could teach the latest library skills to students from a variety of masters degrees. This workshop should not be optional, but a compulsory part of the law curriculum whereby faculty and library develop educational activities jointly.
A complaint often expressed informally by the representatives of major law firms, is that recently graduated lawyers do not know enough about databases, research and search strategies within the field of legal information.Footnote 38 Law courses do not pay sufficient attention to practical information literacy. In domain-specific subjects, scant attention is paid to digital developments whilst accruing knowledge in that area of law. How, for example, can recent case law that appears on websites such as rechtspraak.nl be integrated methodologically within the area of law being studied? Whereas the standard of published case-law used to be interpreted by the annotators of legal magazines, individual information seekers must now be able to directly validate information by means of their search criteria. Consequently, libraries must play a more facilitatory role than they did previously and identify authoritative sources on their own portals via wikis or other web-based tools.
Conclusions
The status of the library is becoming higher within legal education in the Netherlands, but much more effort must be put into effective co-operation between faculty and library. Practically all Dutch law libraries are part of a central university library. Law faculties still often operate their education activities from a distance. Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 are still abstractions, but technological developments are progressing so rapidly that a joint plan for the digital future is already a necessity, not a luxury. Implementing just a few simple recommendations could strengthen co-operation immediately. Firstly, libraries and faculties should jointly and frequently ask students how they process information and what else they feel would enhance information provision. The traditional focus on providing information is moving in the direction of providing information on the basis of demand. Secondly, from the curricular point of view, it is necessary to integrate digital library skills into legal skills education. To do so, it will be necessary to develop educational programmes that connect to the library user's world of experience. Law faculties must also seek a closer alignment with the library and its facilities. At the moment, too little advantage is taken by either of the possibilities for collaboration. Finally, it is recommended that the law curriculum include subjects which incorporate information skills, both at an academic and practical level, as part of the tuition given to smaller groups.
