Book Review

The appearance of a new bibliography generally draws attention only from collectors, librarians, and bibliographers, but publication of Morris Cohen's Bibliography of Early American Law will surely attract a much wider circle of readers. This six-volume work opens new vistas for American historians, historians of the book, legal historians, and other students or researchers who have felt handicapped by the lack of a bibliography on American law. Social and economic historians of the antebellum period will no longer be able to overlook the rich sources provided by contemporary legal material. Political scientists will be able to track influence of American ideas abroad through translations of legal treatises, and historians of the book can get down to serious work on the history of legal publishing in this country. BEAL is a power tool for use in many disciplines. Before taking advantage of this research tool, however, it is important to understand its contents, its organization, and its limitations. For the past four months I have been consulting the volumes and test driving the CD-ROM on my computer for routine and exceptional reference work in the law library. Although people may prefer one format to the other, I think it is wise to review them together because each format serves different functions depending on the needs of the reader.	1
Cohen's introduction clearly establishes the scope: "The Bibliography of Early American Law (popularly known as BEAL) lists and describes the monographic and trial literature of American law published in this country or abroad, from its beginnings to the end of 1860. It also includes works on foreign, comparative, and international law if published in this country." The beginning is determined to be 1612, laws printed in London for the colony of Virginia (10300). The first well-documented, but not extant, example of printing on North American soil is a civic oath, the oath of a free man, printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Stephen Daye in 1639 (2332). Even experienced librarians like Cohen and his early collaborator, Balfour J. Halevy of York University in Toronto, did not anticipate the duration of such a bibliographic journey covering nearly 250 years. What was initially thought to be a project of ten years became a thirty-Five-year marathon. Though a long time coming, the resulting product is well worth the tremendous efforts expended by Cohen and his legion of assistants.	2
BEAL has four main components: monographs, with 10,125 entries; civil trials, 870 entries; criminal trials, 820 entries; and special proceedings, 762 entries. "Monograph" has been interpreted to include many types of legal literature, far beyond the bounds of the treatise. Within the monograph portion we find addresses and lectures, biographies of lawyers and judges, catalogs of law libraries, publishers' and booksellers' catalogs, constitutional convention materials (both state and federal), form books, selected government documents, histories, digests and indexes of statutes and cases, law-related fiction and plays, legal manuals (for lawyers, laymen, and police officers), polemics, collections of cases and statutes on particular subjects, sermons, criminal confessions, broadsides, and works intended for school children. Cohen has encompassed the greater sphere of legal literature. Excluded were single publications of charters, constitutions, treaties, laws; also legislative journals, book auction catalogs, periodicals, statutes and court reports in series, litigation documents, state codes and session laws. These materials were deemed to have adequate bibliographic aids already, such as Meira Pimsleur's Checklist of American Legal Publications (Rothman, 1962) or Elsie Basset's List of Anglo-American Legal Periodicals, which can be found as Appendix IX in Frederick C. Hicks' Materials and Methods of Legal Research (Lawyers' Co-op, 1933).	3
Each bibliographic entry for monographs contains the following elements: an entry number; author (or editor, or corporate author, such as New York State Commissioners on Practice and Pleading); title, meaning transcription of information from the title page, not just a short title; imprint (place of publication, printer, and date). This is followed by a simplified pagination, location of the particular copy examined, and reference to standard bibliographies of early American printing, most frequently Evans, Sabin, and Shaw, but embracing thirty-Five other regional or topical bibliographies of significance, such as Marcus McCorison's Vermont Imprints 1778–1820. If BEAL had furnished this information alone for each entry, it would have been of great service. Yet consider what additional information can be found in the vast majority of entries. There might be analytical notes about the contents, like those accompanying BEAL 8490, which explain that Robert Jones's History of the French Bar includes an appendix of ordinances and regulations governing the bar. Sometimes the reader will encounter a bit of printing history, like that included with The Federalist (2818). More often we find useful biographical details about lawyers and judges. Occasionally Cohen has included appropriate quotes from J. G. Marvin's Legal Bibliography, the handiest legal bibliography from the last century. An observant reader of Cohen's notes may find research projects waiting to be launched, such as the manuscript note in Harvard's copy of On the Principles of Criminal Law (4307) that attributes authorship of that work to Caroline Frances Cornwallis. Similar notes enhance many entries, enticing readers toward further explorations. Because Cohen spent his career in charge of major academic law libraries where he has consulted and examined many unusual volumes, his well-constructed bibliography has made us beneficiaries of his observations, notations, and comparisons.	4
