Satellite libraries, as the name suggests, are libraries that are adjuncts to a principal library. In law firms, they can vary in size from a bookcase in a hallway to a full-sized library. Satellite libraries may be in the same building as the central library, or they may in a different city or even country. They may or may not have library staff running them. Unstaffed satellite libraries present a greater challenge as they depend on articling students, receptionists, or secretarial staff to do such things as loose-leaf filing and reshelving books.

Why do satellite libraries exist? For satellite libraries found in the same building as the main library, they tend to be specialized collections that support the work of a well-defined group; an example would be highly used real estate books being placed in a satellite library for the firm’s real estate group. These sorts of satellite libraries may either happen spontaneously (for example, a member of the real estate group decides to place all the real estate books in the bookcase outside his office for ease of reference) or be a deliberate choice. Satellite libraries in other locations may be unstaffed due to the office’s size (the office is too small to justify a full-time librarian) or there may have been a conscious decision to centralize all library services.

Services provided to satellite libraries by the main library may include research and reference (particularly if the satellite library has no library staff), technical services (such as cataloguing), and maintaining the library catalogue.

Challenges of managing unstaffed satellite libraries include:

• Library staff in the main location may not be as aware of user needs. It is much easier to know what books are being used a lot and what areas are of research interest when you have face-to-face contact with library users.
• For satellite libraries in different cities, library training can be a challenge. In order to carry out training, either a staff member has to travel to the satellite office to do the training (which is time-consuming) or training must be done as a webinar (which presents its own challenges).
• In an unstaffed satellite library, the support staff do not tend to see the library as a priority. As a result, filing may not get done (or be done incorrectly), books may not get shelved, and invoices may go missing. Problems with loose-leaf filing can be alleviated by replacing the contents of a loose-leaf publication on a yearly basis rather than having an ongoing subscription; this has the twin benefits of reducing both costs and filing errors. Unfortunately, Carswell’s recent changes to its loose-leaf policy means that you can no longer save money by doing this.
• It is easier for books to go missing.

With unstaffed satellite libraries, it is helpful to make regular visits. The frequency, however, of these visits are quite dependent on the remoteness and size of the library. Physically being there means that you can see the physical state of library and talking to library users and the support staff who are helping with library maintenance. These visits can also include training sessions.

Communication with the people using the library is important. In addition to visiting the library at regular intervals, it is useful to have a local advocate (a “library partner” or “library associate”) in each office with a satellite library who can suggest purchases or alert you to any problems.

Electronic resources can be an effective way of providing library services remotely. Advantages include not having to worry about loose-leaf services getting updated and, unlike print materials, electronic resources do not go missing. Electronic resources can be challenging to set up as, depending on the publisher, licensing may be inflexible. The costs of the product may be greater than the print publication being replaced. Additional staff time may be needed to train users on these new electronic materials.

As more and more materials become available electronically, a number of the issues associated with managing satellite libraries will lessen. Communication, as always, remains key. In order to provide the best possible service, it is vital to know who is using the satellite library and how best to be responsive to their needs.

In 2011 the Education Advisory Board released a report, Redefining the Academic Library: Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services, which looked at trends in academic libraries and the direction in which they were going. Although I work in a private law library while the report deals with academic libraries, I found the report very interesting; a number of challenges that it identifies are also faced by private law libraries.

The usual suspects are here: rising journal costs, the challenge of being a library in the age of Google and Amazon, and trying to do more with less. The report includes an excellent list of questions on pages xiv and xv designed to help university libraries to identify challenges, a number of which are applicable to private law libraries.

Leveraging Digital Collections

The report is divided up into four sections, the first of which is “leveraging digital collections”. Digital materials pose a number of challenges for libraries: they account for an ever increasing percentage of library budgets, and they tend to be more time-consuming to manage than books once licensing and negotiation, technological issues, and training users are factored in. The report identifies digital rights management (DRM) as one of the most significant barriers to the successful integration of digital materials, noting that:

Ironically, it is now easier to share physical books than electronic copies. Until licensed or “fair use” access to the mass-digitized corpus is resolved, colleges and universities will be unable to begin replacing physical collections with digital access to scanned material.

The move from print to ebook within university libraries may prove to be a challenge for private law libraries as it reduces the pool of materials that can be legally borrowed.

