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Handbook of Legal Information Management
For those who might not have seen it on the CALL email list, BIALL (British and Irish Association of Law Librarians) has a new Handbook of Legal Information Management, published by Ashgate and edited by Loyita Worley. This is the list of essays and their authors:
- Law libraries and their users, Jules Winterton;
- Sources of legal information and their organisation, Guy Holborn;
- Legal research techniques and tips, Peter Clinch;
- Library and information systems management, Mandy Webster;
- Financial management: planning and charging, Michael Maher;
- Managing legal information professionals, Jackie Berry;
- Copyright and data protection, Elaine Ansell;
- Knowledge management, Sue Doe and Christine Miskin;
- Taxonomies, Sue Doe and Christine Miskin;
- Virtual learning environments, Sue Pettit;
- Academic law libraries, David Hart;
- Freelance legal information specialists, Helen Dewar;
- Government department libraries, Jackie King and Sandra Naylor;
- Law firm libraries, Fiona Durrant;
- Overseas law librarianship, Vanessa O’Meara;
- Professional society libraries: the Northern Ireland experience, Heather Semple;
- Ethics in law librarianship, Jonathan Gordon-Till
The book costs USD134.95 and may be ordered from:
Ashgate Publishing
PO Box 2225
Williston, VT 05495-2225 USA
Toll-free: 800-535-9544
Fax: 802-864-7626
Email: orders@ashgate.com
Managing legal information professionals, you say…. Hmmm.
I will definitely order the book and I look forward to reading it – thanks for sharing it! I also find funny the concept of “Managing legal information professionals”, ah well, let’s read before judging…
Because neither of you come from an LIS background, you’re likely missing the reference. :-)
The term ‘Information Professionals’ is an umbrella term that encompasses the varied expertises within the Library community, and is often used to include those of us who obtained our degrees on the ‘Information Science’ end of the MLIS degree. Also, because not everyone who works in a Library is a Librarian, it’s also used to be inclusive of Library Technicians and other related disciplines.
These days with the idea of the ‘knowledge worker’ or ‘information worker’ so prevalent, and hence Lawyers and other disciplines could be seen as ‘information professionals’, the two concepts are likely to merge and cause some confusion.
So, the title is likely referring to the management of a Library, Research, or Information Services, or KM operations, within the context of a law firm or academic law library setting.
Is it still funny? or am I the one misunderstanding?
On the other hand, as a legal information professional, I prefer being “consulted” rather than “managed”. Heh. ;-)
Steven – that’s helpful. When reading your comment I realized that I had automatically equated the expression “legal information professionals” with lawyers. All the same, if it makes us smiling, there is no harm done… :-)
I was actually thinking of us — the diverse nature of our membership — and imagining the task of managing a group like this. A bunch of nothing but lawyers might be easy compared to us.
No harm done at all. :-) I figured there was some jargon-speak misinterpretation going on…
And Simon, I think if one had to manage this group, it might be less of a “hmmm…” moment, and more of a ‘run from the building screaming’ kind of thing.
At the KM World and Intranets 2005 conference in November, keynote speaker Tom Davenport attempted to address the question of how to manager what he called “knowledge workers” (the term coined by Peter Drucker). I think this is much the same as what we are talking about–he said that a knowledge worker is someone highly educated, having a lot of expertise in his/her area; and can create, distribute or apply knowledge. He indicated that, for example, librarians distribute and lawyers apply knowledge.
While knowledge workers typically enjoy high levels of autonomy, our work is unstructured, collaborative, and iterative, creating problems for our management.
He then went into a detailed 10-point plan for working with/managing knowledge workers. I attempted to capture that outline here:
http://conniecrosby.blogspot.com/2005/11/tom-davenport-tuesday-keynote-address.html
(incidentally, this post on my blog is one of the most popular).
Cheers,
Connie
I thought the expression “knowledge worker” was first coined by Alvin Toffler? (not sure)
No Patrick – the term is more popularly credited to the late Peter Drucker: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/history_knowledge/drucker.html and [knowing how much we trust the Wikipedia] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_worker
As well, Davenport was paying homage to Peter Drucker in his talk as Drucker had just passed away.