With more than 10,000 entries for monographs, the print version of BEAL relies on subject classification to present material in an orderly fashion. Cohen's choice of subject headings has a familiar ring: constitutional law, equity, international law, citizenship, and transportation, to name a few. In volume six of the print edition can be found a full listing of subject headings for the entire bibliography. The reader is well advised to spend a few minutes perusing this appendix before plunging into any of the volumes.	5
The second component of BEAL covers civil trials, the third, criminal trials. Like the monographs, trials are organized by subject (admiralty, contracts, intellectual property, torts and so on, for civil; arson, conspiracy, homicide, piracy, and so on for criminal). Accounts of trials have been drawn from various contemporary sources: separate pamphlets printed by newspaper offices; printed confessions of the accused; execution sermons; and independently printed pamphlets distributed to sway public opinion. Among the curiosities was an 1854 trial in Cincinnati (12296) for a bomb (an "infernal machine") sent by a formerly hospitalized patient to the hospital's superintendent, which killed the superintendent and his wife. It is possibly the first murder-by-bomb case in America. Another notable murder trial was that of Dr. Abner Baker Jr. in Kentucky in 1846, during which Dr. Baker's apparent insanity was part of the defense's strategy. Within the categories of trials, homicide trials rank as the most numerous with over three hundred separate trials, many of them generating great local interest and many column inches of newspaper reporting.	6
"Special proceedings" is a selective collection of 762 publications covering 235 contested proceedings undertaken by legislatures, boards of commissioners, or boards of arbitration, both domestic and international. In his introduction to this section, Cohen explains that this is a "representative sampling of the types of non-judicial hearings which were common in antebellum America." In this section I was fascinated to read descriptions of thirty-Five documents connected to a patent dispute over the discovery of ether anesthesia, also known as "letheon" (14687–14722).	7
When approaching BEAL in print for the first time, the reader must become familiar with its indexes, all eight of them: author (pseudonyms, editors, translators, compilers, and reporters are all noted), title, subject, jurisdiction (divided into domestic and foreign), parties (both plaintiff and defendant), place and publisher (divided into domestic and foreign), chronological, and language. Occupying one and a half volumes, indexes refer the user to BEAL entry numbers. If an author is represented by only a few entries, it is quick work to find the reference. On the other hand, when an author like John Adams, the U.S. Department of State, or David Dudley Field is represented by more than a dozen entries, the author index offers no clue concerning the title of each entry, leaving the reader to flip back and forth between index and bibliography until the right title is found. This will not please modern readers who have become accustomed to on-line library catalogs that offer combined author/title searches. Similarly, the title index gives no indication of author, making it necessary to skim through four pages of titles beginning with "Digest" or six pages of titles beginning "A treatise on." Once the reader is familiar with BEAL's subject arrangement, it is possible to jump in to the right section with minimal guidance, but the uninitiated must spend time reading instructions, helpfully repeated in each of the six volumes.	8
Now we can turn to a comparison of the two different formats, bearing in mind that the CD-ROM version preserves essentially the same arrangement and numbering of entries found in the print edition. What happens when a slender silver disk confronts the sturdy durable vehicle of human endeavor? It can not be much worse than the sticker shock awaiting prospective customers for this bibliographic opus. Hein's four-digit pricing ensures that libraries and institutions will be the dominant purchasers. This advice is intended for the individual buyer. To begin, BEAL on CD demands a computer with certain capabilities: 486 or higher processor (Pentium recommended); 8 megabytes of RAM and Windows 95 or 98; or 12 megabytes of RAM and Windows NT workstation 3.51 or later; 10 megabytes of hard disk space; video graphics array (VGA) or higher-resolution video adapter (super video graphics array: SVGA 256–color recommended). In contrast, the hard copy version requires a table and chair. This furniture is necessary because BEAL's six volumes are thick and heavy, about 4.5 pounds each, consuming 16 inches of shelf space. Moreover, when consulting the printed version, it is usually necessary to take down two volumes at a time, one for the bibliography, the other for the index volume. Indexes, of course, supply the essential ingredient for finding the answer or entry. Because the indexes are handled differently in each format, you will have to decide whether you are more comfortable using two volumes of printed indexes or learning the software of the CD version. The CD-ROM has no separate index component because the searching capabilities of the software perform the indexing function.	9
