For years, the West Key Number System has been the most comprehensive and widely used classification system for case law materials by the bench and bar.
It’s the index that makes it easier to do legal research, by organizing the American system of law into topics, and then dividing those topics further to quickly lead to the most relevant cases and issues in a specific search.
The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Awards Program just selected an article about the Key Number System, written by Dan Dabney of Thomson Reuters Global Resources, as its Law Library Journal Article of the Year.
“The Universe of Thinkable Thoughts: Literary Warrant and West’s Key Number System” is based on a speech Dabney gave in 2006. In the article, Dabney gives an overview of the classification system and its role in efficient legal research.
The award will officially be announced at the AALL Annual Meeting in Portland, Ore., July 12-15. (We’ll be live blogging from the meeting, by the way).
The AALL Awards Program was established to publicly recognize the achievements of law librarians based on service to the profession and contributions to legal literature and materials.
Dabney, a former law librarian at several law schools and professor at UCLA, is a senior director for Thomson Reuters Global Resources, based in Zug, Switzerland. We just got his reaction to the award:
Listen to interview (1 min. – mp3)
The AALL Award is not the first time Dabney’s article has gotten attention. The Out of the Jungle blog, via Jacqueline Cantwell, paid him some compliments as well, last year.
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