Technology and law library administration

St. John's Law Review, Winter 1996 by Price, M Kathleen

IV. EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND DEMANDS

In order to gain access to information beyond our walls, administrators are dealing with responsibilities to persons beyond their internal clientele. This is reflected in our desire to maintain government document depositories, although there is also a statutory requirement which provides for public access to the "free" documents we receive.27 As long as these documents are received in paper, public demand is limited. As government agencies shift to CD-ROM and online publications, however, new problems arise. GPO policies28 have not adjusted to the contractual problems we incur with commercial vendors when we replace traditional government primary sources, formerly received as part of the depository collections, with WESTLAW and LEXIS, which are accessible only to law faculty and students. If WESTLAW and LEXIS are not made available to public patrons, must such patrons be provided with alternative CD-ROM products that would make access to government documents possible?

In the past, it has been possible to sequester public patrons within the government document sections of our library collections, but as paper material is replaced with online databases, will public patrons have to be given access to our computer labs? Must we make available to public patrons the plugs to use laptop computers or the printing facilities that would be offered to our other patrons? If collections of primary source government materials are made available to our students in their dormitory rooms, will dial up access have to be provided to our public patrons if they want to search our collections?

As we do the cost-benefit analysis on these collections, we may in fact find that it really is not worth it to maintain those government document collections considering the small percentage of materials that most law library patrons actually utilize. As government agencies, however, switch from paper depository materials to electronic database access, it would not be wise to give up those depository collections because the potential for electronic access is unlimited. This would allow us to move away from the present relatively onerous methods of record-keeping29 and personnel requirements imposed by the GPO, including its prohibition of requesting identification from depository users, even those who walk in off the street.30

V. THE EMERGING ELECTRONIC LIBRARY

Despite the ability of law librarians to balance the demands of the public, their own primary constituents, and the constituents of other libraries who form part of their consortia, most librarians still provide only traditional services of the second stage library which is still primarily a paper library with automated indexes. The challenge for law library administrators in the 1990's is to join the few emerging electronic libraries whose visionary leaders realize that they have a responsibility to take unique parts of their own collections and make them available globally. The incentive to do so may be a preservation incentive, a space incentive, or some other driving force that is unique to the institution. Columbia University is an example of a library which, rather than collecting $40 million for an addition to their building, is setting aside $10 million a year to digitize its collection.31