Does anyone use books anymore?  I can find everything I’m looking for online, can’t I?  Do we really need a print collection?  Librarians hear these questions frequently today.  In the law library field, the answers to these questions are yes, no, and yes.  However, as organizational budgets tighten and the need for office space increases, librarians may face pressure to reduce or possibly eliminate their print collections.  How can we show the value of our print material in response to these pressures?

One of the most common ways to show value is through usage statistics generated by the integrated library system.  However, many law libraries in the corporate and government sectors are smaller and may not have an automated circulation system in place that can easily produce these statistics. To supplement general borrowing statistics, here are a few other strategies to demonstrate the value and use of a print collection.

Measuring browsing, informal lending, and library use of the print collection

In corporate and government libraries, library users often browse material for quick reference without signing it out. Additionally, colleagues often share borrowed material among themselves, i.e. a book borrowed by one user is informally lent to another without the library’s knowledge. This type of usage is just as valid as regular borrowing but would not be captured by regular circulation statistics.  So how do you show this usage? If you ask users to leave material they use for quick reference unshelved, this allows library staff to include the number of items reshelved in usage figures, rather than only the material that has been officially signed out.

To help track informal lending, it may be useful to place a label on the book and ask users to sign their name or check a box whenever they borrow the book from another colleague instead of the library. This method would also work to gather circulation statistics for satellite collections outside the main library. Recording use of the collection by library staff is also important. Library staff often consult print material when working on reference requests or providing document delivery. Whether staff record print sources consulted separately or as part of a general reference statistics document, this type of use should definitely be counted.

Show how having a print collection saves time/money

Calculating a metric that shows how much money or time staff save by having access to an on-site collection is another way to highlight the value of your collection. For example, using the hourly rate of a fee earner in a law firm, calculate the cost of accessing an off-site resource by multiplying the hourly rate by how long it would take to get the resource. While it would take merely minutes to grab a book from the shelf, it could take hours, days, or even weeks to get a book via interlibrary loan.   And don’t forget to factor in the costs of interlibrary loans such as transactional borrowing fees, copying fees, and courier costs.

Demonstrate how the print collection supports organizational objectives or staff work

Pinpointing and quantifying how the print collection contributes to achieving organizational objectives or supporting staff performance will help show the collection’s value.  If operating efficiently and cost-effectively is important to your organization, how does your print collection contribute to this? Depending on your organization’s purpose, can you quantify how often staff use the print collection in pursuit of this goal? For example, in law firms, how often do staff consult print material when working on cases and client files? This number should include the reference work library staff do on behalf of lawyers.

Final thoughts

While the focus of this post is demonstrating the value of a print collection, perhaps we shouldn’t separate this aspect from the other services/resources the library provides.  The library is more than just a collection of books on a shelf. Loose-leaf filing, current awareness services/monitoring, routing journals/tables of contents, reference services, training and instruction, interlibrary loans/document delivery, electronic resources—the library provides all of this to the organization and its staff. Defining and quantifying their impact along with that of the print collection sends a strong message on the overall value of the library to the organization.

On Thursday April 25th, 2013 LLAGNY (Law Library Association of Greater New York), ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) and SLA (Special Libraries Association)’s New York chapter sponsored After the Evolution, an educational event and networking reception. This strategic initiative and program built upon the LLSDC (Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, D.C.) Showcase, a grassroots approach to communicating the value that law librarians bring to their firms, particularly lawyers, the “C” Suite and other firm administration. Several non-DC librarians from AALL’s Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section attended the DC event and helped bring it to NY with future plans for Boston, Chicago and hopefully beyond the East Coast. The objective of this ongoing project is to aggressively promote the management value of law librarians to the target community of law firm leaders. Participating librarians promoted their diverse management skills to administration, technology and marketing professionals rather than to our traditional audience of peers. This concept recognizes that library management is an insightful component of firm management strategy and that our contributions are vital to the overall operation and success of the firm.

