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Peter Hook

Director and Associate Dean of the Law Library

Peter has been an information professional for over twenty years. Having grown up in Kirkwood, Missouri, he obtained his first two degrees from the University of Kansas (B.A. 1994 & J.D. 1997). After practicing law for two years in Kansas City and Chicago, Peter became an academic law librarian—first at the University of Illinois (2000-01), and then at Indiana University—Bloomington (2001-04, 2006-12). While a librarian at IU-Maurer, Peter obtained a PhD in Information Visualization (2014). He spent three years teaching library and information science on the faculty of Wayne State University (2014-2017) before returning to academic law librarianship at Cornell (2018-2020), where he was Head of Digital and Scholarly Services.  Prior to joining WashULaw, Peter was the Associate Director for Faculty Services, Instruction, and Outreach at the University of Notre Dame Law School (2020-2023). Peter has an active research agenda in which he uses visualization and data analytic techniques to make explicit the rich intellectual infrastructures of the law (e.g. Topic and Key Number system). His doctoral dissertation used data from the annual directories of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) to map the topics taught in legal education over time.

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  • Education
    • Ph.D., Indiana University–Bloomington, 2014
    • M.S., University of Illinois, 2000
    • J.D., University of Kansas, 1997
    • B.A., University of Kansas, 1994
  • Courses
    • Legal Research
    • Advanced Legal Research: Analytics for Lawyers, Leveraging Social Science Research for Effective Advocacy
  • Publications

    Journal Articles (in preparation)

    • Hook, P.A. (in preparation). The evolution of the West Topic and Key Number System (1896 to 2022).
    • Hook, P. A. (in preparation). Empirical and Longitudinal Study of Academic Law Libraries: Insights for Management as to Staffing, Stability, Migration, Title Development and Frequency, Correlations, and the most Common Paths to Advancement.
    • Hook, P. A. (in preparation). Structural Properties of Lexis and West Headnotes and Using the Co-Occurrence of Subject Assignments in Cases to Map the 2009 Supreme Court Term.
    • Hook, P. A. (in preparation). Empirical Analysis of the Work of Courts: A Literature Review, Annotated Bibliography, and Typology.

    Journal Articles

    • Hook, P. A. (2021). Litigation Analytics: A Framework for Understanding, Using & Teaching. AALL Spectrum, November/December, 20-23. [Spent several weeks on SSRN’s Top Ten download list for: LSN: Legal Education (Topic)].
    • Hook, P. A. and Mattson, K. (2017). Surprising Differences: An Empirical Analysis of Lexis and West Headnotes in the Written Opinions of the 2009 Supreme Court Term. Law Library Journal, 109(4), 557-629.
    • Hook, P. A. (2017). Using Course-Subject Co-Occurrence (CSCO) to Reveal the Structure of an Academic Discipline: A Framework to Evaluate Different Inputs of a Domain Map. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68(1), 182-196.
    • Hook, P. A. (2016). A Longitudinal Metric Analysis of Course-Subjects to Reveal the Evolution of a Discipline: Changes in the Teaching Frequency and Ratio of Courses in Law Schools in the United States Over 80 Years. Journal of Scientometric Research, 5(1), 13-24.
    • Hook, P. A. (2007). The Aggregate Harmony Metric and a Statistical and Visual Contextualization of the Rehnquist Court: 50 Years of Data. Constitutional Commentary, 24(1), 221-264.
    • Hook, P. A., (2002). Creating an Online Tutorial and Pathfinder. Law Library Journal 94(2), 243-265.
    • Hook, P. A., (2002). Law Librarians Can Help You Save Money and Do Better Research. Illinois Bar Journal 90, 373-375.
      Chapters in Books
    • Hook, P. A. (2014). Evaluating the work of judges. In B. Cronin & C. R. Sugimoto (Eds.), Beyond bibliometrics: Harnessing multidimensional indicators of scholarly impact (pp. 345-364). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. [Invited submission.]
    • Hook, P. A. and Börner, K. (2005). Educational Knowledge Domain Visualizations: Tools to Navigate, Understand, and Internalize the Structure of Scholarly Knowledge and Expertise. In Amanda Spink and Charles Cole (eds.) New Directions in Cognitive Information Retrieval. Springer-Verlag.
  • Activity and Affiliations
    • American Associations of Law Libraries (AALL)
    • AALL, Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section (ALL-SIS)
    • AALL, Foreign, Comparative & International Special Interest Section (FCIL-SIS)
    • AALL, Research Instruction and Patron Services S.I.S. (RIPS-SIS)
    • AALL, Technical Services Special Interest Section (TS-SIS)
    • American Bar Association (ABA)
    • State Bar Associations (Illinois, Kansas, and Missouri)
    • Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE)
    • American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T)
    • Indiana Chapter of ASIS&T
    • Indiana University Librarians Association (INULA)
  • Honors and Awards
    • (2015). Sponsored attendance at the 2015 ASIS&T Doctoral Seminar for Research and Career Development due to status as one of the top candidates from the two doctoral award competitions, meeting with mentors to discuss research and career objectives. ($755, conference registration plus travel). 2015 ASIS&T Annual Meeting, St. Louis, Missouri, Nov. 10.
    • (2012). 2nd Place, ALISE (Association for Library and Information Science Education) Doctoral Student Research Poster Competition, 2012 ALISE Annual Conference, Dallas, Texas, January 18. (Out of 47 participants.)
    • (2009). Co-Recipient of the Best Presentation Award ($100 for each of 3 prize winners), Indiana University School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) PhD Research Forum, Bloomington, Indiana, Oct. 17.
    • (2007). Co-Recipient of the Best Presentation Award ($100 for each of 4 prize winners), Indiana University School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) PhD Research Forum, Bloomington, Indiana, Oct. 16.
    • (2007). Margaret Griffin Coffin Fellowship ($4000), Indiana University School of Library and Information Science (SLIS), Bloomington Indiana, March 26.
    • (2004-2005). Clayton A. Shepherd Scholarship ($2000), Indiana University School of Library and Information Science (SLIS), Bloomington Indiana, March 29.
    • (2001). Grant ($200) to attend the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), “New Realities, New Roles.” Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 14-19.
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