Note: This paper was presented on April 20, 2000, at a symposium hosted by the Rutgers Law Record at the Rutgers School of Law-Newark. The symposium addressed the "The Internet's Impact on Legal Practice and Scholarship." This paper was presented at a panel on "Academic Publishing and the Internet: The Permanence Question." The Rutgers Law Record, which had committed itself to publishing the paper electronically, appears to have suspended operations. Its disappearance, ironically, illustrates well the impermanence of internet publishers and publications, and the worries that this impermanence may present.
THE PERMANENCE OF PAPERLESS LAW REVIEW ARTICLES:
WHO IS WORRIED AND WHAT CAN BE DONE
By Gregory E. Maggs (1)
I.
INTRODUCTION
Legal scholars traditionally have disseminated much of their research through articles published in professional journals. (2) Their articles have many different goals. Some seek to influence the courts. Others propose legislative reforms. Still others develop academic theories about particular areas of the law or about transcendent issues of jurisprudence. Whatever the purpose, however, the authors of these works believe that their ideas need to be distributed and preserved.
For a century or more, most scholarly legal articles have appeared in periodicals called "law reviews." (3) Issues of law reviews traditionally have been printed on paper and then mailed to numerous law libraries (and a few individual subscribers) around the country. Through this means, the articles become easily available to library patrons.
Law libraries generally preserve and store back issues of all of the law reviews to which they subscribe. In most instances, they bind individual law review issues togther into thick volumes, and then store them on shelves. Given the large number of law reviews published, (4) most law school libraries have sizeable collections of these journals. Their holdings of individual publications, like the Harvard Law Review or Yale Law Journal, may extend not only well into the previous century, but even to the one before. (5)
Two recent developments are challenging the traditional method of publishing law review articles on paper and then physically distributing them to law libraries. The first is the creation of "on-line" law journals. (6) These journals include publications such as the Law Record at Rutgers, (7) the Intellectual Property and Technology Forum at Boston College, (8) the Journal of Military and Veterans Law at William and Mary, (9) and many others.
On-line law journals operate very much like traditional law reviews in terms of accepting and editing articles. They differ, however, in that they publish articles, not by printing them on paper, but instead simply by posting them on the internet. Anyone can read these law journals simply by visiting their websites.
Although actual statistics are hard to come by, publishing journals solely on-line in theory should cost much less money than printing them on paper and mailing them to subscribers. (10) In fact, some on-line journals have very little out-of-pocket publication expenses because they are affiliated with universities and may use the university's computers to host their files. They not only avoid printing costs, but also can publish as many pages each as they wish, with almost no additional costs.
Unlike paper journals, few if any on-line journals charge subscription fees to their readers. (11) This loss of revenue, however, rarely makes a difference because law journals published on paper usually lose money. (12) Subscription fees rarely cover all the costs of printing and distribution, and thus many law journals need subsidies to operate. (13) Accordingly, on-line law reviews often are less expensive to operate even if they produce no revenue.
The other development challenging the tradition of printing law review articles on paper is self-publication on the internet. (14) Law professors have begun to realize that they can make their articles and almost any other form of research publically available simply by posting it on their own websites. They do not really need the services of a law journal to disseminate their ideas.
Self-publication on the internet, moreover, has a number of advantages over publishing in traditional paper law reviews or in on-line journals. (15)
Authors can write their articles at any level of sophistication that they desire and can write on controversial or even politically-incorrect topics without the fear of alienating publishers. In addition, authors also face no delay between the finishing of an article and its publication; putting a document on the internet usually takes a few seconds at most. Finally, authors also can repeatedly update works that they have published to take account of new developments.
At present, articles published in on-line journals and articles self-published on the internet probably account for only a small fraction of the total number of articles published. I do not have statistics, but based on my own observations, law professors generally are continuing to submit their writings to established law reviews printed on paper. Libraries, moreover, continue to pay for, receive, and store printed periodicals. (16) Most law journals that now publish on paper have no plans for giving up that practice and publishing solely on-line, even if they do put some of their articles on the internet.
