Law librarians are professionals who specialize in providing legal research and support services in a library setting.
Full definition
Listening to
law librarians at their recent annual meetings, it is apparent that online services are now seen in the same light as loose - leaf services.
This is a great idea and would also foster collaborative opportunities
for law librarians as well as creating learning resources that can benefit law students everywhere.
As law librarians many of us teach our users the best approaches to using the internet, which includes how to best construct a search.
The site helps identify the latest books and products being offered, and is typically followed by
law librarians who are tasked with making these purchases.
In my opinion, it is one of the competencies we will increasingly and reasonably expect
from law librarians in the future.
If a law school curriculum already has such a requirement, this is a ripe opportunity for
academic law librarians to seize.
There is a strong parallel
with law librarians — or, as we're calling you today, legal information professionals.
Of the 8 roles identified, this is perhaps the most obvious role (or at least the one most closely associated with what
law librarians do).
This would be problematic especially as my work as a foreign and
international law librarian involves locating resources beyond my local physical boundaries.
I strongly feel that
many law librarians are under - represented in knowledge management within law firms and are short - selling themselves and their organizations by not being more actively involved.
I've started
asking law librarians if they care whether we include parallel cites in our tables of cases.
Throughout my thirty years as a
professional law librarian, I have been immersed in the impacts of technological change on legal research.
I think it is pretty important that the business managers of law firms understand
what law librarians do.
I am not especially advocating a regular contribution to the wine fridge of your
local law librarian who helps you all the time — I leave that to you.
I took a couple of turns through the exhibit and was impressed by the depth and range of projects and studies carried out by
fellow law librarians, instructors, and researchers.
It is full of examples of
how law librarians in different contexts are facing up to the challenges of constant change.
If anyone has
law librarian career, marketing or other issues you would like me to explore in future columns, let me know!
Management of services, staff, budget and evaluation at the strategic and operational level,
makes law librarians a great fit for electronic document / records management.
While finding the law is important, «one has not truly found the law until he understands it,» as one
prominent law librarian has noted.
It's a very helpful technique; and one I hope most in -
house law librarians will soon become familiar with.
The more that
law librarians look to help others within the organization, the more indispensable they make themselves, which is never a bad thing.
\ And consulting with the
expert law librarian / legal research specialist might point to something that had been omitted.
Academic
law librarians face the challenge of choosing which resources students should be trained on.
From research support and online legal research instruction to operations management and strategic planning,
law librarians strive to meet the information challenges facing law firms, corporations, universities and government libraries.
So if walking away if not an option, how can
law librarians approach negotiations to get a result they're happy with?
Admittedly, in the digital age, the demand for traditional library services is changing, so one would expect to see equal change in the services offered by
county law librarians.
You might think, why would an experienced legal researcher and
law librarian spend a lunch hour listening to a topic that she knows?
Except for the leader, and
law librarian bits, I rarely think about what the other two «I am» statements have to do with my job.