Planning Season Concepts From Harvard
The Library Journal reported:
A Harvard University Task Force on University Libraries has released a report [PDF] aimed at building a 21st-century library, knitting together the university’s robust and disparate library units, collaborating with peer libraries, and emphasizing access to materials rather than acquisition.
It is budget planning season at my firm. I like to offer our firm management creative solutions for keeping costs low while offering exceptional services and maintaining a collection so lawyers a Field Law have resources at hand to find the best solutions four our client. In the decade that I have shared with my firm, I have been lucky to find creative solutions that consistently reduce our capital budget. I confess that I am running out of ideas for spending less and doing more.
Traditionally Canadian legal publishers raise prices year over year. The CALL Vendor Liaison Committee publishes the trends to assist in budget planning. I am sure it will come as no shock to Slaw readers that if there is a 5% increase, Canadian libraries are trying to figure out which 5% or more of their collections they can do without.
The Harvard Task Force Report applies to the closed system of Harvard University Libraries. Perhaps there are other closed systems that would benefit from the ideas found in the five core recommendations.
Core Recommendations
1. Establish and implement a shared administrative infrastructure.
2. Rationalize and enhance our information technology systems.
3. Revamp the financial model for the Harvard libraries.
4. Rationalize our system for acquiring, accessing, and developing materials for a “single university” collection.
5. Collaborate more ambitiously with peer libraries and other institutions.
Field libraries DO share an administrative infrastructure within our multiple locations, we do rationalize our technology systems, our financial model is sound, and we base our acquisitions on a single firm collection model. The recommendation that is available is number 5.
Most law firm libraries will share materials with other firm libraries by inter-library loan. My colleague at the firms downstairs and down the street often call this the “phone a friend” option. Perhaps it is time to collaborate more ambitiously?
The tricky part is if everyone is reducing spending and therefore don’t have the materials to share. And subscribing to electronic rather than paper makes things difficult to share as well. Do you need to coordinate what you cut back on with the other firms to ensure there is still coverage somewhere, that you don’t all drop the same subscriptions? There was a time when the university law libraries coordinated which countries they carried in their legislation collections so that all countries of interest were collected, but they weren’t duplicating effort. Perhaps an effort like that is needed.
Another consideration for private law firms is the competitive advantage of the private library. Is it appropriate to provide free access to the latest content to someone potentially on the other side of a matter?
Of course: the materials themselves are neutral. The alternative would be to require everyone to buy everything.
What the firm can’t do is compromise the clients’ confidential information.
Lending out the books in the library wouldn’t affect that in the slightest.
The CBA Conflicts report suggested that law librarians should not be treated as being exposed to client confidences. I would take a lot of persuading to include librarians within an ethical screen, or treat any volume in the library as having restricted access.
It would be interesting to know if any small/medium-sized firms are (or have considered) creating shared libraries in order to maximize the number of resources while spreading the cost.
On the other hand, this from panelist at the Law Firm Leadership conference today had me shaking my head, quoted from David Allgood, RBC Executive VP and General Counsel:
“If we have “7 Sisters” law firms in Canada (top-ranked firms), why do we have 7 law libraries?”
With all respect, I don’t think he realizes the increasing role libraries and library staff play in the firms, beyond making books accessible. If a joint library were sufficient for firms, they would be using the law society libraries.
This idea surfaces every dozen years or so, and I have yet to see a proposed business model that would satisfy the firms involved.
A colleague form another firm and I and in the same building are tossing about the idea of informally sharing “nice to have” titles on a trial basis. Apart from all of the other issues surrounding print resource sharing agreements, the fact remains that if we share some things, that requires an extra (time consuming?) administrative layer over part of the collection.
This plan could never take the place of having a good core collection on site and for in house use. Sharing parts of a collection could also never compensate for each organization having its own library staff as “trusted advisor”
Simon made a good point about materials being neutral.