One section that I found particularly interesting was the discussion of the Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA) model for ebook delivery. One advantage of ebooks (assuming private law libraries can find an appropriate ebook lending model) is their instantaneous nature. Typically, when a lawyer wants a book, they need it immediately, so libraries (budget allowing) tend towards the “just-in-case” model. However, libraries do not need to buy ebooks until they are requested, as the ebook model permits just-in-time acquisition and loan. The logical next question is then how will lawyers know what books are out there on a specific topic? In a PDA program,

libraries typically contract with an ebook vendor, who then places an agreed-upon portion of its listings in the library’s own catalog. Users see these ebooks along with the library’s own holdings, even though the library has yet to purchase them. The library pays the vendor only when patrons use an ebook, usually in the form of small rental fees for limited use or full purchases for extensive use.

The report examines Grand Valley State University’s PDA pilot program, wherein there was no charge for any book looked at for under five minutes; once a book was looked at more than three times (this was later changed to five times), the system automatically bought the book.

Repurposing Library Space

The third section of the report discusses repurposing library space. A significant percentage of volumes in academic libraries have never been circulated; in some institutions this is true of 80% of the collection. These non-circulating materials take up space which could be used for “collaborative learning” in university libraries or other library-related functions. From personal experience, I know that if we kept circulation figures circulation would not indicate the full extent of a book’s use as it does not account for in-library use which can be significant. The report suggests that libraries are shedding extraneous materials to free up space; I think this may be one area in which private law libraries are ahead of academic libraries. The authors provide a list of helpful suggestions as to how best reduce on-site collection size; these include using pre-set metrics and collaborative collection management.

Redeploying Library Staff

The fourth section, on “Redeploying Library Staff”, discusses a number of interesting initiatives, some of which may not be feasible for very small libraries. One of the suggestions is embedding librarians, the pros and cons of which were discussed recently by Cindy Adams in “Law Firm Librarians: Out of Sight, Out of Mind” (which talks about embedding librarians within practice groups) and Tony Chan in “The Solo Law Firm Librarian and the "Wildcard" Approach to Service” (as a solo librarian, he cannot be embedded, but he talks about how to provide services virtually).

Given that private law firm libraries tend to rely on academic libraries to supplement their resources, it is valuable to know where academic libraries are headed. If academic libraries “can no longer harbor delusions of being a completely comprehensive collection” then what are the implications for other libraries?

A few months ago we had a minor flood in the library. It wasn’t catastrophic, in large part due to the observant eyes of a lawyer browsing our tax section. Nonetheless it was a reminder of how important it is for libraries, regardless of size, to have a disaster recovery plan. In addition to our firm-wide business recovery plan, we now have a specialized library disaster plan.

Key tips for the disaster plan include:

• Keep the plan simple. Guy Robertson, a specialist in disaster planning, recommends that the plan be small and portable; wallet-sized is ideal.
• Clearly delineate responsibilities of the various library staff members in the case of disaster. For example, who notifies vendors to stop mail?
• Have a list of vendors in one place along with contact numbers and account numbers; make sure all staff members have a copy.
• Keep a copy of the plan at home.
• Review the plan regularly to make sure that contact and other information remains up to date.
• With regards to restoration services (e.g. to repair books) it is a good idea to contact your preferred vendors ahead of time. Time is of the essence when trying to save print materials so already having an established relationship will speed the recovery process up.
• Set priorities with regards to what materials you would want to save/replace. What should your priorities be in order to get the library back up and running?

If your library catalogue and related databases are housed off-site by your vendor, you may want to check where they are located and where your vendor keeps the backups. For example, our library catalogue vendor is also in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia (prime earthquake area) so it is important that the backups of our databases be located somewhere else.

As important as the physical and electronic collections are, it is also important to plan for the situation in which you suddenly lose a staff member. Some tips include:

• You should have a general library email account to which all invoices and e-newsletters are sent. If, for example, all e-newsletters are sent to the email account of a specific member and he or she ends up being away unexpectedly, this can lead to frustration.
• All members of staff should have a job manual. The manual does not have to be very long but it should specify what they do, basic guidelines for how they do it, and any important contact information. Like the disaster plan, make sure you keep your job manual up-to-date. Keeping it in a digital format such as a Wiki makes it accessible and easy to maintain.
• If you are a solo library professional, you will probably want to make IT (as they tend to get the “why isn’t this database working?” questions) and Human Resources aware that you have created these resources and where they can find them.

