ACJNet:
Electronic Publishing
漏 1998 ACJNet
ACJNet: Electronic Publishing
Written by: San San Sy
Background Research: Margaret Sadler
Edited by: Margaret Sadler
Legal Studies Program
University of Alberta
March 1998 ACJNet: Electronic Publishing
Contents
Executive Summary i
1.0 Introduction 1
2.0 Electronic Publishing00n Overview 2
2.1 Four Common Classifications of Electronic Publishing 5
2.1.1 Document Delivery Systems 5
2.1.2 Electronic Books 6
2.1.3 Electronic Periodicals 6
2.1.4 Databases 6
2.2 Designing Electronic Documents for the WWW 7
3.0 Electronic Publishing on ACJNet 8
3.1 The Present 8
ACJNet Electronic Publishing Practices and Criteria 10
3.2 The Future 12
Bibliography 14
Executive Summary
This is one of the papers in the series on the components of ACJNet. The series will consist of:
00nbsp;ACJNet: Library Without Walls
00nbsp;ACJNet: Online Education
00nbsp;ACJNet: Virtual Community
00nbsp;ACJNet: Electronic Publishing
This paper focuses on the multi-faceted nature of electronic publishing and its possibilities within ACJNet (Access to Justice Network). As one of four components of ACJNet, electronic publishing overlaps with the Library Without Walls when a client requests ACJNet materials; with the Virtual Community when electronic discussions are used for later reference; and with Online Education when its papers are made available to a wider readership.
The second section of the paper describes electronic publishing in general including the challenge of defining the phenomenon and the technical and political issues influencing it. The paper identifies four categories for classifying electronic publishing: document delivery, electronic books, electronic periodicals, and databases. Key elements in the design of electronic publication are listed, including such features as logical indexes; precise, concise, easily-scanned writing; avoidance of whole-word capitalization, centered, and blinking text; limits on hyperlinks; and a search facility, among others. The third section describes current ACJNet electronic publishing practices and proposes electronic publishing initiatives most appropriate to ACJNet00 future.
Appended to this paper are descriptions and background information to provide additional information. Appendix A tells the history of ACJNet, the many contributors to its development, and thus the basis for the launch of online education. Appendix B includes excerpts from a policy paper on the construction and maintenance of the ACJNet website. The bibliography lists reference materials useful to the development of this paper and the readers00further study of the issues raised.
Electronic publishing is one of the five stated goals of ACJNet. While there are still many issues both technical and conceptual in electronic publishing, ACJNet with its experience in electronic conferencing, library without walls, and electronic information services now needs to engage in the design and delivery of electronic publishing. We hope this paper will provide the basis for ACJNet to embark on this journey.
1.0 Introduction
ACJNet is a bilingual electronic network that brings together an electronic community of people, information, and resource materials on Canadian justice and legal issues. It is a meeting place where people interested in access to justice gather to discuss issues, exchange ideas, share documents, and develop a depository of written resource materials. As of 31 March 1998, there are over 430 publications with approximately 6,700 pages of full text documents on ACJNet. ACJNet is a one-stop Internet site for accessing materials and connecting people concerned with law and justice.
We cannot talk about one component of ACJNet without touching upon others. ACJNet is a community, an Internet site, a distributed network, a library, a knowledge centre, and an innovator. We can start to define ACJNet by saying that it has four main components: Electronic Publishing, Online Education, the Virtual Community, and the Library Without Walls. These four components of ACJNet overlap and mingle and interchange with each other; their connectivity and relationships to each other can be illustrated as a true three-dimensional matrix.
For example, the Virtual Community of ACJNet is part of Electronic Publishing when a home page is created for a new partner or when documents from partners are posted on the ACJNet website. The teachers00curriculum developed as part of the Online Education component also becomes part of the Library Without Walls when a client of ACJNet requests materials. When this client interacts via a conference with the creator of the curriculum to provide feedback on the curriculum, then she is helping to develop the Virtual Community, while at the same time, adding to the Library Without Walls, as the conference00 contents become a reference source. These four components are accessed either via Internet technologies or by person to person contact.
