History of LINX

A personal history by Helga Arlington, Auckland District Law Society Library, with help from Jenny Glasson, formerly of Canterbury District Law Society Library.

LINX began in 1986 with a decision to automate the Auckland District Law Society Library at the High Court in Auckland.

At that time, for most libraries, automation would have meant "an automated book catalogue" such as in a university or public library. In a law library the most used materials are not the textbooks but judgments of the courts. In 1986 the New Zealand Law Reports had fallen several years behind and the hottest property in the ADLS Library was a collection of Court of Appeal and Auckland High Court unreported judgments held in filing cabinets unheadnoted and only grudgingly accepted as precedent in the courts. The most surprising thing to me at the time was that not only were the judgments highly in demand and in a kind of acceptance limbo but that the judges, whose chambers were adjacent to the High Court Library (in what was known as "the ice-cream factory" building in Eden Crescent), had no way of knowing what judgments each other were doing.

The ADLS Library had for some years been publishing an index of New Zealand law journals called the "Current Information Service". This had been produced on a word processor by a member of the Justice Department staff - an old Wang system, with huge floppy disks unreadable by anything else! This index was the first call on the Library’s wonderful new computer which was purchased (from Dave Keet, CSNZ with the assistance of Janet Copsey of Infospecs) just before Easter 1987. We bought the BRS/Search database system, which ran under Xenix, the cheaper smaller version of UNIX. State of the art we were, with an Olivetti 286 with 40Mb of hard disk and 2Mb of RAM. I had never used a computer before and suddenly became /usr/helga on a Xenix system with a very large amount of learning to do!

During this time CDLS had also been trying to tackle unreported judgments. In 1983 the Library Committee and Librarian instigated, with the local Judges, the beginnings of an Index of Unreported Judgments. All judgments from 1983 were indexed using the same style and subject headings as the NZLR. This was done to keep the lists compatible and standardised. The system used was a Phillips word processor, the only electronic system available at CDLS. The list was produced to look like the publishers’ looseleaf publications. This index was just waiting for all of the advantages, known and unknown, of database search software.

We tackled ‘cataloguing’ unreported judgments as soon as the ADLS journals index was mastered. We tried to maintain complete consistency but had no rules to follow. The now familiar "judgments, textbooks, articles" became the three categories of material to be found on "the database". It was not yet LINX but an ADLS database for it contained the Court of Appeal judgments and those from the judges based at the High Court at Auckland only. Just getting the judgments was a work of art for the Court of Appeal then supplied their's in pre-selected packages according to the type of business you were perceived to be in. The High Court judges had to be persuaded of the value of a database on a computer. At that time, few judges had touched a keyboard but now some of them are amongst the foremost in computer literacy.

The same could have been said of many in the legal profession when in 1988 a "public terminal" was launched with the fledgling database on offer. Many hands were led to keyboards for the first time with comments about their appropriateness to women and not men! However, results were to be had even at this stage. The process of ‘conversion’ had begun for anything found on the database could be had in a moment, compared with hours of manual searching. The staff of the library had begun to assume a new role which involved them much more directly with the users. We had acquired new skills and offered a new service which led to far more interaction.

The incompleteness of the database was becoming very obvious. Where were the judgments from the rest of the High Courts? The Wellington and Canterbury District Law Societies had seen the ADLS database in 1988 and made the brave decision to purchase compatible systems and software and to work towards complementary databases to cover the decisions of the judges based at their centres. This decision made LINX possible.

The district law society libraries had co-operated with one another before but in a way which did not challenge the profession’s idea of librarians and their power over legal information. The three libraries now had a product which recorded details of almost all of the court judgments, articles and textbooks relevant to the New Zealand profession. Legal involvement was needed! The LINX database Committee was born, and the three societies linked by an agreement. The NZLS Library Committee was formed at this time and the three "LINX librarians" were invited to join.

In 1989 the three databases were launched on Kiwinet as LINX, an entity at last. In the libraries the three databases, ADLS, CDLS, WDLS still had to be searched individually. Shortly after however the BRS software allowed LINX to be created as a virtual database on our inhouse systems too. (LINX is still created in this way, as three separate BRS databases.) Russell McVeagh became the very first commercial customer of first ADLS then LINX. It is hard to remember that at this time LINX and Legal Library Management’s Briefcase were the only databases apart from LEXIS that the legal profession had ever heard of. Librarians searched databases, not lawyers! There were no other legal databases than these for many years - certainly none of the commercial publishers had any idea of following suit. As Eddie Costigan graciously conceded when launching Brooker’s ‘Law Partner" in 1995, librarians had shown the way and it was not until well into the 1990s that publishers understood that their secure world of books was gone and that they too would have to produce electronic products.

During the 1990s the battle to produce electronic statutes got underway, with publishers moving from Magellan software through Recall Plus to Folio VIEWS. The rivals, Brooker’s and Status Publishing, struggled to come to terms with the difficult format of the statutes and their updating requirements. It would be fair to say that the LINX librarians stood and watched a little smugly as their own struggles were repeated years later by the publishers who did not even have the online database searching experience - on systems such as Dialog and Medline - the librarians had brought to their earlier ventures.

In 1996 the statutes products and LINX were linked. The relevant section of an Act can lead directly into cases on the section and the search results found on LINX can be referenced back to the relevant sections. Folio VIEWS is now the dominant legal database software everywhere in the English-speaking legal world. Legal databases performing the functions of electronic indexes (like LINX), electronic textbooks (like the products from Brooker’s and others) , and electronic encyclopaedias (like the Laws of Australia) are now all able to be produced on Folio. Training on one is basic training on all. Until recently LINX was being sold in BRS, Inmagic, Topic, and other versions, but few of these now remain. All will probably soon be subsumed by Folio - except for LINX itself, which is still produced in the generic but highly flexible BRS. Also in 1996, LINX became part of the Knowledge Basket suite of databases.

ADLS Library now builds a Folio VIEWS infobase of LINX containing hyperlinks to the Statutes of Brooker’s and Status – which, you may like to know, are different! Constructed in slightly different ways and containing slightly different statutes, especially in the Repealed collections. Both of these publishers also construct hyperlinks to LINX too – so with either it is possible to go from LINX and a keyword search to read the words of the relevant Statutes sections – or from the Statutes back to caselaw. Most of our Library users start with LINX, but the trainers for Brooker’s and Status of course teach new users to start with the Statutes.

While LINX had been available on the Knowledge Basket since 1996, 1998 was the year of LAWSITE on the Internet! LinxLaw runs the same Folio version supplied to CD users, updated weekly, and with hyperlinks to the Status statutes. LinxLaw was launched at the 1998 NZ Law Librarians’ Group’s conference early in the year in Auckland. Much interest followed from especially occasional users and those who had used LINX on Kiwinet.

Database searching skills, once the preserve of librarians, are now discussed widely by others. Hunting mechanically though text is such a different concept from using indexes and leafing through books –a complete change of approach, a paradigm shift. The legal profession as a group has been slow to grasp computers and develop the collection of skills and strategies necessary to feel comfortable as computer users.

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