The reason for the slow acceptance of on-line publication of scholarly articles probably is not that law professors and other researchers prefer researching by looking at journals printed on paper. On the contrary, most appear to prefer electronic research. Indeed, one substantial irony is that almost all law reviews that are published on paper are also published electronically in the Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis databases, and readers consult the electronic versions much more often than the paper versions.
Why then are legal scholars and law reviews reluctant to embrace paperless publication, if most research occurs electronically anyway? This question has no simple answer. To a large extent, tradition probably has its own hold. If the University of Chicago Law Review has printed paper copies of it publication for many decades, it may not even consider doing anything else.
To a certain extent, however, the hesitation to embrace paperless publication on the internet may stem from worries about their possible lack of permanence. (17) As anyone who has surfed the internet knows, what appears in a particular location one day, might not appear there the next. The proprietor of the website may have moved its contents or simply deleted them.
Regular reminders of the impermanence of information posted on the internet come from popular "search engines" or websites that strive to help users locate information that might interest them. Use any search engine to look for a topic, and a fair percentage of the suggested links will be "dead," meaning that the results returned no longer have the desired content. For example, in writing this article, I visited the popular AltaVista website (18) and typed the words "Rutgers Law Record." On the first page of search results, two out of ten were dead. Whatever once had existed at those locations apparently no longer does.
Even if on-line articles are easier to access and cost much less money to produce, they presently cannot compete in terms of permanence with traditional law reviews printed on paper. The Harvard Law Review, for example, prints 8,000 copies of each of its issues. (19) It then mails these issues to law libraries around the world. Even with regular use, these issues will last for well of over a hundred years. The widespread dispersion makes physically destroying all the copies of a particular issue of a law review all but impossible.
In the remainder of this essay, I consider possible concerns about the lack of permanence of paperless publication and what can be done to alleviate them. In particular, Part II analyzes what authors, researchers, journals, libraries, and legal database providers find troubling about the lack of permanence of on-line publication. Part III then considers possible ways of reducing the present risks related to the impermanence of law review articles.
II.
WHO IS WORRIED ABOUT WHAT
The lack of permanence of articles published on the internet causes several different kinds of worries. The following discussion examines what the five types of persons and organizations who care the most about law review articles may find disturbing about the impermanence of internet publication.
A. Authors of On-Line Articles
Visit any sizeable library, and you can discover that a handful of law journals have continued in existence for more than 100 years and are still going strong. (20) Many other law reviews have been around for decades, and show no sign of disappearing. Yet, the stacks also reveal that a fair number of law journals have come and gone. The Green Bag, a famous journal that published the work of Oliver Wendell Holmes and others, issued twenty-six volumes between 1889 and 1914, but then went out existence. (21) The Public Interest Law Review printed 5 volumes between 1991 and 1995, but then stopped publishing. (22)
When law reviews printed on paper go out of business, the issues that they have published do not disappear. Instead, they simply sit on the library shelves and stop expanding in their number. Any library patron can find and read them, just like any other published works in the library.
On-line journals may adopt a policy of keeping all of their work in one place, but a potential problem still remains. When an on-line journal goes out of business, its old issues may disappear altogether. If the journal was using a commercial web hosting service, the journal might stop paying the required fees. Even if the journal was using a university computer, the university at some point might remove the files after the journal has disbanded as an organization. If this happens, readers no longer will have the opportunity to access and read what the author has written. Naturally, for this reason, authors may worry about publishing in on-line journals. They do not want their work to disappear.
Self-publication on the internet may lessen the risk of impermanence. The personal prestige of publication gives authors every incentive to make sure that their own articles remain publically accessible on the internet. Yet, self-publication is not a panacea for two reasons.
First, although law professors generally do not "go out of business" in the same way as law journals, they do eventually retire. An older professor, accordingly, might not see self-publication as an attractive option. The professor either must continue to keep the article available on a server during retirement or expect it to disappear.
