Dissertation Information for Barbara Hearne Pausley NAME: - Barbara Hearne Pausley
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science
SCHOOL:
- Case Western Reserve University (USA) (1986)
ADVISORS: - William Goffman
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - Christinger L. Tomer - Spencer Neth - Miranda Pao
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: Information Science Techniques in Legal Retrieval
Abstract: This paper investigated the possibility of improving legal research through the information science techniques of co-citation and bibliographic coupling. Two areas of common law were selected for use in the study. Each was investigated using that portion of WESTLAW and LEXIS which contain case reports from all the states. -Finding Lost Goods-and ·Unconscionability in Sales· are areas of common law defined primarily by judicial decision. AUTHORITY cases representing each issue were identified by using recognized secondary sources such as annotations, encyclopedias, law reviews and text-books. All cases which, in turn, cited the AUTHORITY cases were identified. Thes. SHEPARD cases represent the cases which would be found using the traditional legal method of Shepardizing a group of relevant cases. Bibliographic coupling and co-citation techniques were applied to the Shepard cases and the resulting retrieval was evaluated. The citation relationship identified a set of cases which would not be otherwise found. Requiring that the SHEPARD cases be bibliographically coupled at a threshold greater than one was found to be useful in reducing the undifferentiated set of SHEPARD cases to a group which was more likely to be considered relevant. It is suggested that traditional Shepardizing can be successfully refined by using this relatively simple technique. Other ways of refining the SHEPARD cases using modified information science techniques are also developed and tested. One group required that SHEPARD cases reference more than one of the AUTHORITY cases used by the secondary reference sources. Another technique required that the SHEPARD cases use AUTHORITY cases which are in turn used by more than one reference source. Both sets of cases so defined can be shown to be more relevant than the undifferentiated Shepard set. Some implications of using the different citation relationships are suggested, and a method of enhancing the retrieval of cases from the electronic databases is proposed.
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MPACT Scores for Barbara Hearne Pausley A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:01:28
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