While ACJNet is an ever-changing entity, its objectives remain the same. It uses electronic technologies to:
1. provide Canadians with opportunities to obtain a uniform level of legal, justice, and justice-related information;
2. improve access to the justice system for Canadians with special needs (victims of crime, immigrant communities, youth, aboriginal people, women);
3. improve and create cost-effective communications and co-ordination among elements of Canada's justice system, create international links, and provide a mechanism by which the community and the justice system can share ideas, information, and experiences;
4. provide law and justice learning opportunities for the public, particularly for youth;
5. create a bilingual national electronic communication and information network that provides access to the justice system and to Canadian law for the public. (TB 820659, September, 1993)
Different electronic technologies are used as a means to create and distribute products and services to the general public and as a vehicle for public consultation. As an information tool, ACJNet presents informational and educational resource materials. As an advanced method of providing information, ACJNet offers users an opportunity to post their questions using an online reference service and have them answered by information specialists or experts. As a vehicle for public consultation, it provides virtual space to facilitate broad-based consultation wherein information and ideas can be sought and shared. It also provides the opportunity to develop an electronic community that transcends time and distance.
ACJNet has developed as a consortium consisting currently of the Department of Justice Canada, Web Networks, and the Legal Studies Program at the University of Alberta, the University of Montreal, the University of Ottawa, and Industry Canada. ACJNet is a prime example of what Treasury Board refers to as 00haring resources00and demonstrates how resources can be pooled between different departments, agencies, and institutions all working toward a common goal and all providing great benefit to Canadians. Refer to Appendix A for more information about ACJNet.
This paper focuses on the Electronic Publishing component of ACJNet00ne of four components of the ACJNet suite. This component is the last to be developed and is early in its developmental stage. This document, therefore, should be viewed as a living document.
2.0 Electronic Publishing00n Overview
Wading through three centimetres of paper reprints from the Internet illustrates the elegance and pitfalls of electronic publishing. Some articles are neat and logically formatted for easy browsing, easier reading; some articles are sloppy and unformatted, sentences wrapping00nd unwrapping00s the text meanders down the page. Some writing is brilliant, captivating, satisfying; some writing is choppy, scolding, boring. It00 interesting that all these reprints discuss electronic publishing.
In this small sample, opinion on electronic publishing is expressed by writers, academics, publishers, editors, developers, and librarians in Australia, New Zealand, the European Community, and the United States from 1993 to the present. Such articles cover the spectrum from analysis, design, development, and evaluation of materials for electronic publication.
The network of networks, the Internet, permits all of this opinion to contradict each other, to be linked to each other, to appear unrelated, and to repeat itself00o free-associate. Most of the sources for this review of electronic publishing are those who have been involved with traditional publishing, so the voice of those who advocate that messages in e-mail, newsgroups or websites are part of electronic publishing are not as loud.
Definitions of electronic publishing abound from the restrictive notion that electronic publishing spells the downfall of publishers (Consulting Trust GmbH, n.d.) or uses 00lectronic devices in all aspects of the production, management, and distribution of data to users00 (n.a. 00artin,00n.d.) to the broad domain of all things 00iewed, navigated, annotated, and distributed via CD-ROM, over a network, or through an on-line service00(Grunin, 1995).
Russell (1996) tackles the task of defining electronic publishing with a broad array of definitions. This author also notes that definition is further complicated by the lack of clear distinction between electronic publishing and computer-mediated communication (CMC)00uch as e-mail, computer conferencing, distance learning, and discussion lists. Since some people view CMC as electronic publishing, the statement has been made that on the Net anyone can be a publisher. December00 expertise is in CMC and his article (1994) refers to e-mail, file transfer protocols, LISTSERV discussion systems, information systems like telnet, or asynchronous discussion systems like UseNet newsgroups. Other media that may be considered within the electronic publishing matrix include obvious ones like online publishing, as well as networked communication, electronic document delivery, information storage and retrieval, and desktop publishing (Russell, 1996, p. 4).
