'And Other Duties as Assigned' Expanding the Boundaries of the E-resource Life Cycle to Get Things Done
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Librarians working in environments with a small number of people reporting to them and a limited number of professional staff members often have a great number of disparate duties. How do the tasks and jobs suggested in the e-resource life cycle relate to the many duties of a librarian in a small organization? The presenters will discuss how they break down their responsibilities using the framework of the e-resource life cycle as well as other job analysis techniques to tackle both large and small projects. Among our examples will be an inventory of our collections to clean up our catalogs and our OCLC listings, preparing items for digitization, and implementation of a discovery system. We also want to explore how the needs of a law library and the needs of a general academic library impact workflow and decisions. Presenters: Stacy Fowler, Technical Services Librarian, St. Mary's University School of Law; Marcella Lesher, Periodicals Librarian, St. Mary's University
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'And Other Duties as Assigned' Expanding the Boundaries of the E-resource Life Cycle to Get Things Done
- 1. “And Other Duties as Assigned”—Expanding the Boundaries of the E- Resource Life Cycle to Get Things Done Marcella Lesher Louis J. Blume Library Stacy Fowler Sarita Kenedy East Law Library St. Mary’s University San Antonio, Texas NASIG May 2015 Image: “Juggle Hurdle Collage” by Mark Stosberg in Flickr under a Creative Commons License
- 2. Thinking about what we do as it relates to the e-resource life cycle. How competency standards apply to what we do. What standards have become the most important for us.
- 4. Pesch, O. (2009). ERMs and the e-resource life-cycle [Powerpoint slides] Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/ ERLifeCycle 13 May 2015 Image: Jill Emery and Graham Stone under Creative Commons License Attribution 3.0
- 5. St. Mary’s University Louis J. Blume Library • 3,800 students • 75 programs including two doctoral and two law programs • Online collection of 120,000 ebooks and 35,000 electronic serials individually purchased or through publisher packages • Print collection of over 200,000 monographs and 645 print and microform serial titles • Selective government repository • Staff of 6 ¾ librarians, 8 full time and 2 part time paraprofessionals
- 6. SUMMARY: Responsible for the selection, acquisition, processing, and access to renewable resources in the library including print and electronic serials, databases, and standing orders. ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES include the following. Other duties may be assigned. Developing a library serials collection of appropriate size and strength to meet University needs Coordinating collection development liaison efforts for all librarians in the area of serials acquisitions Working closely with other technical services librarians to resolve mutual problems Planning and budgeting for acquiring library materials Supervising library technicians Selecting and evaluating vendors for library materials Managing library software including customization of database interfaces and other serials management tools Participates in bibliographic instruction as requested and needed by delivering bibliographic classes, and compiling materials for the classes and to assist library users in general Works with other reference librarians in determining the needs of the reference collection Provides direct reference service on a regular basis as assigned by the Head of Reference Works with faculty members in assigned liaison departments to select and evaluate materials for inclusion in the Library’s collections; communicates with these departments concerning Library policies, procedures, and issues of concern to their students Serving on various library and University committees Performing research and scholarship commensurate with the demands of faculty promotion and tenure Periodicals Librarian Job Description
- 7. THEN NOW
- 8. Timeline 2008-2010—Discussions and Planning November 2011—First floor to be cleared September 4, 2012—Charles L. Cotrell Commons opens Print Serials Management Deselection Replacement JSTOR
- 9. Developed a “Keeper” list based on: a. Moderate usage based on shelving counts b. Mission objectives (Catholic theology, Texas history and culture) c. Anything needed for accreditation d. Small press publications e. St. Mary’s publications Librarians were asked to look at their subject areas and fill out a rationale for retention.