Both the LLSDC Showcase and After the Evolution addressed many of the common challenges firms face and provided a stage for presentations and discussions on some current proactive solutions and innovative approaches. The events were designed to evoke the exhibit hall at a conference, featuring kiosks where presenters had laptops and iPads to showcase certain skills, but no formalized or lengthy presentations or PowerPoint slides. The five topics or sales force teams were developed from key law firm strategic priorities:

1. Knowledge Management: Beyond practice support, KM is now an enabler to provide your firm with a competitive advantage

2. Business & Competitive Intelligence: See proactive methods to grow your firm’s business and anticipate the next growth opportunity

3. Strategic Research & the Embedded Research Librarian: Librarians have moved out of the library and are now integral practice group members providing enhanced practice support

4. Strategic Cost Cutting: Learn about the new generation of cost management tools to tame Lexis, Westlaw and other metered research services

5. eBooks: The move to digital continues with the adoption of easier to use eBooks that provide far more functionality than the desktop

The event had over 90 attendees with members from all sponsoring associations, along with CIOs, IT professionals, administrators, law firm consultants, and marketing, records and information governance professionals. Librarians showcased the value they bring supporting the practice of law and their strategies and approaches for supporting the business of law. As librarians and information professionals, we spend a lot of time corresponding, networking and presenting to our peers, but don’t always have the same visibility within our organizations. This event provided an informal, but lively atmosphere for presenters and attendees to interact and make valuable connections and contributions to the topics at hand.

We’ve heard from many attendees, including sponsors, vendors, attendees and presenters, who were very pleased with the event. For many attendees, the overall impact of the event helped reconfigure their perceptions of the law librarian and information professional. For the betterment of the profession, we hope the successes from this new strategic and outreach opportunity will grow from benefitting an individual or firm, to impacting the industry as a whole. As collaborative, innovative and proactive librarians, we are certainly on the way towards gaining mutual respect and are always looking for further opportunities to collaborate with our peers and other industry professionals.

Conference season is coming up, and whether you are heading to Montreal, San Diego, Glasgow or Seattle, conference attendance can be a great tool in improving your skillset. However, when law firms are looking at their bottom line, management may be not be as enthusiastic as you would like them to be about paying for conference attendance. So how do you make the case to your employer that the value that they will receive from the conference outweighs the cost?

Education

The legal world is constantly changing, and being able to keep up to date (whether you are a lawyer or librarian) is important. Depending on the geographical area that you work in, there may not be a lot of opportunities for professional development. While professional publications and webinars allow librarians to learn at a distance, there is a lot of value in being able to physically attend a conference.

Conferences provide both formal and informal ways for a librarian to improve his or her knowledge. Conference sessions provide the “formal” element of learning, and generally cover both soft and hard skills. Highlight those conference sessions that are particularly appropriate to the work that you are doing (or hope to be doing) and explain to management why you would benefit from them.

Formal conference sessions are not the only way that librarians can learn at a conference. There are lots of chances to learn informally; for example, talking to other librarians (whether they be private, academic or government) about the problems that they are facing and how they are solving them. You can learn a lot from these informal chats, as these may be issues that librarians are not willing to talk about in a formal setting (such as a conference session), but are happy to share informally.

Networking

One of the most valuable elements of a conference is the chance to get to talk to people you might otherwise not meet. From your employer’s point of view an obvious benefit of networking is that knowing someone working in a different jurisdiction can save your firm time and money. If you need information from another jurisdiction, having a contact there is very helpful. Even if your contact does not have the item you are looking for or know the answer to your question, they should be able to point you in the right direction.

Vendors

The exhibit hall is an important part of every conference. It is where you get to see new products and see what developments are happening with existing ones. It allows you to have a better idea of what options there are for your library. You may get a chance to talk to the decision makers at the vendors, and tell them what you do or do not like about their products. This can be a surprisingly effective way of giving feedback, and your firm benefits from improvements in the products they use.

Note that the Special Libraries Association has drafted a letter for your employer that can be used to get your employer’s approval to attend a conference.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the challenges facing law firm librarians, including the obstacles to success and what we can do to overcome them.  Always a worthwhile topic, it is of particular interest these days as I work alongside a stellar committee on programming for the upcoming Private Law Library Summit to be held this July as part of AALL’s annual meeting.  

Why is it that librarians are so often the first to recognize how technologies (intranets, social media) and services (knowledge management, competitive intelligence) can be used to advance our firms’ strategic interests and yet so often lose control to others in the organization?  Does management still look at the library as a place rather than a critical service?  Do we present ourselves as spokespersons for one department rather than as an integral part of the team?  Do we fail to sell our ideas using words and techniques that will be heard?  Bottom line, what should we do (or stop doing) to retain ownership and to merit a seat at the management table?   

