Tax, legal and regulatory professionals traditionally have interacted with text assets: books provide text and professionals submit text searches to search engines for answers to their questions. Video and audio assets, however, can supplement or even replace text assets. There are several audios and videos relevant to tax, legal and regulatory professionals both from Wolters Kluwer and the Web, both for free and for a fee. Video and audio provide many types of value. They can provide deeper insight into legislative history. They can provide updates to text content. They can convey mood and nuances that are not easily communicated in text. Consider the following examples:

• Wolters Kluwer Italy offers videos of interviews with prominent authors and legal experts;
• Government agencies have channels on YouTube, for example, the Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States;
• Wolters Kluwer has channels on YouTube, including CCHWoltersKluwer and Wolters Kluwer Corporate Communications;
• Video and audio continuing legal education programs from the American Bar Association;
• Videos of all or parts of court proceedings increasingly are available for viewing; and
• Video feeds of floor debates from the United States House of Representatives (in beta) are now available.

You can perform searches on YouTube, for example, transfer pricing, to find potentially relevant video content. Google offers a video search that can find videos on transfer pricing and other tax, legal & regulatory topics beyond YouTube.

At Wolters Kluwer we are always looking for ways to aggregate and explain complex tax, legal and regulatory concepts for our customers in text, video, audio and software. The question is to what degree video and audio assets should be integrated with traditional text assets. For example, in our research product IntelliConnect, our editors wrote about the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed consolidated audit trail system. The editor’s explanations of this proposal goes into more detail than would be possible in a video. The SEC also released a video of SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro discussing this topic, for which IntelliConnect reproduced a text transcript. The obvious question is, should IntelliConnect provide links from the transcript to the video? Do tax, legal and regulatory professionals want Wolters Kluwer to aggregate and/or link its text and software assets to external video and audio assets?

Another question concerns whether Wolters Kluwer should focus on creating video and audio assets that supplement, or link to, traditional text and software assets. Some of our expert editors, on the invitation from practitioners, have explained tax, legal and regulatory concepts through video and audio, such as videos on tax planning in 2009 and 2010 by Mark A. Luscombe, JD, LL.M, CPA, Principal Analyst for Tax and Accounting at CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business.

It seems clear that video and audio assets are relevant. The question is whether professionals want access to them through Wolters Kluwer’s research and software products. What are your thoughts?