- 10. Decision Title Holdings in Print 2010- 2011 2009- 2010 2008- 09 2007- 08 2006- 07 2005- 06 2004- 05 2003- 04 2002- 03 2001- 02 2000- 01 1999- 00 1998- 99 1997- 98 1996- 97 1995- 96 1994- 95 1993- 94 1992- 93 partial, 1974- present AMERICAN SCHOLAR 1932-2002 1 1 3 8 5 1 5 8 3 2 partial, 1993- present LRC BOOKLIST 1929- 4 3 4 3 3 10 7 12 27 35 51 19 19 keep, usage, not online, print CHESTERTON REVIEW 1975- 5 1 1 2 3 3 5 2 1 2 1 5 3 3 3 partial, keep 1945-2000, discard 2001- present JSTOR current FILM QUARTERLY 1945- 1 3 1 2 4 2 4 3 1 16 2 29 1 unknown, what is this? HOLIDAY (storage) 1946-1974 1 1 partial, 1969- 1991 only in print, online 1992-present ASC HUMANIST 1969-2004 3 8 17 11 28 36 27 12 15 partial, keep 1939-1978, discard 1979- present ASC KENYON REVIEW 1939-2000 1 3 6 1 1 6 1 3 4 2 keep, print NEWSWEEK 1934-1973 1 7 3 2 8 13 13 7 18 20 41 28 67 81 58 83 87 68 keep, not online NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 1987- 1 4 2 1 2 3 4 7 1 12 8 1 6 14 move to monographs ? Mission (3 issues) OCCASIONAL PAPERS ON CATHOLIC HIGHER EDUCATION 1995-1996 keep?, local interest REVIEW: LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND ART 1968-2003 1 1 1
- 11. Title OCLC Number Years to Remove Remove d (A or P) bindery card no. of volumes Milleniu m atoz ebsco admin oclc Comple te AAUP Bulletin 1934-1978 a x 45 ABA Banking Journal 1979-1999 a x 21 A C M Transactions on Graphics 1989-2004 a x 16 AI & Society 1994-1997 a x 4 AIIE Transactions 1969-1979 a x A L A Bulletin 1928- 1931,1933-1969 a x 40 A M H C A Journal (American Mental Health Counselors Association 1980-1987 a x 8 ANQ 1988-1996 a x 9 A S A I O Journal (American Society For Artificial Internal Organs) 1987-2000 a x 14 Abside 1943-1945 a x 3 Abstracts of Folklore Studies 1963-1975 a x 13 Academe 1979-1996 a x 18 ACADEMIA ST. MARY'S JOURNAL OF GRADUATE STUDIES KEEP
- 12. Title Reshelving (1992-2011) JSTOR Downloads (2012- April 2015) American Anthropologist 71 304 College Mathematics Journal 7 32 English Historical Review 37 68 History and Theory 29 67 Social Forces 156 108 Novel: A Forum on Fiction 32 62 British Journal of Political Science 18 50 Print Reshelving vs. JSTOR Downloads
- 13. “And Other Duties as Assigned” Acquire Process Access
- 15. Excerpt from “The Rattler”, March 26, 2015, pg. 8
- 16. • 900 students • Open to the bench and bar as well as the public • New programs of study including Master’s of Jurisprudence and special centers of study • Servicing the entire South Texas area from San Antonio to Corpus Christi • Print/microfiche collection of over 400,000 volumes • Selective government depository • Current staff of 5 librarians and 7 support staff
- 26. Academic Law Libraries County/Court Law Libraries Law Firm Libraries Print Electronic Print Electronic Print Electronic Percentage of materials budgets Gold: Print Green: Digital
- 27. Academic: Budget Move towards cancelling print when overlap with electronic occurs. Firm: Convenience Ability to access items on the fly in court. Shift towards a “bring your own device” environment. County and Court: Space Many had to shift to more digital materials when space was severely downsized.
- 29. Academic (13 surveyed): Two use ProQuest (for Cambridge and YBP eBook packages), one has the Lexis Digital Library, and one uses Ebsco’s Ebrary. Two have also purchased West’s Study Aids package. Firm (12 surveyed): Three use the Lexis Digital Library, one has the Ebsco Ebrary, and three are able to access eBooks through the New York Law Institute (NYLI). Several also subscribe to firm-wide access to the electronic Bluebook. County and Government (9 surveyed): Two use the Lexis Digital Library.