While pondering these questions one day, I found myself distracted by an interview with Sheryl Sandberg whose new book, Lean In:  Women, Work and the Will to Lead, hits bookstores this week.  Sandberg’s resume includes her current position as Facebook’s COO, a past position as Google’s VP of Global Online Sales and Operations, and a couple of Harvard degrees.  She cites the statistics we all know about the paucity of women leaders and states her belief that increasing the number of women at the top of the corporate ladder will benefit us all.  Her advice to women for how to get there:  lean in (not back) and embrace success.   

Yes, Sandberg has chosen to direct her remarks to women but nothing about this advice is gender specific.  Unfortunately, in our profession, law librarians with a seat at the table are sparse regardless of gender. 

For me, Sandberg’s advice resonates because it addresses something in our power to control:  our own actions.  If a seat is what we want, we can make a decision not to hold ourselves back by deciding in advance that we won’t be heard.  We can make a decision not to be afraid.  As Sandberg told NPR,

Of all the posters plastered around Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters — “Move Fast and Break Things,” “Done Is Better Than Perfect” and “Fail Harder”. . . Sandberg has a favorite: “What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?“ 

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/11/173740524/lean-in-facebooks-sheryl-sandberg-explains-whats-holding-women-back 

We can also make a decision to enhance our strategic skills.  A goal of this year’s Summit is to help participants shape their success by defining the roles and developing the services that add value to our organizations.  Lean in.  Embrace Success.  http://pllsummit.wordpress.com/2013-summit/

by John DiGilio, National Manager of Research Services, Reed Smith LLP

Recently while speaking at the Ark Group’s Best Practices & Management Strategies for Law Firm Library & Information Service Centers conference in New York, I said something that seemed to really resonate with the audience.  I was talking about methods for driving resource utilization and optimization, when I shared my opinion that there is little room in the law firm information industry for passive librarians.  What we need to survive and thrive as a profession, I postulated, are true activist librarians.  Judging by the discussion after my presentation and the tweets I saw online, my point hit home.

What is an “activist librarian” you ask?  It’s usually not what many of us were taught to be and definitely not what most folks envision our roles to be.  There was once a time when firm librarians, when not shelving books, could bide their time at their desks waiting for the work to come to them.  That is not to say that we have not always been busy.  But the nature of the beast that we call law firm workflow has changed.  Reference desks, physical libraries, the things that anchored us in days gone by are going away themselves. If we want to avoid going with them, we have to get out and get upfront with our services and our skills.

Activist librarians not only demonstrate their skills, but the value those skills bring to the firms and their clients.  It is not just about doing a great job, but also about doing it in a way that speaks loudly for itself.  Activist librarians do not wait for work to come to them, they are out there drumming it up and proving their worth.  From embedded librarians to resource managers, research tracking to project management, librarians on the forefront of this profession are conducting their duties in proactive new ways.  One of the most exciting  aspects of this evolution is that we are talking about our efforts, comparing notes, and sharing our best practices.

In just a few weeks, I will again be in New York talking about the latest leaps in our industry.  This time it will be at the Integrated Management Evolution Conference, hosted by Integrated Management Services.  My co-panelists and I will discussing Proactive Research Services.  As much as it promises to be a fascinating session, it also makes clear that we need to be having more conversations of this nature.  I have long said that librarians are survivors.  In our future as activists, this requires making a concerted effort to best share our survival skills.

John DiGilio is the National Manager of Research Services at Reed Smith LLP, the Treasurer of SLA, and a former chair of its Legal Division.

Bess Reynolds, Technical Services Manager, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
breynolds@debevoise.com

Last week we had the pleasure of speaking at the Law Library Association of Greater New York (LLAGNY) education event: Going Digital – The Challenges of eBooks in Law Libraries. We discussed the current landscape of eBooks right now, the many vendors, publishers, and aggregators that are making these digital volumes available, the variety of pricing models employed, and criteria to determine which of these packages is right for your library. We tackled the current challenges and obstacles to be overcome by both private and academic law libraries interested in implementing an eBooks program. And finally we discussed what law libraries are doing to make eBooks available to their attorneys and patrons.

