As the new $12-million Hugh F. MacMillan Law Library rapidly takes shape on Clifton Road, a similar building process is underway inside the Law School. Like its physical counterpart, the Law Library's Information Technology Services (ITS) department is taking great strides toward providing state-of-the-art technology for virtually everyone who will use the 60,000-square-foot facility.
ITS, which in the past was responsible only for student and library computer support, now provides technological support to all members of the law school community, according to Robin Mills, director of the Law Library. ITS has taken on the challenge and is "installing a standard interface to handle all Internet access for every member of the law school," said William Morse, head of ITS. The software is all Windows-based, and ITS is training and offering support for all law school faculty and staff.
The most dramatic step forward by ITS and the law library so far is the launching of its own World Wide Web (WWW) server, which has been up and running for about three months, said Deborah Keene, associate director of the Law Library. The new server, which is almost identical in performance and capacity with the University's main WWW server, has enabled the Law Library to make several innovative improvements to its Web site. These include:
* The Emory Law Library Elec-tronic Reference Desk, which is intended to link every legally relevant Web site in the United States and internation-ally, categorized for use in the most research-oriented manner possible.
"The electronic reference desk tells users whether materials are available on-line and where they are located on Internet," said Keene. "All this is free information and is already available in electronic format; our Electronic Reference Library will be a door to a whole world of information." Keene said the library's Electronic Reference Desk is already being applauded by law librarians and attorneys around the country for its organization and ease of use.
* Comments Pages that allow, among other things, submission of legal research questions to the Law Library's reference desk staff. "If you are a member of the Emory community, you can submit reference questions on-line, and we will answer them through e-mail. All this is supported through the web," said Keene.
* A new Search Engine that allows users to find information quickly anywhere within the Law School Web. "If you don't want to go to the Electronic Reference Desk and scroll through all of the topics, you can simply type in the name of a topic and be taken directly to that subject area," said Keene.
* A collection of the highest quality and most useful Mac and Windows Internet client software available for downloading through an individual's Web browser.
Armed with these innovations, the new MacMillan Law Library will have a state-of-the-art multimedia classroom, complete with a large LCD (liquid crystal display) screen and a sound system to support any computer, video or audio technology currently available. "This classroom will be used to give Emory law students training on every aspect of electronic legal research and practice," said Morse. "We believe that attorneys will make more and more use of information technology in the future, and we will be able to handle all aspects of that."
In addition to the new classroom, the library's 150 study carrels will be equipped with Ethernet lines so that students with laptops can plug into a port and be directly connected to the Internet. "Students can come into the library, plug in their laptops, read their e-mail, go to class, and return to do Westlaw/LEXIS research, all on their own machines," said Morse.
ITS also will be providing a set of diskettes containing Internet tools to all interested law faculty, students and staff. With a modem, they will be able to dial in from remote locations and have Internet access from home or even on the road. "Our goal is to have everyone's work environment be totally portable," said Morse. "Our users will be able to take their work with them wherever they go."
As if all these new developments weren't enough, ITS is also looking into the development of original software that will further aid legal researchers in finding and organizing materials on the Web. Hewlett-Packard Company is supporting this effort by donating the use of four of its most powerful UNIX servers to the Law School.
The Law School is calling this effort the Emory Legal Information Technology Environment, or ELITE Project, an ambitious program to revolutionize the way legal information is stored, retrieved and used. ELITE is a database system especially designed for legal research, said Morse, who is also the inventor. According to Morse, "ELITE provides a complete solution for generating, networking and querying legal databases. It contains specific features designed to support the entire legal information technology process. The system is also portable and modular, so that the underlying technology can be extended to other content domains, such as medical information technology."
All these new developments would not be possible, of course, without the building itself, said Mills, adding that the new facility will make Emory "one of the most technologically advanced law schools in the country."
--Elaine Justice