Medium

Medium in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Medium in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Medium may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. Media (the plural of medium) are the physical substances on which or in which a text is recorded and conveyed. Ephemeral media include the airwaves over which sound (including speech) is sent and received. Information retrieval generally deals with longer lasting media, such as stone, clay, metal, paper, film, and the newer media for the recording of electronic digital data: disks, tapes and chips made from various forms of plastic, silicon and metal. An important responsibility of our profession is to make sure that the media on which messages are recorded can actually be preserved for as long as the messages have value. This is a big challenge, especially for untested newer magnetic and optical media for digital data. One hopes that these modern media, including silicon (ceramic!) chips, will be as long-lasting as their ancient relatives, the clay tablets of the Middle East and elsewhere. And even more important thus far is that the technology required to read various media not be discarded before the texts on older media are transferred to media that can be read.