Even professors not near retirement may find self-publication less secure than paper publication. At present, I maintain a website on the George Washington University computer. (23) Perhaps at some time in the future, I will move to a different law school. If that times comes, the George Washington University may cease to allow me to keep my articles posted on their computer. True, I could post any articles that I have written on another computer at my new location. This option, however, is not perfect. If I move my articles to a new location, all links to the article at the George Washington University will become obsolete. Readers might have difficulty finding it.
B. Readers/Researchers
Worries about the lack of permanence of on-line publications extend beyond the authors of law review articles. Indeed, lawyers, judges, professors, and students who wants to read law review articles or use them for research has understandable reason for concern. An article they want to find may have disappeared from the internet or moved to a new location where they cannot find it with ease.
What is more, even when they find the on-line law review articles they are looking for, they may face another problem. In particular, when they start to read the footnotes, they will find that they refer to other on-line journals. These journals may have disappeared or been relocated.
Several years ago, I wrote a symposium piece in a journal which published its articles on-line. (24)After the editors told me where to find the article, I added a link to my own website so that researchers could find it. Within a few months, however, my link to my own article suddenly ceased working. Without informing me, the journal had moved my article. (25) This development not only frustrated me, but I was soon contacted by others who wanted to read the article but could not find it.
Readers of law review articles also have another problem. Even if they find an on-line article, a difficult problem emerges. In particular, the reader may wish to cite the article but can have no confidence that it will stay in its present location. The author of the article, or the publishing journal, may move or delete it. If the article disappears, then any citation by the researcher will cease to have any value.
The impermanence of citations is not a hypothetical problem. On the contrary, nearly every article that I have written in the past several years refers to sources found only on the internet. (26)
Many of the sources that I have cited now have moved. Others may move in the future. For example, last fall I wrote an article discussing proposed revisions to the Uniform Commercial Code. In the article, I cited drafts of these proposed revisions that appear on the internet. Yet, these drafts may move to a new location not long after my article's publication.
C. Law Libraries
Law libraries also have concerns about the permanence of paperless law review articles. The concern is not that internet publication is going to make libraries obsolete. Most libraries have thousands of books and periodicals that remain important, but that no one is likely to put on-line in the near future. (The possibility of increased electronic publication, however, may make universities reluctant to expand or renovate libraries until they know more about what the future will look like.)
Instead, the concern of law libraries is that they will have difficulty with their principal mission: namely, satisfying their patrons' research needs. Although libraries can provide internet access and terminals, they cannot guarantee that their patrons will be able to find articles published in on-line journals or self-published by authors. These articles, as noted, may have moved to new locations on the internet or disappeared altogether.
D. Law Journals
Law journals and their staff also have understandable concerns about the possible impermanence of their publications. In many ways, their worries match those of authors. Although they do not write the articles that they publish, they work hard at putting them in final shape them. The editors of law journals naturally would hope that their efforts would not disappear if their journal goes out of business and no longer maintains its own presence on the internet.
On-line law journals also have another concern, which confronts them when they solicit manuscripts. Specifically, to the extent that authors have doubts about the permanence of internet publication, they may prefer to publish their articles in competing law journals that still issue paper copies. On-line journals thus may not have the opportunity to publish some of the best articles.
This reality already may be slowing the move to on-line publication. Law reviews that currently publish on paper may believe that competition requires them to continue the great expense of printing their publications. It seems unlikely that the Stanford Law Review will cease paper publication until journals at Harvard, Yale, Chicago, and the other top law schools similarly desist. Otherwise, authors may perceive a marginal advantage to publishing in the competing periodicals.
E. Legal Databases Providers Like Westlaw and Lexis
Legal database providers like Westlaw and Lexis serve many of the same functions as law libraries. For this reason, they may have similar concerns about the lack of permanence of law review articles published on the internet. In particular, they want to able to serve their users' research needs. To the extent that these databases contain cases and articles that cite on-line sources, they would prefer for their readers to be able find these sources. Otherwise, the total value of their research will diminish.