We then discussed an alternative option of accessing eBooks through a membership library. Ellyssa, who works for the New York Law Institute (NYLI), where they have just made 56,000 eBooks available to our members free of charge and Bess, who works at Debevoise, the first NYLI client to have integrated with the NYLI seamless catalog module discussed the benefits of leveraging all of NYLI’s eBooks to the firm’s OPAC. Now any law library that uses EOS and is a NYLI member can deliver a formidable e-book collection.

Here are our slides from the presentation:

The press has been reporting skills shortages coupled with growth in unemployment. This situation comes from a transition toward new highly skilled jobs and away from legacy lower skilled jobs (you can read about this further here, here, and here). This is already happening in the greater library industry with a shift from some traditional roles, which are often very repetitive, towards roles that require more management and technological skills.

This situation can occur in law libraries as well as in the greater economy, and as law libraries’ roles change over time, this has the potential to become more pronounced. Law library staff have been somewhat sheltered from the pressures experienced by those in other library sectors and the wider economy because of conditions particular to legal publishing and research; however, these conditions are starting to change.

How easy it is to recruit staff depends a great deal on the geographic location of the position, the complexity of the role to be filled, and the number of people in that field already. This is a commonplace observation, but it becomes quite important when additional skill sets are required in a field like law libraries that has always been small and requires a specialized skill set.

It is generally not difficult to recruit for a position like a junior legal librarian in a major centre, but when management skills are required or the position is located in a smaller centre it becomes more difficult. When additional competencies, such as advanced competitive intelligence, patent searching expertise, knowledge management skills covering all facets from database design and search technologies to facilitating the integration of all members of an organization into a community, are part of the required skill set, it becomes unlikely that an organization will be able to fill a position at currently budgeted salaries, as qualified candidates may have to be poached from other organizations.

Legal libraries have not been as fast as other types of libraries to adopt some technological developments in recent years. There are a number of reasons for this, but in my opinion one of the most overlooked is the fact that print resources so perfectly fit the structure of legal materials that there has been less incentive to change. In contrast, scientific research was not as well served by the print environment and for this reason people were much more willing to adopt technological advancements for research.

Many of the changes that have happened in legal research have been conversions of case law, legislation, and commentary to electronic formats without a great deal of change to their organization. The lack of impetus to adopt new technologies and a specialized skill set that blocked access to those outside law libraries combined to shelter law libraries and staff from having to examine their competencies, services, and roles to the same extent some other libraries have.

The development of a divide between the skills required for future jobs and the skills of existing staff has implications for both staff who wish to continue to be employable and library managers who wish to develop their libraries. With compromises and willingness on both sides, the best solution is to invest in existing staff in anticipation of developing needs, so that libraries will be able to develop while enjoying the strengths that come with long term staff.

When hiring is necessary, it will be good practice to hire based on potential rather than existing skills. While this approach runs the risk of losing staff members to retirement or other organizations after the investment is made in training, it is no more risky or expensive than being in the situation of having to try to repeatedly headhunt individuals from other organizations.

Part of the solution to this problem is for library managers and organizations to be open to the idea of training staff on the job and being open to providing more funding for professional development. Library staff should also take responsibility to develop this paradigm. Staff members can take the initiative and approach their employers with proposals to develop skills in anticipation of coming needs and changes.  This will enable them to remain relevant and take advantage of some of the benefits of employment that are of most value to them in the form of professional development time and funding.

Institutions housing libraries, library management, and library staff need to develop a shared understanding of the role that continuing professional education and the development of internal capacity will play in meeting their users’ needs. Anticipating future needs and developing plans means that law libraries and staff will be able to meet the requirements of the organization in the future.

However, the fact that this rule is only in effect inside the heads of lawyers leads to problems for those of us who do have to work within the law. In particular, it brings problems for information services staff, when you uncover activities that the lawyers have been engaged in that they really shouldn’t be. Nothing criminal (no bodies being disposed of in landfill sites, or shipments of suspicious powders being couriered between offices), but things which breach certain contracts, or certain laws. Favourites are:

• Sharing subscriber-only content with other staff who are not authorised for access to that content
• Distributing subscriber-only content to clients
• Sharing passwords for subscriber-only databases
• Using and distributing material from commercial sources without attribution

We are in a difficult position: we want users to access information, but we want them to do it correctly. Spending all our time telling them that a contract says they can only do X, when they want to do X, Y and Z is often just a waste of time, as they will continue to do exactly what they want, and we have no power to stop them doing it.