- 30. The transition to the e-resource life cycle Space, space, and more space Budget Learning from the User Those competency standards Keeping up with Technology Research and Assessment And the Big Ones
- 31. Flexibility Open-Mindedness Tolerance of Complexity and Ambiguity Image: yogaforsoul.wordpress.com Concepts taken from NASIG Core Competencies for Electronic Resources Librarians, points 7.1 and 7.2
- 32. Pesch, O. (2009). ERMs and the e-resource life-cycle[Powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/ERLifeCycle. Terms: Techniques for Electronic Resource Management . Retrieved from https://library3.hud.ac.uk/blogs/terms/. NASIG Core Competencies for Electronic Resources Librarians (July 22, 2013). Retrieved from http://www.nasig.org/site_page.cfm?pk_association_webpage_menu=3 10&pk_association_webpage=1225. NASIG Core Competencies for Print Serials Management (Draft 4/7/15) Digital Projects Unit, University of North Texas. Retrieved from http://www.library.unt.edu/digital-projects-unit.
Notas do Editor
- Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming. We purposely chose an ambiguous title because, as you will see during our presentation, our job titles don’t always match up with what we do. We also knew that in the time between writing our proposal and the actual presentation, we might just have responsibilities and tasks that changed, and we wanted to leave room for that. Much like our juggling hurdler here, we probably bit off more than we could chew, so even though our abstract mentioned that we would discuss the implementation of the Blume’s new discovery system, it was implemented without too much pain or suffering, so we’re not going to be using it as an example today. Marcella would, however, be glad to answer any questions about it at the end of the presentation.
- So why are we today? The transition to electronic resources has been very important to the Blume Library and is becoming more relevant to the Law Library as well. As you will see, library space in particular and how it is used has been very important to both of us. With that in mind, we decided to see how our duties and workflow fit within the e-resource life cycle and how NASIG’s competency standards fit in as well. And we realize we’re not the first ones to think about this.
- So even though we’re from a lot of different places, hopefully our experiences will resonate with you. Usually at conferences, we either learn something new or learn that others approach their work in a way that is similar to ours. Both of those experiences help. The NASIG Core Competencies for Electronic Resources Librarians approved in July of 2013 and the draft of the NASIG Core Competencies for Print Serials Management, which Sanjeet Mann, the chair of that committee, so graciously shared with us, have been crucial in examining our work environment and work flow. Both of us work in hybrid environments of both print and electronic resources, but since we are in different types of libraries, we are at different stages in how resources are managed, and there are significant reasons for those differences.
- The concepts embedded in Oliver Pesch’s e-resource life cycle do truly describe many of our tasks, but we find that those same tasks can also be associated with the print life cycle. The Techniques for Electronic Resource Management developed by Jill Emery and Graham Stone are also integral to our work in providing the extra information that makes some of our tasks less daunting. As is emphasized in the competency documents and in the literature from TERMS, we don’t have to take the whole world on to do our jobs, but we can adapt the concepts to a scale that works for us. For the remainder of the presentation we will be showing you how we have used these cycles and principles in managing different library projects. We’ll be using some of the vocabulary you see in these images and adding some of our own.
- Just a little bit about our library and campus--as shown on the screen We have an online collection of 120,000 e-books and 35,000 electronic serials--We have a small staff of 6 ¾ librarians Our PhD. program in counseling which consumes a very large chunk of our recurring resources. We participate in Texshare which accounts for a significant portion of the databases we provide to our students. My budget which doesn’t include print monographs or e-books is less than $300,000.
- I actually wrote my job description in 2013 so it really does reflect most of what I do and I think it actually reflects the core competencies, so my thanks to my NASIG colleagues for providing that framework. My “Other duties as assigned” list that don’t really speak to the e-resource life cycle include —store room cleanup, art gallery monitor, informal liaison to our intensive English program and lots of university committee work such as membership on the Faculty Senate. I am also at the reference desk where patron feedback, a crucial element in the e-resource life cycle, gives me a first-hand view of how well we are delivering this information to our patrons. I’ve been at St. Mary’s for 25 years, but the project I’m going to describe is probably the biggest we have tacked to date.