While Russell (1996) makes a distinction between electronic publishing and websites or homepages, others like December (1994) and Solock (1997) include them in the range of electronic publishing activities, referring to new search features, valuable hotlinks, meta-sites, newsgroups, and discussion list archives.
A particularly useful definition of electronic publishing, because of its thoroughness, is the one included in Grolier00 electronic encyclopedia (Grolier Electronic Publishing, 1995, as quoted in Russell, 1996, p.4).
Sometimes used to describe the application of computers to traditional print publishing00rom word processing to computerized order processing00he term electronic publishing refers more precisely to the storage and retrieval of information through electronic communications media. It can employ a variety of formats and technologies, some already in widespread use by businesses and general consumers, and others still being developed. Electronic publishing technologies can be classified into two general categories; those in which information is stored in a centralized computer source and delivered to the user by a telecommunications system; and those in which the data is digitally stored on a disk or other physically deliverable medium. The former category, including online data base services and videotext, represents the most active area in electronic publishing today.
No universal standards are in evidence, nor are they truly possible for a dynamic creature of such proportions. Apparently the wisest course is to associate with those sites that do set standards for themselves, or set and monitor standards for others. The Scout Report (1997) and Argus Clearinghouse are two examples of web services that publish their criteria and label sites that meet those criteria.
The dynamic features of the web are exploited in the most successful electronic publications. As in any good educational materials, the elements of electronic publishing include audience specifications, purpose statement, objectives, an overview of the information contained, the technical range and constraints of the publication, and its presentation mechanics (December, 1997). The standard elements of instructional design guide the production of these elements: planning, analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation and revision. A new feature is added in the electronic age: promotion is introduced as an important process, targeting general Web audiences, potential users and current users, to connect users with needs. December (1997) advises that online community norms and practices be followed in this process.
Issues in Electronic Publishing
While some seem to believe that electronic publishing can occur outside the realm of the Internet, others agree that mastery of electronic publishing means mastery of tools, practices, and production on the Internet. In order to exist, electronic publishing needs
authors who want to publish electronically, people with skills to produce electronic text, media which will enable dissemination of electronic format material, standards which are common, agreed upon, accessible, powerful and cheap, users with the technology to use electronic text, and technology powerful enough to provide an infrastructure (n.a. 00foott,00n.d).This list of necessities indicates that technical barriers may limit the scope and impact of electronic publishing. Not all features of an electronic publication can necessarily be accessed by all users. On the other hand, if developers reach for the lowest common denominator, the results may be boring and ignored, or avoided by high end users. The Web, however, is not the whole network and use of facilities, like gopher, file transfer protocol (ftp), and e-mail, may alleviate some of the limitations for some users.
The future of electronic publishing rests in most cases, according to the research reviewed here, on political rather than technical issues. Intellectual property, archiving, and quality control issues appear to be among the most challenging for the future of this medium.
2.1 Four Common Classifications of Electronic PublishingOne perspective on classifying electronic publishing is to investigate network-based media and physically-distributed digital media such as laserdiscs and CD-ROMs, or 00nline00and 00ffline00 publications (Grolier Electronic Publishing, 1995, as quoted in Russell, 1996, p.4). While these are designed and distributed to be read electronically, it is usually possible to print the documents on paper in their entirety. Newsletters and databases represent some of the successful uses of online publications and integrate the dynamic attributes of being online with the possibility of up-to-the-minute additions and revisions. Electronic books like encyclopedia and dictionaries with a predictably longer shelf life, enhanced by the use of graphics, images, animation, and sound, make successful offline publications.
