Vendor v. Librarian – mega slam: Part 2

I wanted to wait a few days for part 2 of my post to think about my position and what had been written and said. Since then a few more posts have shown up, most notably from Tom Boone, and at the Law Librarian blog. And, as is always the danger when waiting to post something, much has already been explored by other bloggers. But I do have something to say about this, and I’m going to say it. The best way i can describe this post, is me trying to think my way through why this is such a controversial issue.

The title of this post is a joke of course about the oft contentious relationship between librarians and vendors. But the reality is that the vendor-librarian relationship should never be an adversarial one. It may often feel this way. Vendor’s reps are often selling something while librarians seem to be always trying to do more with less. But it is a relationship rather than a transaction. And the relationship between vendor and librarian is key. As a people person myself I have always valued relationships with vendors and some vendors have been better than others in that regard.

As difficult as it is for some librarians to believe, for me, Thomson Reuters Legal (TRL) has been one of the better vendors in terms of relationship building. In recent years, their marketers have been very good at engaging librarians in social media and building relationships without resorting to traditional sales pitches and “vendor-speak”, often genuinely engaging people on twitter and blogs.

And I think this is why the SWAG issue is so contentious. We are uncomfortable with an extravagant gift,  as most of us would be when anyone we had a relationship with simply handed us something like an iPod. And for myself this is why I don’t accept vendor SWAG. This feeling of unease, extends to something even small.

But what then, are we to make of vendor dinners, or sponsorship of events? Even Sarah Glassmeyer admits to being conflicted about what is and is not appropriate to accept from a vendor. But these particular benefits don’t seem to bother us as much. And why should they? I have bought drinks and dinner for colleagues. As Scott Berkun says in the keynote I embedded in this post, there are three timeless technologies: speaking, writing, and drinking. Vendor parties involve two of these. Dinners and parties are relationship building events.

Similarly we are not bothered by accepting LexisNexis, Wolters Kluwer and other vendors sponsoring AALL grants. And we shouldn’t be. They are not buying allegiance to their brand, and we are never quite as suspicious of these activities. Similarly we should not make that assumption about SWAG.

Of course sometimes AALL must take a stand on certain issues. Many of us applauded, rightfully so, when AALL refused money from TRL last summer for refusing to participate in the Price Index. TRL refusal to participate is contrary to the relationship we thought we had. But the relationship between this vendor and our flagship organization continues. It must.

But this is just proof that despite our missteps, and there have been plenty of actions by librarians and vendors which are contrary to a healthy working relationship, we are still partners. TRL invited many bloggers who were critical of their product to take the trip to Eagan, MN. And they and other vendors would do well to continue the practice of engaging critical bloggers, Sarah Glassmeyer included.

However, I would advise librarians to do the same. When vendors are deserving of criticisms, we should criticize, worthy of praise we should praise, and even if we have to sanction we should do that too. But these vendors, whether we subscribe to their service, or we remain only potential customers, are our partners and we should always remember that.

Vendor v. Librarian – mega slam: Part 1

Sitting at dinner with executives from Thomson Retures Legal (TRL) in St. Paul, MN, one of my colleagues asked, “what do you expect from us?” The answer was that they simply wanted to tell their story. At the time I wondered if this was a direct hint toward a recent blog post I wrote, encouraging vendors to tell their story. I put the suspicion from my mind. My suspicions were re-ignited the next day at their headquarters in Eagan, MN when one of the reference attorneys presenting to us specifically referenced that blog post.

But the most amazing part of the trip was what TRL successfully did during that meeting, and have failed to do since. They told their story.

That’s why I had been planning on writing a post about the trip to Minnesota, and meeting with the WestlawNext folks. It was a unique experience and an interesting process that itself could be important, beyond the topic of discussion (WestlawNext).

And after February 1 when they unveiled WestlawNext at LegalTech in New York, I was prepared to blog about the value provided by the bloggers I sat in those meetings with, compared to the superficial tweets and posts coming from LegalTech.