So what will get them to listen? So far, I’ve found that money and shame are the only slightly effective motivating factors.

Money
An explanation to the infringer along these lines seems to work quite well – Oh, so you want to breach that contract with a database supplier, eh? You realise that they can monitor exactly what each user/username is doing on their database, right? And whereabouts they’re located when they log in, so they know it’s not possible that you’re in X city and Y city 100 miles apart within 10 minutes? If they decide to investigate this, we may only be able to access that database in future at exorbitant prices, if at all. You are going to cost the firm a LOT of money.

Also, you realise that there’s no current defined limit on the maximum financial penalty that could be imposed for what you’re doing with that copyright material right now?

Shame
This one is more about bringing shame on the employer than the individual themselves being ashamed. For certain law breaches, like for copyright legislation, the threat of a legal case being brought against the firm, with the attendant bad publicity, can give enough of a fright to individuals that they stop what they’re doing. At least, they stop doing it while you’re around.

However, these approaches only really work when the infringer is low to mid level experienced – the higher up they progress in power, the less likely they are to listen to you, or even be available to you to discuss it.  And if you do get your points over, and it does worry them, then they’ll just delegate whatever they had been doing to a minion to do…quite often, you. And then they’ll get annoyed when you try and explain why you can’t do what they want!

Does anyone else have experience of good ways to manage users who are doing things with materials and resources that they really shouldn’t be?

Posted on behalf of a Scottish Law Librarians Group member

By

A judgment that is easy to read and understand is the ideal judgment that as legal researchers we would all like to find. Something so simple, and easy to understand, delivering thorough reasoning of the decision-maker in coming up with the concluding remarks.

Justice Alan Wilson (Supreme Court Judge and President of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal) addressed a recent conference of regulatory officers about the statutory obligations and good practice of making and delivering clear decisions, to assist the attendees to develop skills in writing their government department decisions.“The key is to write reasons that can be understood: reasons which expose, in language that is as simple and straightforward as the matter allows, how and why the decision-maker came to the decision; and, by that simplicity and clarity, allow the reader to see and understand what has happened – and, at best, why it is right.”

Why is this best practice and what are the key elements to achieving this? 

• Use accessible language: ‘Judge-speak’ has resulted in some Australian High Court decisions being five times longer than they were 80 years ago. Some decisions are extremely long with quotes fro other cases and many footnotes, which discourages reading, unless you are required to. Wilson J recommends to consider the question ‘will the recipient understand what I have decided?’ 
• Well written reasons are persuasive:  The reasons need to be written to be understood using simple language with the how and why the decision was made. You need to write in a manner to persuade the disappointed party that the decision was right. Avoid slabs of extracts from other decisions or repeating facts throughout. 
• Provide clear concise reasons:  Avoid technical words and jargon to provide a readable clear decision. 
• Explain the statute:  This will help the recipient of the decision understand the law that affects them. Sometimes the decision-maker may use the legislation as a smoke screen to confuse the complainant hoping they will just accept and not challenge the decision.  Wilson J interestingly stated: ‘Statutes and rules are not always written in language that is easily understood – were it not so, lawyers would be redundant’. 
• Known pitfalls:  Yes, Judges may get things wrong, such as mistakes about evidence or failing to expose the process of reasoning. Was the evidence relevant and sufficient? Readers must be able to see and understand the ‘why’ of the decision ie the application of this law to these findings of fact = this conclusion. 
• Using structure to improve quality:  Set out the decision with the following points:
  • what is to be decided; 
  • what are the relevant facts; 
  • what is the law to be applied; 
  • what happened when that law is applied to those facts; 
  • what decision flows logically from that exercise – After reading the first page, Wilson J suggests that the reader should have gained a good helicopter overview of the case.
• Credit issues, disputes of fact:  In the decision to be delivered, is it necessary to make a finding and if so, what standard of proof is required. Is the evidence available sufficient to make such a finding. In presenting their case, what evidence delivered has probative force. If one of the parties case is preferred need to state why.