- The first picture represents what our print periodicals floor looked like until the end of 2011. It contained three full rows of periodical volumes, a children’s literature collection, private study rooms distributed around the perimeter, office space for academic technology services, a small theater style viewing room, and a film studio. The second picture is what it looks like today—a very successful and vibrant place.
- Here’s how we got there. As you can see from the timeline, our Library Director had for many years been supporting the idea of a Library Commons. The Commons went through many iterations with many different floor plans. We did a lot of measuring of how much shelf space we might really need to maintain and received a $400,000 quote for compact shelving. Based on the usage of print materials I felt that this was not a good use of the money even if we had the money for it. Instead, I recommended that we ask the University to fund JSTOR II and III which they did. Late in 2011 we knew that there was funding to completely renovate the first floor and turn it into a Learning Commons which would include a Starbucks, a Computer Help Desk, a reference area where we still keep our print reference collection, and offices for Academic Technology services, and three areas where small classes could be held. So we needed to very quickly make some decisions involving seven librarians with subject responsibilities. Mistakes were made and there was some unhappiness over the rapidity of decision making. This type of project brings together many of the skills outlined in both the e-resource life cycle and in the techniques discussed in the TERMS blog even though at this point we were still talking about the care and feeding of print resources. As an afterthought in working on this project, I believe that I would have discussed these concepts with my colleagues as we took on the task. To move it back a bit, the first step we took before we knew how much floor space we were going to have to clear was to look at the impact of acquiring JSTOR Arts & Sciences 2-3. It replaced 109 titles or portions of titles in the print collection constituting 3,183 volumes. In 2011 we had 1,963 print titles in on the shelves so it was a relatively small portion but it was what the University was willing to budget for us.
- Developed a “Keeper” list based on: a. Moderate usage based on shelving counts b. Mission objectives (Catholic theology, Texas history and culture) c. Anything needed for accreditation d. Small press publications e. St. Mary’s publications Librarians were asked to look at their subject areas and were asked to fill out a rationale for keeping the title.
- This is an example of the decisions that were made. It also pretty dramatically shows a drop in print usage which was measured by reshelving over a rather long period. In 2000 numbers really started to drop. It also reacquainted us with titles that had been stored away and forgotten.
- As you can imagine, we had a big job making sure that our users knew what we actually had after removing so many titles. We created a workflow that could be done by many different people and did not have to be done sequentially. My full time assistant and my student assistant added OCLC numbers. The entire library staff, for the most part, worked to remove items from the shelf. We counted volumes based on removal data. I am still doing follow up on making sure that our holdings are correct in OCLC but much of the task early on was done by my assistant by batch deleting on OCLC our holdings where there was no need to edit. This was her first experience using OCLC and a good learning experience for her. So we thought we were done and I told my assistant, we’ll never weed again! Three full rows of shelves were reduced to 1 and ½ rows and moved to the second floor. The children’s literature and textbook collection which had been on the first floor was moved to a nice alcove on the third floor.