But my friend and colleague Sarah Glassmeyer may have forced my hand a little by raising the issue of vendor swag and question of ethics, including the decision I and others made to accept an all expenses paid trip to Eagan Minnesota to meet with the WestlawNext team and preview the product.

Comments about this have ranged from the on point, to the factually inaccurate (all librarians on the trip had passwords which enabled them access to the product). And a larger discussion of librarian vendor relations has followed.

Now, I currently do not accept vendor swag. I used to. I do not remember the exact point at which I stopped accepting it (early 2009), nor do I remember the exact reasons (general feeling of ickiness). But I do not accept swag anymore. However, I did accept this trip to see WestlawNext.

I did not accept the trip immediately and not without some reservation. Yes, I questioned whether or not it was appropriate to accept a trip from TRL to preview this product. Beyond the ethical questions raised by accepting such a trip, flying to Minnesota, on about two weeks notice, in January at the start of the semester, is at best an inconvenience and at worst a pain in the ass. As my colleague mentioned this was not a trip to Hawaii.

Now here’s where it gets a little tricky.

I am a blogger – whatever that means to you – to me that includes some amateurish semblance of news gathering, editorializing, and simply passing on information. I decided long ago to not to place too much emphasis on counting how many visitors I have, subscribers to my feed, etc. I have had offers to monetize this blog and turned them down for one reason or another. But there are some people who do indeed read this blog, and find it valuable.

Now, since I am not employed as a professional news gatherer my organization cannot afford to send me to every event that may be valuable. I either use part of my professional development/travel budget, or pay my own way. Which is fine. In this particular instance, TRL decided to pay to fly me and other bloggers into Minnesota on their own dime. They gave me a place to stay for the night, and fed me. It was not a vacation. I spent most of one day traveling, and the second day in meetings.

I decided, right or wrong, that it was within my professional responsibility, and the scope of this blog to accept this trip. I mean that it may be advantageous to the organization that employs me (Yale Law Library) to have a staff member get an early insider’s view of an important new product, it may be advantageous to my career (I am up for promotion in a few years) to note that I was recognized as a blogger recognizable enough to be worth the cost to fly out to Minnesota, and valuable to the readers of my blog that I was at the meeting.

I stand by the decision.

Now some people,like this commenter, might think this makes me a less reliable authority on such matters. That doesn’t worry me. Long time readers of myself and Tom Boone know who we are and whether or not we are valuable, reliable sources of information. Frankly, I think devaluing our two voices (along with the other dozen or so bloggers there) is a disservice to any law librarian and their own professional reading.

There is of course a larger issue of vendor-librarian relations that I think should be addressed. And this is a wholely different issue than accepting an ipod (a gift I wasn’t offered and would not have accepted). FYI, I was offered but did not accept any swag while on this trip.

But I will save this larger post for later. Let’s consider this part 1.

Yale Teaching with Technology: Google Wave

On Tuesday, 2/2/10 I’ll be co-presenting about how to use Google Wave. We have created several waves for this presentation. This post is an will be an example of embedding a wave on a website or blog.

5 random thoughts about WestlawNext

So lots has been written about WestlawNext. Much more detailed analysis has been floating around. So rather than rehash what’s already been said all over the web, I’m going to provide some random thoughts I had about the project as I was sitting in the meeting at Eagan, MN. These are just from some notes I jotted down, that I think are interesting. Disclosure (again): Thomson Reuters paid my way to Eagan and put me up for the trip.

1. Attorneys do not look at documents on Westlaw beyond the first 5 to 10 results. I suspect it’s the same for Lexis, and pretty much any search site nowadays

This is what they found when researching how attorneys used Westlaw. I know that this is a problem on Google, one that has led to the emergence of the Search Engine Optimization industry, that search results beyond the first few almost do not exist. But to hear that attorneys by and large will rerun a search if desired search results don’t show up within the first few hits is very… I’ll say illuminating. Is this a failure on the part of firms, librarians, legal education, or attorneys themselves? Is it a failure at all, or just how research is done in the Google age, something that databases, search engines, librarians must simply accept as a modern research practice? WestlawNext is now accommodating this practice, as will other vendors I’m sure. Should librarians?