We haven’t yet had to put our disaster plan into practice (for which I am very glad) but the process of setting up the plan was useful and, should we ever need to implement it, I will be very grateful we went through the process.

Resources
http://www.sla.org/content/resources/inforesour/sept11help/disip/ is a bibliography of disaster-planning resources
"Hit by a bus" has some useful tips on planning for unexpected staff absences.

Librarians often use the rule that 20% of a library's collection accounts for 80% of its use. However a recent OCLC study found that 80% of the circulation in a university library was driven by just 6% of the collection. Given that law libraries, whether academic, courthouse or private law firm, are constantly under space pressures, does this mean that we should be discarding the other 80-94% of the collection and using the space for something else? (Spoiler: my answer is “no”.)

Usage is not necessarily a good measure of the value of an item. There are items in my library that may get used once every two years. Does that make them less valuable? Not necessarily. "Grey literature" (non-commercial publications such as government publications) can be hard to track down. I am fortunate to have an excellent university library and courthouse library within easy reach, but they do not always own these ephemeral materials, and even if they do, they may not be available. (For example, the University of British Columbia's law library underwent renovations recently, resulting in the collection being inaccessible.) When lawyers require these materials, they usually need them as soon as possible, so having them to hand saves lawyer time and stress.

So how do you know what lesser used materials in your library are valuable, and what aren't? Well, why aren't they high use materials? Do they belong to a niche area with a small number of potential users? Are they available in a different format that is preferable to users? (For example we have a set of the English Reports in print. Because of their age, it is much easier – and less dusty – to read them online.) Is it that users simply don’t know about them? (And why not?) Or are these materials no longer useful?

A collection development policy (as recently discussed on SLAW by Louis Mirando) is key; libraries – no matter what their size – need to have one, in addition to a weeding policy that formalizes what the criteria are for removing items from the library. (Karen Sawatzky wrote an great article on the subject of weeding one’s collection.) However one’s collection development policy cannot remain static: lawyers join the firm, bringing new clients and new practices; they develop new practice areas; new areas of law develop (for example, clean energy).

If libraries are facing space issues, one solution is to digitize these lesser used materials; while the "virtual" library space isn't limitless, it does offer libraries a chance to archive materials that might not be deemed worthy of physical library space. The issue, of course, is that making electronic copies requires staff time and may run into copyright issues. If we don't think an item is worthy of shelf space, why do we think it worthy of the staff time it would take to make a digital library?

How should librarians communicate the value of these items to their users? Wilma MacFarlane, former Library Manager at Farris LLP in Vancouver, handled the issue of lesser used but valuable items in an innovative way. She had one of her partners pull all the key texts for understanding the history of two specific subject areas (corporate law and railway law) and then had them bound in a distinctive binding to indicate their value. They may not have been the high use items, but they were incredibly valuable for historical research and this way their value could be made visible to library users.

While statistics about usage can be helpful, just knowing how often a book is borrowed is not, in itself, a useful measure of its value. Usage statistics need to be looked at in the context of the library’s clientele’s needs and the library’s collection policy. It is important for librarians to understand and to be able to articulate the value of such items in their collections, and what they add to the collection as a whole.

Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada use “*”. CanLII uses “!”. I’m referring to the symbol that these databases use for as a “wildcard”, that is the symbol used to represent one or more characters in a string when carrying out a search. Conversely, when it comes to the symbol used to truncate a word, Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada use “!”, but CanLII uses “*”. (Google does not allow users to truncate search terms at all, although it does use “*” as a wildcard in phrase searches.)

Not only does the symbol used for the wildcard vary among online services, but some services may use different symbols for the wildcard depending on whether it can replace multiple characters or only a single character. For example, CCH Online uses “?” as a single character wildcard (e.g. “mari?uana”) but “*” as a multiple character wildcard (e.g. “securit*” would retrieve “security”, “securities” and so forth.)

By default, most search engines will perform an absolute search: they will return any documents that include the precise words entered. Quicklaw or Westlaw Canada will include the plurals of the search terms in their search. More sophisticated search engines such as Google and CanLII will perform their own fuzzy logic for matching words or phrases that are similar to the ones entered. WIldcards are therefore very useful when searching databases like Quicklaw and Westlaw as they allow users to find records that have variants of a particular search term.

Where did the term “wildcard” (or “wild card”) come from? Its first recorded use (with the meaning “a playing card that has its rank chosen by the player holding it”) was in 1927, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The term was subsequently adopted in computing; in a number of computer operating systems the asterisk is used as the wildcard symbol for multiple characters, with the question mark being used to indicate a single character.