This concern may become more obvious in the near future. Since very recently, users have been able to access Westlaw and Lexis on the internet. (27) They may call-up law review articles and other documents that cite sources found elsewhere on the internet. In the near future, Westlaw and Lexis may allow users to click on the citations to access the cited sources. Users naturally will find it frustrating when they come across dead links. Although Westlaw and Lexis did not cause the contents of the cited sources to move, users still will feel frustrated while using their services.
III.
WAYS OF REDUCING THE PRESENT WORRIES
Although authors, readers, journals, libraries, and database providers have understandable worries about the permanence of paperless law review articles, the situation may improve in the near future. Technological advances may reduce the possibility that articles published on the internet will disappear by reducing the cost of storing them and by making them easier to find. In addition, law journals currently might provide greater security by taking simple, inexpensive, and presently feasible measures. To the extent that these measures do not succeed, for enough money, commercial database providers probably can provide a solution in the future.
A. Technological Advances
Concerns about the lack of permanence of articles not published on paper stem from two facts about the internet discussed above. One is that material posted in one location on the internet often moves to another location; the other is the contents of websites sometimes disappear from the internet altogether. By good fortune, technological advances that may alleviate these problems are now occurring. On-line law journals and authors of self-published articles can take advantage of these developments without having to do anything.
Although moving an article from one place to another on the internet may render links to the article obsolete, it will not generally make the article unavailable. On the contrary, the movement only will make the article more difficult to find. In the past few years, however, search engines and related sites appear to have gotten much better at finding sources. (28) Improvements will continue because the owners of each search engine will want to have the most users, and thus win the most advertising revenue.
Even more importantly, however, technological advances greatly are reducing the need to move or delete the contents of websites. As the cost of hard disk drives has diminished, the price of disk space on servers has become very inexpensive. As one illustration, in exchange for advertising revenue, some companies now are offering the public free email accounts along with at least several megabytes of storage (enough for a dozen articles). (29) With this competition, commercial sites are charging less and less. Accordingly, even if a law journal folded, it might have sufficient funds to pay to maintain its database in perpetuity. This is especially true because low demand for law review articles would make expensive high-distribution bandwidths unimportant.
B. Simple Steps to Combat Worries about Permanence
Although technological advances already are lessening concerns that on-line articles might disappear, paperless law journals and even self-publishing authors can take three simple actions that further will alleviate worries about permanence. These actions include making and distributing backups, allowing others to make copies, and devising unique identifiers for each article published.
1. Making and Distributing Backups.--One major benefit of paper publications, as noted above, is that they are distributed to multiple libraries where they are stored. Even if one library loses an issue of a law review by theft, fire, or other means, numerous other libraries will retain their copies. The complete disappearance of an article seems almost impossible.
On-line journals could largely replicate this type of security by the simple expedient of copying the entire volume published each year onto CDs or DVDs, and then mailing them to the libraries at the law schools in the country. This task would require very little time or money, and yet would provide permanent and easily accessible storage.
A perfectly satisfactory CD/R drive -- the device needed for recording CD-ROMs -- now costs about $200 dollars at any computer retail store or on-line computer merchant. (30) Blank recordable CDs cost $1.50 (or less if purchased in bulk), but hold about 650 megabytes. (31) In my estimate, that means one disk could hold at least 10 years of a large law review. Moreover, because CDs do not use magnetic fields to store data, they have extraordinary long lives. They may last for hundreds years.
Law libraries do not have infinite space to store physical items. CDs, however, take very little room. They are also highly durable. To the extent that CDs serve only as backups, law libraries would not have to keep them in immediately accessible locations. So long as patrons could request them in the event that the on-line journals ceased being available, they would continue to serve a purpose. (32)
2. Allowing Copying by Others.--Even if law journals do not follow the recommendation of copying their entire volumes onto CDs or DVDs and then distributing them to law libraries, they at least could facilitate backup copying by others. They and their authors simply would have to disclaim their copyright protection and then make it easy to download the contents of their website.
