- The early web was just this incredible new tool that no one knew yet how it would be used and what it would be used for.
- The first Yahoo was a card catalog.
- Netscape had a What’s New page with links to interesting stuff.
- apple.com was a Unix box under a librarian’s desk. They started adding stuff that was useful to users and developers. No business model, just the librarian approach to information. Circulate it.
- I think if a new web is to be born, it’s because it’s again a possibility with the advent of AI.
- Listen to librarians, they probably have some good ideas of where to start.
Yes, listen to librarians, they will have ideas to start.
We charted the course for The Library at LexBlog as“Preserving and structuring the insight of legal professionals as secondary law.” Can you get anymore library focused?
Since then I have spoken to law librarians about our work. The structure, the citations, the use of AI, and more. I saw librarians being a great resource as they, themselves, chart a course in legal publishing, legal research and law in our society, generally, in an AI world.
The Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries, of which I am a member, may be the best conference I go to each year. It’s about the law, the way it is accessed and the way it is used. You feel you’re at the real intersection of technology and the law. Elsewhere you feel you’re at the intersection of business and the law.
I hope to connect with the law librarians and those whom teach in the field at the UW in Seattle, am talking with someone in library innovation at a major law school next week and expect to meet law librarians while in Boston the end of next month.
So much to learn from the unsung heroes of the web. By listening to them, they’ll probably have some good ideas where to start on AI and the law.