So what about the symbols chosen to represent the Boolean search terms (AND, OR, NOT)? The ampersand is fairly consistently used as a replacement for the Boolean term AND; CCH, Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada all use it. The vertical bar or pipe (“|”) is a pretty common alternative to OR; CCH, DisclosureNet and Google all use it. (“|” is used for OR in a number of computer programming languages.) There is more variety in the symbolic replacements for NOT; CanLII uses a dash (“-”), CCH uses the caret (“^”) and Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada use the percentage sign (“%”). Generally though, try not to use “NOT” in a search as you can end up inadvertently excluding relevant search results.

As an aside, the term “Boolean” comes from the inventor of Boolean logic, George Boole, who was a nineteenth century English mathematician.

The inconsistent use of symbols means that users have to be careful when running the same search on different platforms. Using “*” instead of “!” (or vice versa) can lead to a narrower search than was intended. It is therefore important, when training users on a new database, to make sure they are aware of any quirks in the database’s search syntax.

For ease of use, I’ve included a quick reference table below.

[1] n is used to indicate how close the two terms should be to one another, e.g. “contract /5 sale” would find everything that had the words “contract” AND “sale” within 5 words of each other.

(This article is based on a talk that I gave at this year’s Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference.)

With online services accounting for an ever-increasing percentage of libraries' budgets, it is important to be able to keep an eye on the usage of these services. Fortunately, a number of these online services offer usage reports. These reports allow the account administrators to get a clearer picture of how these services are used and how to get the most out of them.

Where to get usage reports

The availability of usage reports varies greatly from publisher to publisher, and from product to product. Some services have fairly sophisticated online usage reporting systems which allow you to set up automatically generated reports and to slice-and-dice the data according to your needs (e.g. Quicklaw’s PowerInvoice, Westlaw Canada’s Reporting System). Some products deliver their usage reports as paper printouts or the PDF equivalent. Other products require you to specifically request usage reports from the vendor as they are not automatically generated. Finally there are those services that do not offer usage reports; in order to gauge usage of those services, you either have to rely on self-reporting by the user group or buy a third party service.

Third party services which monitor usage have been growing in popularity. Some of the better known products include iTS OneLog, Research Monitor and Lookup Precision. These products may also integrate password management systems and/or include verification of client/matter numbers.

What information do vendor reports contain?

Again, this varies wildly based on the publisher and the product. Generally these reports contain information on who used the product (assuming that you have set up individual user accounts), how often the product was accessed and how long the access lasted. Some reports may give you more details such as the specific databases used, the IP addresses that were used to access the service, the search terms used, or the number of pages printed.

What can you use this information for?

Recovering costs. For private law firms, a key use for usage reports is to aid in the recovery of costs from clients. For pay-as-you-go services, calculating the costs to be charged back is fairly straightforward. For services where you are paying a “flat fee” which is independent of the actual usage, it can get a bit more complicated. Westlaw Canada and Quicklaw provide what are referred to as “notional charges"; generally these charges are based on what would have been charged if the searches had been done on a pay-as-you-go basis.

When and which costs should be charged back to clients rather than treated as overhead is a separate and complex discussion. Nina Platt has written a very interesting column on precisely this issue: "Cost Recovery of Online Legal Research: When is Overhead NOT Overhead".

Deciding whether to renew contracts or not. Being able to see if a resource is actually being used and if so how much is important information. While lawyer feedback on a resource is useful, from personal experience I have discovered that there can be quite a difference between self-reported usage and actual usage. A number of online services allow you to add or subtract modules as you see fit; it is important to get the most out of your library budget by paying only for modules that are being used.

Targeting training. It is not unusual for articling students who have had free access to Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada at law school to aggressively use the firm’s databases, sometimes resulting in a very large bill. My firm carries out cost-effective training for all new students but I have found that it also helps to keep an eye on the usage report and, should the numbers start to rise, to gently suggest some one-on-one training. Teaching students to search effectively not only reduces database charges to the client but also reduces the amount of time spent searching.

Marketing the service. For librarians it can be immensely frustrating to have a wonderful resource and see that few people are using it. Usage statistics allow us to see who is using a resource and who isn’t (but ought to); this information allows us to target our marketing efforts at the non-users. Usage reports can also be used as a way of measuring the effectiveness of the marketing for a specific product.