Giving up the copyright protection on articles really would not cost authors or law journals much of anything. After all, at present, they do not make money selling their works. If every on-line law journal freely allowed the copying of its articles, some firm might go into the business of archiving them. This firm then could compile a set of CDs or DVDs each year, which they could sell to law libraries so that they could maintain their own copies.
Alternatively, law librarians or authors might take on the responsibility of copying selected on-line journals. True, law libraries would not have the manpower to copy all on-line publications, but they could select a number journals to duplicate just as they currently decide which journals to purchase. They then could keep their copies in case the articles disappeared from the internet.
Authors might decide to make copies to insure that citations in their footnotes remain useful. For example, I might copy all of the internet sources cited in this article and post them on my own website. That way, if anyone wanted to look up something that I cited, it easily could be found.
The approach suggested, needless to say, involves a fair amount of redundant copying. This presents a problem mostly in terms of the total manpower expended in making copies because the cost of disk space is negligible. Law journals, however, could strive to minimize the labor involved. Their websites should have an easy-to-find place where users can download an entire volume (or indeed all volumes). They also should keep files in the same location to facilitate automated downloading for backup purposes.
3. Unique Identifiers for Law Review Articles.--Another simple measure that might help alleviate at least some concerns about permanence would be to develop or agree upon a system for uniquely identifying law review articles published on-line, either by law reviews or by authors. Authors or journals could include the identifying information in metadata tags at the start of the document. The identifying information would greatly aid researchers when using search engines to find paperless law review articles that may have moved from their original locations.
Authors in other disciplines already are using a standard called the "Dublin Core" for identifying documents posted on the internet. (33) The Dublin Core consists of a small number of identifiers, formatted in standard way, to help researchers find documents. (34) Legal scholars also could use the Dublin Core. Or they could try to invent an alternative. For example, a central website (perhaps maintained by a prominent law school) could dispense a distinctive number or code to authors of law review articles, ideally for free or for a limited cost. So long as the numbers and codes do not resemble anything else on the internet, the search engine would call up only the article itself and the articles that cite it.
Identifying numbers or codes would not do anything about the possibility that an article would be totally removed from the internet. They would, however, ameliorate the problem of relocation at very little expense. As the cost of storage on internet hosts diminishes, complete disappearance may become less of a problem.
C. Commercial Providers
Money solves most problems, and it can go a long way to addressing concerns that authors, researchers, librarians, and others have about the lack of permanence of law review articles. Westlaw and Lexis do such a fine job of storing electronic copies of journals printed on paper, that no one even stops to wonder whether the electronic copies on these databases will cease to exist. On the contrary, many researchers turn to these sources first because they know they will have what they are looking for.
The Westlaw and Lexis databases at present do not contain many, if any, law review articles published solely on-line as opposed to in traditional printed journals. Perhaps the principal reason is that most paperless law review articles are recent creations, and do not have a large readership. However, if a well-known periodical, like the Virginia Law Review, stopped publishing on paper and began posting its issues only electronically, I suspect that Westlaw would continue to carry its issues in its database.
Westlaw, Lexis, and other legal databases might be hesitant to go to the trouble of including some paperless law review articles if they are available for free on the internet. Many subscribers to these services would prefer to save money and access them directly, and thus bypass the databases. Yet, some researchers might prefer to have as many sources as possible located in a single database so that the time spent searching for sources is diminished. Ultimately, Westlaw, Lexis and other database services will have to make a financial calculation (which they are far better suited to make than me), and will decide whether it makes sense to store law review articles published on-line.
IV.
CONCLUSION
For well over a century, law professors and lawyers have published law review articles in printed publications. The internet now makes it possible to distribute journal articles at very little cost without relying on paper and postage. Paperless publication raises a host of understandable concerns, especially about their permanence. Nonetheless, if authors, journals, and law libraries work together, they greatly can reduce these problems at little expense. If these efforts fail, then market forces may allow already successful legal databases like Lexis and Westlaw to address the problems.