For software William S. Hein and Co. has chosen Folio Views, a proprietary product licensed to publishers of CD-ROMs. Folio Views is popular with legal publishers because it features powerful formatting and hyperlinking tools, as well as versatile searching capabilities expected in electronic publications. Lawyers and historians may have encountered Folio software when using the CD publication of Consolidated Statutes and Consolidated Regulations of Canada (Canadian Government Publishing), or the CD edition of Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789 (Library of Congress and Historical Database) or English Reports 1220–1865 on CD-ROM (Juta Hart). According to an installation card, which accompanies BEAL on disk, the text is "fully searchable and 'Fields' have been created to help narrow the focus of searches to specific parts of the text. Search templates have also been included to make field searching simpler for the user." All this sounds fine: six volumes compressed to a single disk, with no loss of information. My question is, will this technology-based resource work for me?	10
The first hurdle was learning how to use Folio Views. When the Bibliography First appeared on my screen, the icons and arrows surrounding the general configuration were not intuitively clear. Visual clutter only got worse as I clicked the mouse in search of user enlightenment, making me wish for the predictable layout of a book. It was as important to read all the instructions about mastering specific features of this software as it was to read Cohen's general introduction to the scope, contents, and indexes of the bibliography. These instructions, called BEAL Infobase Help Notes, can be found by selecting "Infobase" from the Help option on the menu bar at the top of the screen. Help must also be invoked for explanations on the general use, glossary, and peculiarities of Folio Views. To be honest, I will admit that words like "infobase" and "popup window" do not prejudice me favorably toward this software. Moreover, since necessary instructions must be read on the screen, I found it awkward to recall and follow those instructions upon returning to the infobase. It would be more convenient to refer to a set of printed instructions while learning how to navigate the infobase. Reading in the glossary that an infobase is a "collection of information (both text and graphics) with a comprehensive index" did not help me understand the software. The publisher might better have provided a separate users' guide for handy reference.	11
Of the various ways of searching BEAL on disk, I thought the simple query template was most satisfactory for quick results. This template offers the choice of searching by author, title, subject, jurisdiction, parties, bibliographic references, location, notation, language, publisher, place of publication, language, state of publication, and date. This method will answer the immediate needs of most researchers looking for bibliographic verification. More refined searches can be done with an advanced query template, which supports Boolean inquiries, truncated searches, Field searching, and proximity searches. On forays into the infobase using these templates, I discovered that selecting "bibliographic references" as a search field does not permit tracking an internal BEAL reference. In other words, if the reader knew that the first American edition of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England was BEAL 5312, it is not possible to call up this entry by typing "5312" in the bibliographic reference space. Bibliographic references will search only other bibliographic works, like Evans, Sabin, Eller, and Wing. On the other hand, if you type in "5312" on the simple search template, then the BEAL entry for this first American edition will appear on the screen. There is a reason for this lack of logical connection: for BEAL in print, each numbered bibliographic entry is the basic unit of information; for BEAL on CD, the basic unit for the entire infobase is a record, which does not equal and cannot be equated with the bibliographic entry number. It is a curious editorial lapse in translation of the printed text to a machine readable text that BEAL entry numbers were not made a searchable field.	12
Overall, I think the strength of the CD-ROM rests in its ability to perform quick searches of the entire work. The speed of searching, however, depends on the reader's willingness to devote time to learning this skill. A casual user of the CD may forget searching strategies between use; a frequent user is probably already a librarian. Although Folio Views enables the searcher to perform lots of tricks (adding sticky notes, highlighting text, adding links to internal notes), the software is more complex than is truly needed for handling a straightforward reference work. It was only with the help of a computer-savvy law student that I was able to implement useful features of Folio Views beyond routine searches. To the publisher's credit, when I did call W. S. Hein's 800 number with a printing and formatting question, the response was timely and accurate. You might well ponder: if you're minding the software, who's minding your scholarship? Furthermore, there are problems with illustration of sample entries for monographs and trials where scanning has not reproduced legible displays on the screen. Even more disappointing was the discovery that forty-eight illustrations of title pages distributed throughout the print edition are not reproduced on the disk, despite its video graphical capabilities.	13
Morris Cohen has done a superb job of documenting activities and publications of the legal scene in America prior to the Civil War. Researchers of every historical persuasion will find some material in BEAL to enrich their studies. An essential reference work for academic libraries, the bibliography will have a liberating effect on students of both legal history and legal publishing.	14
Whitney S. Bagnall Columbia University

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