When trying to get the most out of your usage reports, keep in mind that your account representatives are one of your most valuable resources. They can tell you what your options are for a given product and some even offer training on their automated report systems.

No matter how good a library is, space and economic constraints mean that it simply cannot carry everything a researcher might need. As a result, libraries rely on other libraries to help fill in the gaps in their collection. (This practice has its flaws, most notably being what happens when the other libraries stop carrying the materials you need, but that’s another column.) I run the library of a Vancouver law firm so my “go to” libraries (as you might expect) are the B.C. Courthouse Libraries and the University of British Columbia’s Law Library. However, I also use the Vancouver Public Library extensively as it has resources that the other two do not.

Public libraries do not tend to have the extensive legal collections found in a courthouse or university library; their strengths lie elsewhere. The diversity of their collection means that they can provide resources that one might not necessarily be able to find a library with a focus purely on law.

Here are some suggestions as to how legal professionals can use their public library for both legal research and business development:

Government documents
A number of public libraries function as depositories for Canadian government information, meaning that they receive copies of all Government of Canada publications distributed via the Weekly Checklist. This comes in handy when trying to find older federal government materials where a significant amount of content is not available electronically. Examples of such material include Senate and House of Commons committee reports, Statistics Canada publications, and historical reports.

Standards
Technical standards can be very expensive so a purchase may not be economically feasible when only a single use is going to be made. It is therefore worthwhile checking with one’s public library to see if they already own the standard needed.

Business directories
Public libraries tend to have collections of business directories. These can be useful for finding contact information (despite the prevalence of business websites, it can be extraordinary what information doesn’t make it on to the site) or for gleaning business intelligence.

Newspaper databases/microfiche
Although most newspapers freely publish most of their recent news stories online, sometimes one may need to find an older news article. Most public libraries provide access to newspaper databases to assist with this. Alternatively, one may need a copy of how a particular page of the paper as it was originally published (for example a copy of an advertisement may be needed and most newspaper databases don’t include this type of ephemera). Public libraries usually have microfilm or electronic databases of copies of old papers which retain the full layout.

Research
Some public libraries offer paid research services whereby librarians will carry out more extensive research than can be offered for free; an example is the Vancouver Public Library’s InfoAction. Examples of the kinds of research InfoAction carries out include business or market research, and obtaining copies of documents. One particularly useful thing is that these services can request information from a government or organization while acting as an anonymous proxy; the library service functions as an intermediary so that there is no disclosure that a law firm is interested in the information.

Specialized collections
A public library is likely to have a specialised collection of books about the area it is located in, including those that have been published by small presses or vanity publishers. These can be extremely useful when trying to find out the specific history of an area or a local business.

Obviously the size of the public library is going to be a factor; the resources available through the public library system has will vary tremendously by individual library. Nonetheless, the public library is an excellent resource and one that should not be overlooked.

In a previous article, I discussed some issues with loose-leaf subscriptions and suggested that a number of them might well be replaced by eBooks. The term ‘eBook’ is used for electronic material produced in a wide range of formats. These formats include, but certainly are not limited to, HTML, PDF, AZW (Amazon’s proprietary format for the Kindle), EPUB (an open e-book format used by the iPad) and Mobipocket. Not all these formats are compatible with all devices. Wikipedia has an excellent list of the various formats, along with a table showing which format will work on what device.

The majority of Canadian legal eBooks produced so far have been designed for access via a desktop computer, either online or as a downloadable PDF. Examples include Carswell’s eReference Library (online), Irwin Law’s E-Library (online) and David Whelan’s Finding & Managing Legal Information on the Internet (PDF). Although price and licencing issues can be a factor, from a library point of view online eBooks generally can be managed in the same way as other electronic databases.

Making sure that library users are aware of the full range of library resources is always a concern and even more so when it comes to non-print materials such as eBooks. How then does one make eBooks as accessible as possible to library users? Key concerns include such things as how to integrate eBooks into the library catalogue; for example, how should libraries handle electronic resources that have significant numbers of titles on them? Should they add all the titles into the catalogue or just selected ones? Larger law libraries, such as university law libraries, generally have the technical resources to integrate the list of journal and electronic titles directly into their catalogue. Alternatively, should libraries merely note the existence of the database in their catalogue?