The four classifications of (1) document delivery, (2) electronic books, (3) electronic periodicals, and (4) databases, explored here, however, represent the recent transformation from print to digital forms of information. Based on Russell00 arbitrary classifications (1996, p.7), this classification system appears to be common among other academic researchers in the field.
2.1.1 Document Delivery Systems
Online document delivery systems range from in-house to worldwide circulation. In-house systems take advantage of uniformity in hardware and software systems to supply standard packages of information within a closed system. With ever-expanding technologies, it is becoming easier to transfer documents across platforms and software programs. This allows transmission of an article, report, or chapter on demand to any computer around the world. This is especially valuable to researchers considering the wealth of materials in academic and public libraries. It is also advantageous to authors whose work may have been published in paper-based bound form with a variety of other articles. Free to travel on its own, the article may find increased readership worldwide.
Facilities such as SGML (Standardized General Markup Language) provide a structure for managing content of digital documents across various platforms and software programs. Karney (1995) claims that SGML, despite its complexity, is 00 new paradigm for working with information00since it defines only structure and content and not appearance or presentation. 2.1.2 Electronic Books
While paper-based books are still easier to take to bed, electronic books hold promise in their ability to be searched and quoted. Works such as The Collected Works of Shakespeare (Educorp) are public domain works, greatly favoured by students and academics for research purposes. Encyclopedia, dictionaries, and other reference books take advantage of low production and distribution costs and high storage capacity in CD-ROM format. Advertised as 00nteractive books,00electronic books are popular in the children00 section and may eventually produce different readers in society.
With book-sized products, the digital text storage method of choice seems to be 00lain vanilla ASCII00 (PVASCII) and compressed files. This simplifies movement across platforms and in and out of word processing programs whether by gopher, ftp, or e-mail.
Despite the assumption that books suit physical distribution rather than electronic, the Gutenberg Project aims to have 10,000 titles in electronic form00ther than CD-ROM, although some titles are available in that medium00y the year 2000. Most of the original documents for these PVASCII files are copyright free, minimizing reproduction problems.
2.1.3 Electronic Periodicals
Electronic periodicals embrace electronic journals, newsletters, magazines and/or e-zines, and discussion lists. The application of these publications, particularly in scholarly research, has been positive and prolific. Important factors in their success have been ease of access, quality of product, and the ability to print a copy of an article, that copy being at least as high quality as a photocopy of a journal article. Access to the publication may be through subscription, through limited access (password, membership), or a combination of these. One model might allow free access to the table of contents and abstracts of all articles, but ask payment at the request for an article. Quality control may still be exercised by peer or expert review.
2.1.4 Databases
Databases cross the line between online and offline publications. Online access is important for dynamic databases like Dow Jones or other financial information services. Less fluid databases like encyclopedia take advantage of the storage capacity of CD-ROMs.
The largest educational example of an electronically published database is the ERIC (Education Resources Information Centre) database. ERIC contains more than 800,000 records with the addition of 30,000 new records per year. Begun in the 1970s, ERIC is now available on CD-ROM, on magnetic tape, or via online access through commercial services.
