Early Years
Prior to 1990, Washburn University distributed information to students using a "dial in" modem pool and an Electronic Bulletin Board system (EBB) installed by Dr. David Bainum and his staff. The law school portion of the EBB was called “Wallis” and was maintained by Prof John Chistensen
I came to Washburn University in 1990 from Gonzaga University School of Law where I had gained experience distributing free law related electronic information on floppy disks. I referred to the disk information as “My Brain-Book” and upon arriving at Washburn, promptly loaded it all on the EBB. We called the information I loaded WashLaw.
In late 1990, WashLaw (EBB) was made available to several regional law library organizations. We added a "dial-out" modem pool to the “dial-in” modem pool, and as a result, online users could connect to both off-site (dial out) resources as well as a local area CD-ROM network.
Internet and Lynx
At the same time we were building WashLaw, and with the encouragement of then Dean James Concannon, we initiated partnerships with law related organizations and marketed WashLaw at their conventions. By October of 1991, we were providing Internet based “telnet” access to WashLaw (rather than the dial in system.) Generic accounts invoked access to the EBB. In the months that followed, we launched many new services with our partners, one of which became the national AALL system. Thanks to the support of Mark Estes and other AALL leaders, that system (now called AALLNET) prospered.
Between February and July of 1992 we experienced our first significant Internet (web based) traffic using free Lynx developmental software distributed by Michael Grobe, Charles Rezac, and Lou Montulli, who at the time worked at the University of Kansas. Bob Stoller installed the Lynx software on the Washburn server. In those early days, Bob’s assistance was invaluable.
Just like the EBB system, generic accounts automatically invoked Lynx (rather than the EBB) using telnet. Lynx then called html code that itself drew up information on the file system, on gopher servers, as well as any web servers that we could locate. We even used Lynx to run software applications for users. At the time, Lynx was a major improvement over the EBB.
For some time, I was unable to locate any law related web servers to invoke with the telnet (connect to Lynx) version of any of our systems. In fact, when I first contacted CERN, there were only 20 web sites (total) world-wide and none of them appeared to be law related. Needless to say, that number grew exponentially in the months that followed and we continued to add links to our systems.
The World-Wide-Web Servers (WWW)
Washburn librarians have written simple html code since early 1992, expanding system menu options daily. The exact date of the first actual WashLaw web server is somewhat unclear, but I have concluded it to be between mid to late 1992. I believe Lloyd Herrera installed the server.
While the World Wide Web matured, we ran the web server, the LYNX based strategy, and even the EBB all side by side. Functionally, all did the same thing and even used the same data, although I was reluctant to continue writing the complex scripts necessary to enable the EBB to do what LYNX and the web server did inherently. Eventually, I migrated all of our users away from EBB and Lynx to our web servers. Today, all systems run on standard web servers.
Contributors to WashLaw (the most important part!)
In mid July of 2008, I will be leaving Washburn to pursue medicine in hopes of initiating a “sister service” (medical bioinformatics) for the Army and have asked Barbara Ginzburg to take over WashLaw. Barbara is a librarians’ librarian and will no doubt cultivate WashLaw to grow in exciting ways.
Nancy Gray (RefLaw), Andrew Evans (DocLaw), Glen McBeth (Video/Multimedia pages), and Dee Barker (Kansas, law firms) have made exceptional contributions. Much of WashLaw is maintained by the extraordinary dedication of my research assistants and Jewel Makda. Curtis Von Lintel keeps the web server running.
Virgie Smith, Jie Su, Paul Arrigo, Marie Mack, Rebecca Alexander, David Vermooten, Pam Tull, Joe Hewitt, Gary Vincent, Lissa Lord, Terry Rodino, Lane Peterson, Jennifer Strauss, Dara Montclare, Josh Luttrel, Lou Biegeleisen, Ryan Moody and Ahmed Bachelani, have all contributed significantly to the success of our information systems. Washburn University remains very very grateful for their work.
Mark Folmsbee
Associate Dean, Computer Services, Washburn University School of Law
http://washlaw.edu