PLL Consumer Advocacy: Advisory (9-24-97)

************************* CAPLL ADVISORY *************************

CAPLL Advisory: PLL Consumer Advocacy Advisory

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* To: Multiple recipients of list <privatelawlib-l@lawlib.wuacc.edu>
* Subject: PLL Consumer Advocacy Advisory
* From: "Kathie J. Sullivan" <mltwkjs@transit.appliedtheory.com>
* Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 13:05:34 -0500
* Reply-To: privatelawlib-l@lawlib.wuacc.edu
* Sender: privatelawlib-l@lawlib.wuacc.edu

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A new subcommittee of the PLL/SIS is the Consumer Advocacy for Private Law
Librarians Committee, or CAPLL. In addition to writing articles on a
regular basis for PLL Perpectives, we may be issuing what I will call CAPLL
Advisories.

Someone this week has been discussing the problems they have been having
with Shepards on their network as well as asking for evaluations of KeyCite
vs. Shepards.

I would like to encourage you to run the same citation check in BOTH
services as part of your evaluations. I will give you citations to two
cases to aid in the process. You will note that the results are not
identical between the services. I asked my Westlaw rep about this and she
indicated that KeyCite only lists the documents which *are available on
Westlaw.* Therefore, if a law review is not on Westlaw, it may still show
up on a Shepards result. For an example of this, run the services for 118
NYS2d 867.

You will see a similar puzzlement if you run the services for 528 So2d 1244.

I had it in my mind, correctly or not, that KeyCite might well replace
Shepards and that we would only have to run ONE of the services. I am not
sure this will be true, especially if we are looking for secondary materials.
Depending on what you are looking for, you may have to run both KeyCite
and Shepards.

Kathie Sullivan, CAPLL Chair

Library Director
McNamee Lochner Titus & Williams
75 State Street
P.O. Box 459
Albany, NY 12201-0459
(518) 447-3266
(518) 426-4260 (fax)
sullivan@mltw.com

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