2.2 Designing Electronic Documents for the WWW
Producing electronic publications requires some modification to writers00and developers00skills. Some of the key elements need to be:
logical introductory indexes precise, concise writing, easily scanned, and written in inverted pyramid style (cf. newspaper articles) accurate spelling and grammar avoidance of limited graphics (including smaller logos) proof-read and field-tested applications limits on hyperlinks short pages, well-labelled (author, date) with links to home page quick response time on e-mailed inquiries a search facility membership appeal and capture; and regular revisions and updates (Powers, 1997 and Nielsen, 1997)The study of selection criteria for the Internet review services helps focus designers and writers on important aspects of publication. With obvious overlaps with good design practice in any medium, the following list covers important criteria specified in the literature:
purpose: audience content: scope (breadth, depth, time, format), accuracy, reasonableness, presence or absence of negative indicators authorship: authority, credentials information maintenance, currency, timeliness presentation: organization, navigation, graphics/text, load time, application, design workability: user-friendliness, technical requirements, accessibility and availability (archiving), interactivity, connectivity reviews, evidence of quality control; and cost (costs of connecting, costs associated with the use of intellectual property contained in a resource).3.0 Electronic Publishing on ACJNet
3.1 The Present
The target audience for electronic publishing on ACJNet is Canadian adults and young people who are not legal experts. Each publication may have its own target audience, for example, an FAQ (frequently asked question) on joy-riding in the ACJNet Youth FAQs website is written for young people, whereas a publication on child custody is for adults. But both of these publications aim to provide plain language information on legal issues to the general public who are not legal experts or who are most commonly referred to as 00ayperson00
Given the lack of generally accepted definitions and standards on electronic publishing, ACJNet within its community has defined electronic publishing to include the four common classifications:
00nbsp;document delivery
00nbsp;databases
00nbsp;electronic books
00nbsp;electronic periodicals (Russell, 1996, p7).
These electronic publishing endeavours are made accessible online on the ACJNet main website (http://www.acjnet.org). For the purposes of this paper, the production of the ACJNet main website is not considered as electronic publishing by ACJNet.
Policies about its website are contained in the document ACJNet Main Website Policy (First Edition, March 1998).1 See excerpts from this document in Appendix B.
As each new medium develops, its content is usually taken from the old medium. Most ACJNet electronic publications online are conversions of existing print publications. As such, these electronic publications are classified under the document delivery category. In using the Internet for document delivery, ACJNet is committed to providing users with more than one format of a publication. Also, acknowledging the fact that most users scan a document online, each publication usually has the HTML format for scanning and another format for downloading or printing. An example of this is 00 Guide to the Law Regarding Common-Law Property in Alberta00 at http://www.acjnet.org/docs/clwslse.html. This document is in both html format and a Word 6.0 format.
Some documents posted prior to 1997 were in plain vanilla ASCII such as 00omestic Violence and the Courts: Immigrant and Visible Minority Perceptions00published by the Law Courts Education Society, June 1995, located at http://www.acjnet.org/docs/dvidoj.html.
A key feature of these publications is that they are 00atalogued00under one or more subject headings. Each publication is also assigned keywords in its HTML source document for better access by search engines. A more detailed description of the practices and criteria is found later in this section.
These publications are stored under one single directory which can function as a full text database for the site search engine. The URL for these publications reflect this structure. A typical URL for a document is http://www.acjnet.org/docs/ifplens.html with the last section of the URL representing the name of the document and the publisher, i.e. Information for 00y Public Legal Education Society of Nova Scotia (PLENS). Documents on ACJNet have been accessed by users from all ten Canadian provinces and the two territories.
From the beginning of ACJNet, the existing public legal education library catalogue was available. Thus another type of electronic publishing that ACJNet is engaged in is providing databases. These library catalogues are maintained as a structure database and converted into a WWW-accessible format for searching by Internet users. Although these library databases are made available on the ACJNet main website, the original database is available on the owner00 computer. Thus what is on the ACJNet main website is a snapshot of the database at a given time. By making it available on ACJNet, the owners do not have to maintain a server for public access and the public can still access the database at a distance. Users are free to access and search the databases. If they are interested in getting a copy of a library book, periodical, or audio visual material, they may contact the owner of the pertinent library catalogue. These catalogues are listed on the ACJNet00ibrary Catalogue page at http://www.acjnet.org/textbase.html.
Through the ACJNet legislation site (http://legis.acjnet.org), Statutes and Regulations of Canada, Statutes and Regulations of the Northwest Territories, Statutes of Ontario, and Statutes of the Yukon Territory are made available online. Internet users can go to the site to access and download the statutes and regulations.
