Technology and law library administration

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

Very few of us have been so farsighted. It certainly is not necessary for each one of us to duplicate the Columbia experience, but we should begin to move, in very modest ways, into the electronic environment. It only costs a few hundred dollars to put up a bulletin board to post useful information within the law library. The potential cost of the automation enterprise is quite daunting. For example, it costs, according to commentators, approximately one full-time staff position to support every 30 to 40 workstations connected to a local area network (LAN).32

Law librarians should be particularly concerned about the word processing capabilities available within their law school. We are perfectly content to let the school dictate in this area, without realizing that resources for information in any institution are finite. As the local area network becomes more important, the potential that resources previously devoted to libraries will be used to support it becomes greater. We, as library administrators, need to be involved in both the design and maintenance of technology in order to guarantee that the substance of legal information is delivered in the most effective manner, lest the medium triumph over the message. It seems, therefore, that an administrative structure like that of the University of Pennsylvania or Yale University, where the law library manages the law school's computing facilities, is the preferable approach because it allows for a balance of resources between the traditional acquisitions budget and the computer budget. Such a structure draws upon the librarian's traditional expertise in the organization and servicing of information.

An example of the importance of this balance is provided by Cornell University. At Cornell, a branch library which serves the law school has been very poorly funded. The law school managed computer operation, while a little bit glitzy and perhaps less useful than it could have been had if it had been designed by librarians, is very well supported indeed.

The ability to utilize technological resources allows a law library to explore the potential of collection sharing, which brings with it the cost recovery of being first to make collections available online. The University of Cincinnati's Diana Human Rights Project33 or Pace University's NCAIR34 supported electronic UN Sale of Goods database involve non-librarian faculty members interested in particular areas of the law, library personnel bringing their knowledge of organizing information and retrieving information, and computer support professionals who deal with the technology. These new partnerships for creating gateways to electronically stored information are an appropriate model for the future. Moving in these directions involves risks, but failing to act is even more perilous. By the time one knows where the road is going, there is a great danger of becoming part of the roadkill. More than ever before, library administrators cannot afford to react in the short-term, but must plan ahead for technology. We are all required to do this as part of the sabbatical inspection process in law schools. We need to move beyond the formalistic one-time Law Librarian/Dean's report on file. Strategic planning with benchmarks and resource commitments must be an ongoing process.36