- But it was not to be. Our second project actually began due to the need for more tutoring space because of other renovations on campus. Although we knew at that point that we would probably not get the space back when renovation was completed. The alcove where the children’s collection had been moved was now needed for other purposes. It had to be moved to the area that was housing part of the remaining print journal collection. This time I got a little smarter and created a three category color-coded list indicating which journals could be totally removed without too much hardship—mostly titles available in EBSCO databases, (2) titles that could be partially removed without expense, and (3) titles that could be replaced if we wanted to buy backfiles or JSTOR collections. That list became part of our 2013-14 Institutional Effectiveness Plan and documents for the future a firm rationale for the print items we continue to keep. We removed the 53 titles that were available in databases to which we already subscribed and the remaining volumes are our current print holdings. The second floor of the library now houses those journals, our government documents collection, the children’s literature collection, a quiet study area and the circulation counter. To summarize: In 2011 our print title count was approximately 1963. Today it is 509 titles. Our volume count was 90,783. Today it is a little over 65,800. Although this was not our initial choice to do all of this weeding so quickly and it was not without controversy, there were no substantial objections from students and faculty. The project involved many elements of competencies outlined in the print serials management document and particularly ties into to the section which provides examples of the actual tasks we went through– such as the costs of preservation or converting to an online product, working with colleagues to weed the collection, and the actual physical work of removing the correct material (and a few mistakes were made!) and adjusting local holdings information for both our institution and OCLC. In the case of material that was replaced by the addition of the two JSTOR collections, it appears as you can see on the slide, that patrons are discovering material that they would have not used before. So as suggested in the e-resource life cycle, evaluation and monitoring continues and as money comes along we will most probably acquire additional e-resource titles. (In fact, grant funding has allowed us to provide access to JSTOR IV.) Now on to something a little different.
- As noted in the abstract for our presentation, we do many things in a small library. As the department providing access to older issues of our school newspaper, The Rattler, we worked in concert with Special Collections to make sure that we had microfilm copies of our school newspaper available. I had experimented early on with digitizing microfilm and had not been very happy with the results and much of the older microfilm had been done inhouse and had not been done very well. In addition to all of the activity of clearing out our first floor, we were also in the process of providing office space for technology personnel due to a merger between our library, Information Technology Services, and Academic Technology Services so we’ve been clearing out our store room. In addition to an organized collection of newspapers in Special Collections, we had a very unorganized collection of newspapers in our storage room going back to v.6, 1924. (I wish I had taken a picture to show you what fun that was.) There were multiple copies of old newspapers (and a lot of them not even from St. Mary’s!) and many of them very fragile. Even though there was no money for digitization, it was a perfect opportunity to see if we could convert this print resource to an e-resource for our community since we had to remove them from the storeroom anyway. Acquisition of the paper copies of the Rattler was not the issue but we had to organize and prepare and most importantly we had to acquire the financial means to do the project. Fortunately, we were able to obtain a mini-grant through the Rescuing Texas History Project, sponsored by the University of North Texas so here is where you really start see the e-resource life cycle at work, with some twists when doing local digitzation. Administering the resource meant to get permissions from various offices on campus (what I would call licensing terms) to make sure we had the right to do this and to make sure we could apply for the grant. Providing access meant figuring out what we had and how much the grant would cover.
- Here is a sample of the prep work that we did and continue to do. I worked with our librarian who takes care of Special Collections to pull together the best copies to send.
- This is actually an example of what we hope to see by making the Rattler available as an e-resource. Because I had been working with preparing the pages for digitization, I was able to help members of our newspaper staff on a very late Friday afternoon locate information for a Women’s History Month feature. There are two pictures from the newspaper and one from the yearbook—a title for future digitization. And here is where I’ll pass you on to Stacy.
- As you can see, I have a lot fewer students to deal with. Right now, we have about 750 full-time students and 150 part-time evening students. We are in the process of adding some new programs, so that number will probably be going up soon. We are a selective depository, so we have to be open to the public, and that’s good since we’re also the only well-resourced law library in a city of over 2 million. There is a small law library in the courthouse, but it’s not run very well, so most pro se people come see us. We also see quite a bit of traffic from local attorneys for that same reason.