In writing decisions in this manner, Wilson J suggests that a vital element of procedural fairness of reasons being ‘accessible’ will be met. The High Court has repeatedly said that findings must be rational, and logical.

What can legal researchers learn from this approach?

Judgments are ideally meant to deliver the decision-makers reasons in a clear concise manner. When delivering cases to our clients, we should also consider writing a summary as to why the cases located were relevant to the research conducted and what key points within the cases may assist. Case citators are also a valuable tool to assist with this, with a concise summary of facts and the outcome. The citators are not always right with their analysis, so make sure you also do check before delivery to your clients.

Concise reasons – we can but dream that all decision-makers will take this approach to judicial writing to make legal research tasks easier.

Laura Woods, Research Analyst at UK corporate law firm Addleshaw Goddard, asks exactly this question in the latest issue of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) Update and handily provides some practical tips on how you approach this often tricky aim.

In the UK its never been more important to demonstrate the value we provide since the credit crunch reared its very ugly head a few years ago. In light of the credit crunch many firms including CMS Cameron McKenna, Osborne Clarke and Freshfields and others made the decision to outsource their Library services. In the light of this what are some of the techniques Law Librarians can employ to ensure they’re demonstrating their value:

Laura starts by talking about brand and ensuring people know you exist. There are a number of was you can do this including having consistent messages and using logos and templates whenever you communicate with anyone in the firm. Knowing you exist is crucial in developing trust with fee-earners, practice groups and other individuals within a law firm. Once a fee-earner knows you exist it’s only a short step before they use you or someone within your team as go-to-person, demonstrating their trust in you and acknowledging the value that you provide within the firm.

The second point that Laura makes is about making yourself indispensable. Whilst it should be obvious that we need to be good at our jobs, what we need to be is really really good at our jobs. In reality this might mean that we need to move out of our comfort zones and undertake activities that as Law Librarians we might find unfamiliar or challenging. This might be talking to Partners or decision makers regularly to understand what is happening within the firm. Essentially we should be acting as champions for the service we provide and it’s something we need to do actively! Laura’s third point is around embedding information professionals within teams. This is something that has been increasingly happening within UK law firms and has proved very successful in ensuring practice groups understand what Library and Information Services can provide. Also you never know what you might find lurking in a corner in a practice group, those missing books you sent that firmwide email about or those looseleaf updates that need filing, who knows what you might find.

Laura’s final points are around outsourcing admin work and delivering differently. Whilst outsourcing your own work might sound like you’re shooting yourself in your foot. What this actually means is looking at what work you do regularly to see if it can be done more efficiently elsewhere. This will free up time for more skilled and and potentially much more valuable tasks. Finally it;’s important for all members of a Library & Information services to look at how they can do things differently, what this means in reality is thinking about how existing processes and workflows could be updated to make them more efficient or updating them to make the most of opportunities to save money, thereby demonstrating the value the service provides.

Laura’s article reminded me of a blog post I’d read recently by Bonnie Cheuk called “What is the future of information professionals“. In it Bonnie asks “What do information professionals do? What do others think we do? What should we be doing now? What is our future? How should we define it?” The context of these questions is the massive transformation that internet, mobile and social media technologies have had on information professionals and the type of information that we’re now expected to manage. Whilst there are a number of challenges associated with the new information landscape we work in there are also some opportunities to demonstrate the value we provide.

These include becoming a strategic partner with business leaders to help resolve business problems. To offer new perspectives and practical solutions to help facilitate knowledge sharing within organisations. As Bonnie says this should go beyond managing intranets and document management systems, instead it should be about playing a role in an organisations strategic IT roadmap, communication practices and more. Bonnie also suggests that information professionals should become champions of new ways of working. This might be helping people understand how new technologies work or helping them resolve an issue they have creating or sharing information.

As Bonnie and Laura both say there are plenty of opportunities for us to demonstrate the value we provide. We need to do more than just talk though we need to get out into the business and demonstrate what we can offer and how we can assist people. I recently saw a quote that I think sums this up “They say actions speak LOUDER than words…
But a lot of times, It’s better to have both”

So what are you waiting for!