1. The search on The Laws of Australia is really not to be trusted. One of the bugs in the system appears to be when you do a search such as:
"deed covenant"@10 - in the free text search - results 10
and then refining the search using the word enforc* - results 3362
Thomson/Lawbook has responded to the search within a search issue with quite a good explanation, and the information that Thomsons were in fact working on a fix for it (but hadn’t let anyone know):
When you combine a phrase search (eg "deed covenant"@10) with another term (eg enforc*) and you don't enter "AND", it is conducting an "OR" search (which it shouldn't be) and is throwing up more results rather than less. This is in the process of being fixed - it appears that someone had in fact fed through your information to the technology team and they were working on a fix.
In the (hopefully very) short term the way to get around this is to combine the search (eg search for "deed covenant"@10 AND enforc* in the free text search box). This will give the correct results.
I will let you know when the searching functionality has been fixed and deployed online.
2. The subject navigation links along the left side of the screen no longer refer to the new commentary publication of that subject e.g. under Bankruptcy the Commentary does not appear when the javascript + sign is opened – this makes it quite difficult to browse (you can do it individually within the actually commentary document itself, but this is not so useful)
Thomson/Lawbook response (10/4/08) Thanks for passing these on. I'm looking into them and will get back to you when I have some more information.
BF: In my opinion returning the online indexes to the looseleaf services (which both CCH & LNAU have had the good sense retain online) would resolve most of the problems which relate to the inherent flaws of all search engines - (1. language is too variable so you miss something important or 2. the language has too many meanings so you get too many off the point hits). I have written to Thomsons more than once about this, but have not had any considered response from them. The idea they have is that the new commentaries will over-ride the need for an actual Index, although the commentary structure doesn’t particularly do this for fairly obvious reasons. Indexes will re-direct you from many different points, back to the legal issue. Browsing and searching are never as targeted. Thomsons print publications still have indexes; I use the Index to The laws of Australia quite often as a really useful way of getting to the legal point I want to read about. It’s much faster than messing around with their offputting interface (and the constant chance of faux results).
3. It isn’t possible to gather a list of 'hit' documents across many pages of a particular search results without losing the marked hits from the pages before. So on every page once you’ve selected the items you want you have to print out those hits before moving on. Saving them doesn’t really work as they usually only save as html pages and look like rubbish without the ‘complete files’ folder which accompanies them – and how do you email that?
Thomson/Lawbook response (I've put this up as a problem before) I have now logged calls to have the tagging issues fixed and will keep you updated on their progress. I apologise for the fact that these problems have not been remedied before now.
4. There are major discrepancies in subject headings within the ALJI.
Thomson/Lawbook response (9/4/08) : I have contacted the team responsible for ALJI and have asked them to contact you in regards to the subject heading discrepancies. If you don't hear from them within the week, feel free to let me know and I can chase it up again.
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So if anyone finds that any of these issues have been remedied can you email me - regards Barbara
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