- So, for the most part, my job description was written for me as well, and at the time, it was an accurate reflection of what I did. What I did was enough – at her library, Marcella is the serials librarian. I am the serials librarian. I am also the acquisitions librarian, the government documents librarian, and beginning in a couple of weeks when our current one leaves, the Special Collections librarian. I also do ILLs, maintain the course reserves in Millennium, decide on all selections that go to the collection development committee (which, of course, I am on), and supervise the filer, the processor, and the mail delivery for the entire law school. Recently, however, we’ve lost a few people – we were at 8 librarians, and now we’re fixing to be down to four. Of those four, one is the director and one is on paternity leave. So with such short staffing, I am having to pitch in to get even more things done, things like making changes on the website and fielding faculty research requests. So I am usually being pulled in several directions at the same time. In fact, while I was working on this presentation the other day, I received an email stating that the dean was making me point person for something else. So I guess that’s why they added “other duties as assigned” so many times to my job description, and at the moment, there are many other duties that have been assigned to me. Hopefully, those assignments are just temporary, but only time will tell. The first project I am going to talk about involved rearranging the books on my first floor – all 42,000 of them. It wasn’t really a space issue – is was just that I had spaces in the wrong places. There was no room at the end of sets that were still growing, and there was a ton of space after sets that we had cancelled. Plus things were not really shelved in a way that flowed well to me.
- So I took it upon myself to draw up a floor plan and decide where every book needed to be moved to – and here’s a picture of how I did the floor plan in Excel – it’s literally shelf by shelf of where I wanted to move things. Now all I had to do was convince my boss to let me do it. After a year, I finally did, and we set up the time for the big shift to be made. In between the time I drew up the floor plan and when we were finally going to do it, we got a new dean who has had all sorts of ideas regarding changes at the law school, one of which was putting a Starbucks and a commons area in the law library, even though the one in Marcella’s library is just two buildings away. Of course, our collective feathers immediately got ruffled over our space getting taken, and we’ve pretty much been in an uproar over it ever since, but in a strange twist, we recently had our yearly library retreat, and in looking over the 2-year and 5-year goals we came up with last year, we had written that we wanted to incorporate “more group study space” and that it was our desire to become “the center of student life for the law school.” In all our indignation, we had completely overlooked the fact that we had the commons idea – albeit not in those words – before the new dean was even hired! So the dean walked in one day while we were doing the final prep for the shift and wanted to know why we were moving all the books if he was planning on taking part of our space anyway. I explained that while we did know about his plans, I needed to shift the books anyway and that I was putting all of our dead state statutes and cancelled regional reporters on the side he was looking at confiscating. That’s when he told me, “You’re pretty smart, aren’t you?” I told him, “I have my days.” Really, I put them over there because I had the idea that those volumes could be discarded in order to put in more study carrels for the students, but that’s obviously not going to happen because it’s pretty much the exact opposite of what the dean wants. For timing on this shift, we had a week after finals and before the university closed for the holidays. If that wasn’t enough time, there was another week in January before classes started again that we could use to finish up. Turned out not to need the extra time as we got the entire floor shifted in just 3 1/2 days!
- So all this year we have kept hearing about the potential for construction on our first floor to make room for the commons, and there has been much speculation going around as to if and when this construction was going to take place. This is a current schematic of my first floor - you can see by the big red line that with the addition of a commons area, we will be losing just about half the floor space. So with that in mind, my boss asked the associate director and me to come up with a plan to rearrange stacks while still maximizing shelf space if it did come about that this was really going to happen. He gave us a deadline of May 18 to have something ready for him to look at. Luckily, I got it done in a couple of day because on May 12, we were given notice that the construction was due to start this coming Monday, June 1st. So with me coming here and my boss going to China for our study abroad program, we had practically no time to get this all done. At this point, I knew it was time to ...
- At least this time, we were only going to worry about 30,000 books – we didn’t have time for anything else, so those dead sets that I had set aside were just going to be withdrawn and discarded.
- So with floor plan #2 in hand, which was much more basic than the first one as you can see, we set out to rearrange what books we were keeping – I managed to minimize the shelf space lost so that we didn’t have to shift more than a third of the remaining books nor did we have to move too many books upstairs. My catalog and OCLC cleanup has not even begun yet, but I will be getting on that over the summer, but only after I study for my Jeopardy audition next month.
- The first shift just consisted of rearranging the books that were there, but this shift meant weeding a whole lot of books – 11,575 to be exact. So this is when I used the e-resource cycle to help decide what books could safely be discarded.
