Austin, Texas
May 18-20, 1994

The Research Library the Day After Tomorrow

Hitchikers' Guide to the Supreme Court

Jerry Goldman
Northwestern University

[Summary of presentation]

The "Hitchhikers' Guide" is a work in progress. The current version was built in Hypercard 2.1, but the next version is being constructed using Hypercard 2.2.

The Guide has three essential components: an examination of the work of each of the Supreme Court Justices; materials on the Supreme Court cases, including the full text of decisions, which are linked to the appropriate justices; and a tour of the Supreme Court building, including visual depictions, and a narrative describing the sculptures, architecture, interiors of the courtrooms and conference rooms. By clicking on buttons or icons on each screen in the Guide users can travel between components and display text, audio and video materials connected with Justices or cases. The purpose behind the Guide is to give users accurate and easily accessible data about Supreme Court cases, Justices, and the full text of decisions for scholarly purposes.

One method of accessing material on justices is to search by year or date and bring up a list of all the justices who sat on the court at that time. Still photographs and brief biographies of each justice can be accessed though icons, as can material on predecessors and successors in each justice's seat on the court. Video clips of some confirmation hearings, notably the Clarence Thomas hearings, can also be played. Clicking on the icon for a baseball brings up a "law baseball quiz," in which the object is to choose the justice whose record of contributions to the field of law most closely matches a particular baseball star's contribution to the game of baseball.

From the main menu screen, or from material on the justices, users can click on icons to travel to materials on each case brought before the court. Texts of the decisions of all significant cases are linked to their authors, as well as facts and references connected to the cases, the constitutional question to be resolved in each case, votes of the justices, and audio and video recordings of testimony or court proceedings.

Libraries serve an important role in scholarly work. Vast bodies of material will be available in digitized form in the future and libraries will be called on to provide organization for this information. The Guide is one example of how to put pieces of text, video, and sound together to make a usable resource for scholars.

A development and authoring tool called "EZ Reader," another work in progress at Northwestern, was used to add links to visual and sound elements from text included in the "Hitchhikers' Guide."