1. Associate Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School. This paper was presented on April 1, 2000, at the Rutgers Law Record's "Symposium 2000: The Internet's Impact on Legal Practice and Scholarship." See Rutgers Law Record, Symposium 2000 <http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~record//symposium/symposium.html> (visited Apr. 24, 2000). The paper was part of a panel discussion addressing the topic "Academic Publishing and the Internet: The Permanence Question." I wish to thank the Rutgers Law Record for inviting me to participant, and the other participants on the panel and the audience for their helpful suggestions.
2. See Michael D. McClintock, The Declining Use of Legal Scholarship by Courts: An Empirical Study, 51 Okla. L. Rev. 659, 661-665 (1998) (discussing publication in professional journals from the early 1800s until the present).
3. See Bernard J. Hibbitts, Last Writes? Reassessing the Law Review in the Age of Cyberspace, 71 N.y.u. L. Rev. 615, 617-28 (1996) (describing the early history of law review article publication); James W. Harper, Why Student-Run Law Reviews?, 82 Minn. L. Rev. 1261, 1263-65 (1998) (same).
4. See Anderson Publishing, Online Resources: Directory of Law Reviews <http://www.andersonpublishing.com/lawschool/directory/alpha.shtml> (visited Apr. 25, 2000)(providing the names and addresses of 604 law reviews).
5. The Harvard Law Review began publishing in 1887, and the Yale Law Journal started in 1894. See Michael I. Swygert & Jon W. Bruce, The Historical Origins, Founding, and Early Development of Student-Edited Law Reviews, 36 Hastings L.j. 739, 768, 789 (1985).
6. See WashLaw Web, Law Journals <http://www.washlaw.edu/lawjournal/lawjournal.html> (visited Apr. 18, 2000) (providing links to numerous law journals that publish on the internet, many of which are exclusively on-line); Jurist, Law Reviews <http://www.jurist.law.pitt.edu/lawrev.htm> (visited Apr. 18, 2000) (same).
7. See Rutgers Law Record <http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~record/> (visited Apr. 18, 2000).
8. See Intellectual Property and Technology Forum at Boston College Law School <www.bu.edu/iptf> (visited Apr. 18, 2000).
9. See Journal of Military and Veterans Law <http://www.wm.edu/SO/MLJ/> (visited Apr. 18, 2000).
10. See Comment, Shawn G. Pearson, Hype or Hypertext? A Plan for the Law Review to Move into the Twenty-First Century, 1997 Utah L. Rev. 765, 778-780 (1997) (reporting an estimate that printing solely on-line would save about 70% of the costs of production). See also Niva Elkin-Koren & Eli Salzberger, Law and Economics in Cyberspace, 1999 Int'l Rev. of Law & Econ. 553, 561-562 & n.22 (generally comparing the costs of publishing on-line to the cost of publishing on paper); Peter D. Kennedy & James A. Hemphill, Publishing on the Internet: Pitfalls and Projections, 4 Tex. Intel. Prop. L.J. 33, 34 (1995) (same).
11. The Rutgers Law Record, for example, allows anyone to read its article on the internet without paying. See Rutgers Law Record <http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~record> (visited Apr. 25, 2000). Some printed journals charge for on-line access. For example, the Hastings Law Review offers email subscriptions for $7. See Hastings Law Journal, Order Form <http://www.uchastings.edy/hlj> (visited Apr. 18, 2000).
12. See Josh E. Fidler, Law-Review Operations and Management, 33 J. Legal Educ. 48, 63 (1983) (reporting that only the Harvard Law Review is self-sufficient and that subscription fees bring in less than 50% of the revenue needed by most journals).
13. See Hibbitts, supra note 2, at 640, 668-69.
14. Professor Bernard Hibbitts has acted as the leading spokesperson for self-publication. See id. (describing and supporting this development). The Akron Law Review held a symposium in which numerous articles responded to his views. See Special Issue, 30 Akron L. Review 173-323 (1996).