- In order to still be able to provide access, I wanted to make sure any print volumes we weeded were, at a minimum, still accessible to our students and faculty by electronic means. Providing support came into play with the local bench and bar as well as our public patrons – we needed to be able to show them alternative ways to access the cases they were looking for. The evaluation component is something that I will be looking at from this time forward – things like checking usage statistics on our databases to see if there’s been increased usage or listening to my patrons to see if there are any titles that need to be reacquired in print. Pretty much everything we discarded was cancelled in print a while back and there hasn’t been anything I needed to pick back up yet, so I really don’t see that being an issue. But monitoring statistics that could show me a spike in online database usage might even inspire me to cancel more print, especially journals. We still get over 400 journals in print, and the vast majority of those are already available on HeinOnline. Cancelling them, therefore, would give me the ability to weed more volumes in the future if or when space again becomes an issue.
- A move like that would bring us more in line with academic libraries in general, most of whom have already dropped the majority of their serials in print in order to provide those same resources exclusively by electronic means. In fact, dropping many journals in print is something I’m seriously considering – one reason is the example Marcella showed you earlier regarding print versus electronic usage. We do see some usage of our bound print journals, but I have to decide if it’s really enough to warrant the costs and the space it requires. Marcella, who as you now know had to weed most of her print journals, told me that she and the other librarians she works with took a vote and they decided I should just get over it. And looking at the re-shelving stats I’ve had my filer keep for the past 8 months, they’re probably right. The month with the highest print usage had just 16 books re-shelved, and our Hein usage stats show hundreds of page views every month. But seriously, if I can save money and my main patron base can still access the information, especially in a way in which many of them are much more comfortable with these days, it’s something I should seriously consider. Without buying anything new, I could reduce the 400+ journals I still get in print to about 20 titles that aren’t duplicated electronically, and with the money saved, we could possibly get a West Public Access terminal, which would give the legal community and my public patrons access to all that material we ended up weeding during the second shifting project. My patrons would be happy, and perhaps more importantly, my dean would be happy as well. That seems like a win-win to me.
- But we librarians still like our books, even when they all look alike, and the law field is still very print-based, much more so than other fields. So aside from journals, going whole-hog into the eBook arena is a bit more problematic for us. We actually spent a lot of time wondering if we were the only academic law library feeling so far behind the curve on this subject, so a co-worker and I recently conducted a survey to find out. Our results made us feel a whole lot better – we were not any more out of touch with eBooks than pretty much any other academic law library we spoke with, and we were even ahead of the curve compared to a couple bigger institutions.
- Of course, we’re nowhere near where regular academic and public libraries are. We recently presented on this subject at ER&L, and some of the numbers we heard were crazy to us – Boston College, for example, is now spending 85% of their materials budget on electronic items. Even Marcella’s library is at an 80/20 split. We’re more like 70% for print and only 30% for electronic materials, and that was a trend Mina and I saw in most of the academic law libraries we surveyed. About the only exceptions were a couple of brand new law schools. As this chart shows, law firms libraries fare better – they’re much more in line with academic and public libraries than law school libraries are. And as you can see, county and court libraries are at about a 60/40 split, falling somewhere in between.