2. Analyzing customer usage to make the relevancy rankings more relevant, in particular measuring “meaningful interaction with documents”

For me, this may have been the most welcoming revelation about the new WestSearch relevancy rankings. They wanted to take user behavior into account in relevance rankings. But users click on documents in search results which are irrelevant. So how do you measure document relevance to a search. WestSearch incorporates what they called “meaningful interaction with a document” as signifying relevance to the search. Meaningful interaction may include actions like keyciting a document, printing a document, citing with reference, saving it to a folder, downloading, etc. These are the types of actions that were found to signify a relevant document. WestSearch will incorporate these actions into relevance rankings.

In addition to search results, WestlawNext will analyze documents saved to their folder system. The theory is that documents that appear in the same folder may have links between them and can also improve relevancy rankings.

What does this mean? It means that Westlaw’s relevancy rankings should continually improve as more people start using the system. Awesome.

3. All browsers will be supported. But Chrome is the best

Gone are those annoying pop-up windows, and messages telling us that something is best viewed on Internet Explorer. WestlawNext will be available on all browsers (Chrome is coming in mid-February). That means Mac users, Firefox users, Chrome users, Safari users will all be able to use WestlawNext on their desired platform. This is a very welcome development. It also makes me think that Westlaw may have been listening to all the user complaints about browser compatibility. Oh, by the way. Their studies found that Chrome was the most steady, fastest, most reliable browser.

4. Synchronization across all platforms

Save a document to your folder on WestlawNext online. Access it from your mobile device later. WestlawNext has been built with portability in mind. As we enter an age where people expect content to be accessible across multiple platforms, WestlawNext appears to deliver.

5. Possibility of command searching

Librarians seem to be worried about the disappearance of boolean searching. I am excited about the possibility of command searching. Currently in WestlawNext if you type “keycite [citation]” you go directly to a keycite report for that citation. Not a big deal, as Greg Lambert mentioned on the video I posted earlier. But imagine the possibility of typing “define [term]” and going straight to the definition in Black’s Law Dictionary. How about typing “ALR Index [term]” going straight to the ALR index. Do you see where I’m going with this? This system seems ripe for these types of shortcuts, and I am excited about some of the possibilities opened up by it. Whether or not others will be as impressed, or if and when these capabilities will be fully explored in WestlawNext has yet to be seen. But I would like to see it.

6. Super Bonus Final Random Thought

There is a lot more to think about with regards to WestlawNext. The system is by no means perfect. There are other issues to consider, like pricing.

But this new system is obviously a major shift in legal research. Couple this new product with Bloomberg, and the new Lexis product coming later this year, and alternatives like FastCase and the entire ecosystem of legal research may be completely different by this time next year.

I know some librarians and others are worried about what this means. But I think the application of modern search techniques, coupled with new web technologies may open up a whole new world of legal research for us. I look forward to some much needed changes.

Video: discussion of WestlawNext

ABA Journal and New York Times have already written about it. Lisa Solomon and Robert Ambrogi have seen it also. On Feb. 1st Westlaw unveils it’s new product WestlawNext to the world at LegalTech.

Yesterday they met with a group of legal information professionals to talk about the product and it’s creation. I was lucky enough to snag an invite to the meeting. Disclosure: they paid our way out there and put us up for the trip.

Soon I will post some (hopefully) cohesive thoughts about it, including some discussion of the meeting itself, but in the meantime…

After the meeting Tom Boone, Greg Lambert of 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, Jason Wilson and I sat down at the Minneapolis airport and talked about our thoughts about the product and the meeting. I videotaped it.

The video includes discussions of features, potential price considerations, and other issues raised by the new product.  So please enjoy, the video runs about 40 minutes long.

Discussion of WestlawNext from Jason Eiseman on Vimeo.