15. See Hibbitts, supra note 2, at 670-71 (describing these benefits); Pearson, supra note 9, at 787 (same).
16. At the extreme end of the scale, the Harvard Law School subscribes to 14,878 periodicals (which probably include nearly all of the approximately 700 law reviews). See Harvard Law School Library, Basic Facts About Harvard Law School, http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/facts/facts_hls.htm> (visited Apr. 19, 2000). Just imagine the money that the library would save if all articles appeared for free on the internet!
17. Professor Jonathan Bick correctly observes in his accompanying article that authors may have other legitimate concerns, many of which they may consider more pressing than the lack of permanence of internet publication.
18. Altavista <http://www.altavista.com> (visited Apr. 25, 2000).
19. See About the Harvard Law Review <http://www.harvardlawreview.org/About.html> (visited Apr. 25, 2000).
20. See supra note 4.
21. See The George Washington University Law School, JACOB -- The Online Catalog of the Jacob Burns Law Library <http://jacob.nlc.gwu.edu/search/tgreen+bag/1,4,4,B/frameset&tgreen+bag&1,1> (visited Apr. 18, 2000) (card catalog listing for the Green Bag).
22. See The George Washington University Law School, JACOB -- The Online Catalog of the Jacob Burns Law Library <http ://jacob.nlc.gwu.edu/search/t?SEARCH=public+interest+law+review> (visited Apr. 18, 2000) (card catalog entry for the Public Interest Law Review).
23. Gregory E. Maggs <http://www.law.gwu.edu/facweb/gmaggs> (visited Apr. 18, 2000).
24. See Gregory E. Maggs, Internet Solutions to Consumer Protection Problems, 49 S.C. L. Rev. 888 (1998).
25. I now have put the article on my on website. See Gregory Maggs, Internet Solutions to Consumer Protection Problems <http://www.law.gwu.edu/facweb/gmaggs/sclr.htm> (visited Apr. 20, 2000).
26. See, e.g., Gregory E. Maggs, Karl Llewellyn's Fading Imprint on the Jurisprudence of the Uniform Commercial Code, 71 Colo. L. Rev. 541, 543 n.14, 549 n.63, 551 n. 81 (2000) (several citations to internet sources); Gregory E. Maggs, New Payment Devices and General Principles of Payment Law, 72 Notre Dame L. Rev. 755, 759-60 nn. 31-33 (1997).
27. See Lexis.com <http://www.lexis.com> (visited Apr. 24, 2000); Westlaw.com <http://www.westlaw.com> (visited Apr. 24, 2000).
28. See Timothy Hanrahan, The Best Way to Search Online: Finding What You Need on the Web Is Getting Easier and Easier, Wall St. J., Dec. 6, 1999, at R25 (discussing improvements in search engines).
29. See, e.g., Bluelight.com <http://www.bluelight.com> (visited April 24, 2000) (K-Mart and Yahoo!'s free internet service, providing subscribers 15 megabytes of disk space through Yahoo! Geocities <http://www.geocities.com/join_info.html> (visited April 24, 2000). See also <http://freeinternetservice.homepage.com/> (visited April 24, 2000) (listing other free internet services).
30. See Jon A. Hill & Alfred Poor, Personal Storage: Backing up your personal files has never been more important; with today's CD-RW and DVD-RAM drives, it's also never been easier or more affordable. So what are you waiting for?, PC Magazine (Mar. 14, 2000) <http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2444597,00.html> (visited April 24, 2000) (noting the availability of low cost drives that can write CDs or DVDs).
31. See id.
32. Although the library would keep track of the CD in its (presumably electronic) card catalog, it would not maintain the content on a computer.
33. I would like to thank Mr. Steven S. Perkins, the User Services Coordinator at the Rutgers Law Library of the Rutgers University School of Law-Newark, for calling my attention to Dublin Core metadata standard. For his views on the subject, see Steven C. Perkins, Dublin Core, Harvest and Resource Discovery in Law <http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~sperkins/99cali.html> (visited Apr. 24, 2000).
34. See Dublin Core Meta Data Initiative, Dublin Core Metadata Element Set <http://purl.org/DC/documents/rec-dces-19990702.htm> (visited Apr. 25, 2000) (describing in detail the system).