- Because it is likely that a complete switch from print to electronic is still quite a ways off, this hybrid environment is something we’re all likely to be dealing with for quite some time to come. Unfortunately, our interviews suggest that no matter the type of law library, in general, there has been no real “game plan” for when to switch from print to electronic, what resources to target for conversion, and once the shift has been made, how to manage the changes in work flow that invariably arise. Pretty much whatever has been done has been on an ad hoc basis as various situations have come up. What is interesting is that for the different law library types, the driving factor behind whatever changes have been made is quite different. Most academic law libraries, for example, have had budget issues in recent years, forcing them to look at cost-saving measures in depth. This has precipitated the cancellation of many materials that are already available in the databases they purchase, like the previous example of the regional reporters. But it’s been a slow process, and most of these libraries have not made an active collection development decision to try and convert from print to digital on a wide or wider scale, which was precisely the case with most of the law firms we spoke with. Firms, however, generally have different motivations for conversion – with them, it’s often not about the money. With the urgency of some cases, law firm libraries have often switched to electronic access in order to provide a collection that is “just in time” for their patron base rather than the traditional print collection with titles that are on the shelf “just in case” someone might need them. Attorneys often need things right now, since a delay in finding the right material could cost a client money or even freedom. The attorneys being able to pull things up in court on whatever device was very important to those we spoke with. Things are generally less urgent in an academic setting, where the bulk of our materials are used for research and study purposes, pursuits that don’t usually carry such pressing time constraints. And many of the county and court libraries we spoke with had, like us, had their space downsized, sometimes by quite a lot – one moved from a 4000 sq. ft. space to 200 sq. ft. This obviously severely limited the amount of shelving that was available, so hundreds of thousands of books had to be weeded. These decisions were primarily predicated on which would still be available to them in electronic format. Probably without even knowing it, most of these librarians utilized the e-resource life cycle to make these tough decisions. They had to evaluate which items needed to be retained, provide support for patrons by showing them where the materials were still accessible electronically, and administer all the new formats and passwords.
- Because of our survey, we have considered cancelling more print in favor of electronic, but there are still some barriers. One problem we run in to is how to service public patrons and the entire San Antonio area legal community. Our two big legal databases, Westlaw and Lexis, have all that weeded material available, but they are only accessible by students and faculty. Although students and faculty are our primary patron base, we pretty much service the entire South Texas area (from us down to Corpus), so we try to be as inclusive as possible when evaluating which resources to keep in print. Another issue is that many of the smaller vendors don’t give a discount for getting electronic access, so there’s no real incentive there, especially when the print is often much easier to use than a clunky website. Up to now, I have pretty much been talking about continuing resources, whether they are journals, loose-leafs or serial monographs like West reporters. eBooks are another matter altogether, especially in law libraries.
- As you can see by our survey results, very few of those we interviewed purchase actual eBook packages. There are a couple of main reasons for that. To begin with, much of the material offered is outdated; the vendors aren’t putting the latest copies of case books and study materials in their packages. The inability to obtain access for multiple concurrent users is another reason many law libraries have not really embraced eBooks yet. Plus, a lot of the packages are focused more on international law, which is not what most of us need – no matter if it’s an academic, firm, or governmental law library, we’re all primarily, looking for materials on U.S. law. Also, the platforms are often too cumbersome to be reasonable alternatives to print – it’s still a lot easier to buy a book and stick it on the shelf. What all this means is that by using the e-resource life cycle, mainly the support and evaluation parts, most law librarians have not found the materials available really worth the trouble. One of our interviewees put it this way: “Nothing seems important enough to justify learning a whole new process.” So even with all the other duties that have been assigned to me, I have managed to use the e-resource cycle to perform a variety of those tasks, ones that would not immediately be associated with the cycle. We librarians are nothing if not adaptable, and I think the projects we’ve talked about today are good examples of that. I am going to hand it back over to Marcella now for some concluding remarks.
- I think we are pretty accurate in describing our work responsibilities as disparate, but for us, the transition to the e-resource life cycle is not totally separate from how we think about print and why we keep it or discard it. Space has been the driver and sometimes we have been in control and sometimes we’re not. Budget or the means to acquire some of the resources we need in a different format will continue to be critical. How we provide support and evaluate what we provide takes on some additional meaning, especially in the law school where community service adds some additional issues that have to be resolved. I don’t think I need to say much about keeping up with Technology--that’s why most of us are here. Research and Assessment as defined by the competency standards is on-going and data collection skills both large and small are crucial to us—but what we have found most important and what keeps us both crying and laughing depending on the day are what we call the big ones.
- With no pun intended--some of our collections have become moving targets. And we’ve had to give us some of our assumptions about what are collections should look like. The personal qualities outlined in the core competencies are clearly on target with our experiences and we expect we’ll need to remind ourselves to develop these attributes as we continue in our careers. We may have to stretch ourselves a little bit but hopefully we’ll continue to see that sun rise!