Even if eBooks are included in the catalogue, libraries may still run into the problem that users will not use this material. Based on personal experience, a certain number of people find reading books on a computer screen to be awkward so even if a user does find the eBook in the library catalogue, he or she may not wish to use it. At the other end of the spectrum, there are those people who use Google for all their research and if a resource does not show up in Google, it might as well not exist. A colleague of mine recently commented that she dealt with law students who had never used the university’s library catalogue; they just Googled for materials.

There are still only a small number of Canadian legal eBooks designed for mobile devices, such as Canada Law Book’s British Columbia Annual Practice, and Carswell’s Practitioners Income Tax Act; the number of U.S. law books available for eReaders is much greater. It is far easier to read eBooks on a tablet than it is on the small screen of a Blackberry or iPhone so the ever increasing popularity of tablets means that the potential market for legal eBooks is growing.

Similarly, when it comes to legal apps, American publishers are ahead of Canadian publishers. Among the legal information apps currently available are Black’s Law Dictionary, WestlawNext and a number of U.S. federal and state codes. There are a minimal number of Canadian legal apps so far; Wilson and LaFleur have produced an app for the iPad that allows users to access a small number of French language titles.

It is likely that there are going to be increasing numbers of eBooks available over the next few years, so the question then becomes: how do libraries best manage eBooks for mobile devices?

Although public libraries have been in the forefront of eBook lending, their model does not really lend itself to law libraries. British Columbia’s public libraries provide access to a wide range of eBooks through Library To Go wherein titles are requested and checked out in a manner akin to the traditional process and then downloaded to the user’s computer or mobile device. Once the loan period is up, the book is automatically deleted, so the next person can “borrow” it. Libraries can only lend a preset number of copies of a book, so for a popular book users have to wait for it in the same way they would for a physical copy. There are some practical issues with this model when it comes to private law libraries. Unlike public libraries, the materials in a private law library collection are intended to be readily accessible all the time. With a traditional print book in a law firm library, a user either reads it in the library or signs it out to use in his or her office. If someone else needs that book, they can see who has the book and then borrow it from the original borrower.

A different way of handling eBooks is to place multiple eBooks and apps on a portable device (such as a Kindle, Kobo or iPad) which can then be loaned out. As with the public library model, this too reduces access to books since a borrower can’t then pass those books he or she isn’t using on to another user. This may become less of an issue as Amazon has introduced a system whereby Kindle books in the United States can be lent to other people. However, not all Kindle books are eligible for loans as it depends entirely on how the publisher has set up the eBook licence. It seems apparent that how legal publishers licence eBooks is going to be a major issue for libraries.

Given these issues a logical market for eBooks is as a replacement for the “desk copy”. From a practical point of view, it is much easier to manage an eBook when it is only going to be used by a single person. One advantage of an eBook over print is the ability to easily search the text, and some eBook readers allow annotation. An added bonus is that an eBook reader tends to weigh less than its paper equivalent; a single copy of the Income Tax Act is significantly heavier than any of the portable eBook readers on the market. (Furthermore, eBook consolidations of legislation are much less likely to be left behind in conference rooms than print versions.) The general purpose Apple iPad and the forthcoming Blackberry PlayBook (which will come with Kobo’s e-reader software installed) mean that the number of lawyers with access to some variety of eBook reader is likely to increase.

Judging from the vendor forum at the 2010 Canadian Association Law Libraries conference, legal publishers are very interested in the eBook concept. From the librarian’s perspective, there are a number of reasons for integrating eBooks into the library: reduced library space, ease of supporting the needs of lawyers who work remotely, and making it simpler for lawyers who would like to go paperless. Going forward from here, it is important that publishers work with libraries to develop both a business model and a practical framework for eBooks that meets the needs of all parties.

We’ve discussed Google Scholar on SLAW before. Google Scholar allows you to search legal opinions and journals for free, and while the coverage is primarily American, there are a significant amount of Canadian materials available. Not everything in Google Scholar is available in full-text; in some cases only the citations are included.

Google Scholar supports most of Google Search’s advanced operators (e.g. “phrase search”, + and -). It also allows users to limit their searches by date with the caveat that “that some web sources don't include publication dates, and a date-restricted search will not return articles for which Google Scholar was unable to determine a date of publication.”

If you are looking for court cases on Google Scholar, you can limit your search to a specific U.S. jurisdiction (federal or state) but there is no way of limiting your search to case law from jurisdictions outside the United States. Admittedly there is no real reason to use Google Scholar to locate Canadian case law for free as CanLII fills that role quite nicely. (As Simon Fodden has noted Google Scholar does not incorporate material from CanLII.)