For the past two years, ACJNet, in collaboration with SchoolNet, has been developing legal FAQs for youth at http://www.acjnet.org/youthfaq. These FAQs are developed specifically for the Internet. They are written from the perspective of youth and incorporate unique features and limitations of the computer screen. These FAQs could loosely be classified as electronic books since each topic and subtopic forms chapters of a book. Using the book metaphor is limiting in that each topic and its links to other topics are an example of unbinding a book. Although the developer does recommend a sequence for reading the FAQs by how they are organized and presented on the computer screen, users/readers can enter from many different points and access the FAQs in any sequence. Even when following the predetermined sequence, readers can go to a link and end up following a new sequence. ACJNet tries to anticipate this non-sequential reading and design the FAQs in such a way that the sequence is not as important in the reader00 understanding of the issue.
ACJNet00 experience in developing these FAQs is setting standards for future electronic publishing endeavours. For quality control, these FAQs are researched and written by lawyers who are experienced in plain language writing and are reviewed by another lawyer. Once written, the FAQs are edited by a plain language writer to have them at a general readability level for grades six to eight. The edited FAQs are reviewed by the lawyer/writer before being sent to the Department of Justice Canada for counsel approval. During the process of counsel approval, the lawyer/writer usually discusses with Justice counsel to ensure that the information can be understood by non-lawyers. It is only when the counsel and the writer are in agreement that the FAQs are posted online.
ACJNet Electronic Publishing Practices and CriteriaNet Electronic Publishing Practices and Criteria
ACJNet aims to develop a collection of online full text documents relevant to its subject area. It has many different sites focusing on different types of materials and different legal and justice topics. Online documents, including statutes, regulations, bylaws, research, occasional papers, self-help guides, and information pamphlets, are collected and made available on the ACJNet main website.
Publications are either expressly solicited from organizations or they are received unsolicited. Publications may be submitted in either print or electronic versions. When considering the conversion of an existing print or electronic document for inclusion on ACJNet, several questions are asked to determine its suitability.
00nbsp;Is it available online elsewhere?
00nbsp;Does similar material exist elsewhere?
00nbsp;Is there an anticipated demand for it online?
00nbsp;Do the contents contribute to the body of knowledge?
00nbsp;Does the publication conform to the inclusion criteria for links?
00nbsp;Can it be read easily?
If a publication has been accepted for conversion by ACJNet, every effort is made to retain the integrity of the appearance of the original document. Standard layout and design conventions are used consistently and it is always noted at the top of the document who is responsible for its content, with a link made to the publisher when available.
Each publication is assigned subject headings which are listed in the Subject section on the site. Notification is sent to the publisher when the publication is available online.
Currently all publications on ACJNet are originally published in print form. ACJNet converts these publications to make them accessible online, thus using the Web as a delivery mechanism to provide broad access.
In acknowledging users00varied needs, the site strives to provide more than one format for each document.2 In general, documents are available for browsing in HTML format and for downloading or printing in word processing or Adobe pdf (portable document format).
If a document is less than 19 pages in hard copy, the complete document is converted into HTML. If it is more than 19 pages, the table of contents is presented in HTML form (unlinked) with a note at the bottom to connect to the document in the original format as submitted by the publisher.
Documents are usually posted in Microsoft Word or in WordPerfect depending on which software was used to create the original document. When the document layout and graphics are essential to the understanding of the materials, PDF is used. In such cases, the document is posted with an executive summary and table of contents with the complete document in pdf. 00iteracy and the Courts: Protecting the Right to Understand00by the John Howard Society of Canada is available only in pdf at http://www.acjnet.org/docs/litctjhs.html.
If the document is not received in electronic format and it exceeds 19 pages, the document will be scanned and posted in Microsoft Word, the software used by the site management group.
Currently, PDF is not a format of choice due to the requirement that users download and install a reader to read or print the document. As more users get accustomed to PDF, this type of file will be included consistently as one of the formats for publications on this site.
