South Texas College of Law, Annotations (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 10, No. 3, December, 1982 Page: 4 of 8
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Page 4 — ANNOTATIONS - December 1982
'Online' system offers variety of information
by Gerri G. Lawrence
Most attorneys and law
students are familiar with the legal
information available from com-
puter research systems such as
LEXIS and WESTLAW. How-
ever, many are unaware that a
vast amount of valuable informa-
tion on other subjects is available
via a computer system known as
"ONLINE". That's the term used
by librarians and information
analysts to describe doing research
using a computer terminal, a local
phone call and databases offered
by commercial database vendors.
What it means to the practicing at-
torney or ambitious law student is
that a request for information on
a topic — be it pending New York
oil pricing legislation, or the tox-
icity of a pesticide to fish in Texas
lakes — can be answered quickly,
completely, and at a relatively low
cost.
If you're familiar with our
school's WESTLAW system it is
easy to comprehend this. Com-
puter systems are generally quick
in their response time, offer the
ability to scan several years worth
of material in a matter of seconds,
and the cost of the time involved
in terms of searcher and computer
time is usually much lower than
trying to do the same research
manually. Having done both types
of research, I feel comfortable in
assuring you that "ONLINE"
research is often a cost effective
method of locating information
with a high degree of confidence
in the search results.
But what exactly do I mean by
doing research "ONLINE"? Zip
codes, stock quotes, law reviews,
1120 Smith at
Houston. Texas 77002 (713) 650-1980
newspaper articles, bibliographies
of recent journal articles on brain
tumors? Yes, all of these are
available and more. There are two
major types of information
available through "ONLINE"
databases. One is bibliographic in-
formation. This type of search
renders a bibliography, which in
turn refers you to the articles or
books that contain the informa-
tion you requested. These are also
called reference databases in that
you are pointed to another source
for additional details or for the
complete information. The other
type of database available is non-
bibliographic, also known as
source databases. These are
databases that contain complete
data or the full text of the original
source information. This includes
numeric databases that contain
original survey data and/or statis-
tically manipulated representa-
tions of data, and full text
databases that contain the records
of the complete text of an item,
e.g., a newspaper item, a specifi-
cation or a population census.
Let's say you've got a products
liability case against a major
chemical company. Your client
used their baby lotion for her
triplets and has developed skin
cancer. In addition the family
physician, a world famous der-
matologist, has researched this
particular type of carcinoma and
believes that there is a strong
possibility that all three children
will develop the disease by the
time they are adults. You're talk-
ing a lot of money for your client.
Since most companies of any size
have the sophisticated research
capabilities of which I write,
you're not going to be able to get
by with a few good medical texts.
You'll need to know the toxic
levels of the chemicals involved,
the etiology of skin cancer and ex-
perts in the field that can testify
on your behalf as well as the
resumes of those experts the
defense plans to call. Sources for
these questions could be the Na-
tional Library of Medicine's
databases: Medline, Cancerlit,
Toxline, Chemline.
Or say one of your corporate
clients is concerned about a piece
of legislation on hazardous waste
dumping that California is con-
sidering. You need to monitor and
advise them on this bill. There are
several databases that offer a wide
range of state and federal legis-
lative tracking systems. CCH's
ELSS is one such system that's
proven to be very reliable and ex-
tremely cost effective. Public Af-
fairs Information, out of Califor-
nia, not only monitors legislation,
but is attempting to track state
regulations — no simple task and
one worth almost any amount of
cost to avoid the frustration and
uselessness of trying to track state
regulations manually.
Where do you go to get ac-
cess to these marvels of modern
library technology? The public
library is a start. Many will offer
"ONLINE" searching to the
public on a fee basis. Should you
work for a corporation then look
to the corporate library? But
should none of these sources be
available then the next choice is an
Information Broker. Information
brokers (located through the
yellow pages or by calling the
public library) generally cost more
than these other sources, however
they are well worth it since their
reliability is part and parcel of
their business.
This has been a very basic and
brief overview of "ONLINE" in-
formation — there is so much
more that information folks like
myself have begun to specialize,
not only in online searching, but
in particular subject areas. It's
been an exciting area for the
library world to move into, with
new techniques and applications
being explored everyday. A useful
tool in this area is a list of data-
bases: Directory of Online Data-
bases by Cuadra Associates, Santa
Monica, California. Use this arti-
cle as a seed to explore the type of
information which is available. It
might just give you the winning
edge sometime!
• 1980-81
• 1980-81
• 1980-81
DELTA THETA PHI
E.E.TOWNES SENATE
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in the U.S.
CONSIDER DELTA THETA PHI
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• Take advantage of an opportunity of Scholastic Recognition and Professional
Associations through the leading Legal Fraternity in the United States
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O'Neal, Dale, Jr. South Texas College of Law, Annotations (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 10, No. 3, December, 1982, newspaper, December 1982; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth144406/m1/4/: accessed May 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting South Texas College of Law.