Each HTML source document for publications includes:
00nbsp;title of the document describing the content of the document;
00nbsp;description meta-tag describing the purpose of ACJNet and the specific document;
00nbsp;keyword meta-tag listing all general ACJNet keywords and the keyword/subject headings assigned to the document;
00nbsp;hidden information indicating who created the document and the date when HTML was completed or updated;
00nbsp;the ALT tag for use by text browsers where graphics are used as links; and
00nbsp;the name and e-mail address of the person to whom problems relating to the document are reported
3.2 The Future
As ACJNet evolves, many new electronic publishing initiatives may be explored. In as much as developing publications in print form and making them available electronically could save printing costs for the publisher, this is not a creative use of the Internet. ACJNet should engage in publishing materials for the Internet00hether short one-computer-screen legal information, materials for use with online legal education, electronic justice updates using pull technology, or developing a living 00egal bits00database.
An information brokering service posting relevant press releases and announcements of new issues and publications in a News section of ACJNet could establish the ACJNet main website as a central source of current information. This takes advantage of the unique hypertext features of the WWW. Electronic publishing in this form is comparable to a newsletter, providing a short synopsis or a listing of current issues with links to more detailed descriptions maintained by a government department or other organizations. In this case, users can control the amount of information they want by deciding to go to linked sites or stay with the ACJNet website. With the vast amount of information available on the Web, it can be time-consuming and cumbersome to search and read lengthy writings for the kind of general information that readers require on a regular basis. This is a value-added service that will save readers time and energy.
This type of publishing can happen in many formats. ACJNet could send staff to 00cout00for information, then write, organize and post it in the News section. Alternatively, discussion forums allow both facilitator and users to post and share relevant information. Such information exchange can be converted into a full text accessible database. This is a variety of electronic periodical. When there is a critical mass of 00rticles,00links can be established between these using hypertext. These links assist readers in their understanding of a concept, jurisdictional differences, and the relationship between different concepts. The possibilities are endless. To further expand this type of publication, hypertext links can be established to include other sites that meet ACJNet selection criteria.
ACJNet should explore the possibility of publishing interactive books. For young people, interactive books could take the form of short stories with legal and justice issues in the story line.
Throughout the story, hypertext links can be made to existing legislation or cases as they relate to the story. The book can also be designed to have different subplots and various endings, depending on how the reader chooses to use the links. This type of story is similar to a choose-your-own-adventure story with the addition of more twists and turns. The greater the amount of legal information that can be linked, the greater the enrichment.
In developing this type of electronic book, it is important not to be lured by the endless possibilities of hypertext links. Most importantly, the linked information should be written specifically for the book. This not only assists the reader in getting back to the story, it also maintains the style unique to the book. The hypertext link might be as simple as definitions of words. Whenever there is a legal term, there is a hypertext link to a definition or discussion of the term. In the case of a choose-your-own-adventure, there could be many story lines based on the actions chosen by the readers and legal implications of each action.
A less complicated, but very useful way of imparting legal information is what can be referred to as 00b>legal bits00 These are similar to 00lash card00commercials consisting of a couple of lines of text. They are designed to catch users00attention by being short and snappy. The message contained in these legal bits would be a challenge to develop and may have to be black letter law. The purpose of this type of publication is to raise awareness. It could also indicate where to get more information. The main idea is that it is short and catchy. Other technical features might be added for further exploration such as links to sites with more information.
As the technology for electronic publishing on the WWW expands, so too will the possibilities for ACJNet00 publications. These examples of newsletters, periodicals, interactive books, and legal bits illustrate initial possibilities. It is equally easy to see how all the objectives of ACJNet can be further developed through these and future technologies. ACJNet will be monitoring technological developments and pursue their advantages in the provision of legal, justice, and justice-related information to Canadians.
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1 Because ACJNet currently has electronic publishing available on the website, some of the information contained in the website policy document may be duplicated here.
2 Documents made available during the early stages of ACJNet are only available in one format.
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ACJNet: Electronic Publishing
ACJNet: Electronic Publishing
ACJNet: Electronic Publishing