Furthermore although you can limit your search results to just case law you cannot do the opposite and limit your search results to just legal journals.

Hein Online has allowed Google Scholar to index approximately 1,100 titles so that they are searchable using the Google Scholar interface. Although Hein Online is an American publisher, it includes Canadian journals. (A full list of the journals on Hein Online can be found here.) If you don't have a Hein Online subscription, you may not be able to see the full text of these articles; however, for a number of articles there are links to free versions elsewhere on the internet. Given the scope of Hein Online, the inclusion of its materials improves the quality of the search results.

There is no easy way (yet) of limiting your Google Scholar search to just Canadian materials. Simply using site:ca to limit the results to those found on a Canadian site will mean that a number of relevant results may be missed, including those from Hein Online.

Another way of retrieving only Canadian articles is by using the journal name to limit the search results. For example, you could do this by going into the Advanced Search option and adding can OR canada OR canadian to the publication box. There are two problems with this method, the first one being that this search will return not just journal articles but also case law. The second issue is that the results will omit any Canadian articles published in journals that do not have “Canada” or “Canadian” in their name, as well as articles with citations that shorten Canadian to a “C” (e.g. CBLJ). If you’re searching for articles from within a specific subject area, it may be easier to limit your search to a specific journal or journals. You should make sure that you include all the various ways that that your journal might be cited. Currently Google does not allow you to truncate your search terms.

Using the intitle: operator to limit the search to having “Canada” or “Canadian” in the title (e.g. intitle:canada OR intitle:canadian) is not recommended as you will end up with a lot of case law where the name of one of the parties includes one of these words and you will end up excluding Canadian articles that do not include these words.

Although the bulk of legal materials on Google Scholar are American, there are enough Canadian resources on it to make Google Scholar a worthwhile tool for Canadian legal researchers.

Over the last five years, electronic resources have become an increasingly more important part of the services provided by law libraries. Administering electronic database subscriptions can be a time-consuming process; managing an electronic subscription includes, but is not limited to, evaluating the resource, negotiating a contract, training users, dealing with passwords, and billing back costs (if necessary). This column discusses a specific aspect of managing database subscriptions: the advantages and disadvantages of using individual user IDs rather than organization-wide passwords.

One problem with the growing number of online database subscriptions is the associated increase in the number of passwords that librarians have to administer. It can be frustrating for lawyers and other end users of these products to have to remember a large number of user IDs and passwords; it may even act as a barrier to use of these expensive products. Therefore one of the goals of librarians should be to make it as easy as possible for the end user to access these products.

Obviously, how the resource is licenced is the most important factor. Some products require that each potential user be given a unique ID and password; other products only allow one organization-wide password. In some situations there may be a choice; for example, you may be able to choose between getting an enterprise-wide licence for a product or getting licences for a specific number of named users. You may not always be told there are options beyond what is initially offered, so always check with your vendor. Most vendors are willing to work with you to find the best solution to your needs.

There are several advantages to using individual user IDs and passwords. Individual user IDs mean that you can immediately cut off access when the user leaves. If the resource allows you track usage by user, having individual IDs allows you to see who is using a product and how much they are using it; you can see if a resource is being underutilized by a specific practice group. Being able to track usage may also give you a clue that someone is not using a resource properly. It makes it much easier to bill costs back to clients.

On the other hand, having only one organization-wide (or office-wide) password can make life a lot simpler for an administrator. The password can be easier to find (e.g. it may be published on the organization’s intranet) meaning that users are much less likely to lose access to the resource. Contrast that to the situation in which a lawyer goes to use a resource late at night only to discover he has misplaced his password and has no way of finding it.

A third possibility offered by some vendors is using IP authentication instead of requiring an ID/password for users to log in. Databases that use IP authentication make the login process even easier, as the only thing users have to remember is the database’s URL. In order to use IP authentication, your institution needs to have a fixed IP address or range of IP addresses. The downside is that users may not be able to access the database from home.

Assuming you have options, there are several things to consider when choosing between one password for all users versus individual passwords:

Are you charging back for this product? Generally a good rule is: if you are not charging back for the resource, you should have one general password. If you are charging back, have individual passwords. File numbers get entered incorrectly; it’s much easier to figure out what the real file numbers should be if you know who did the searches in the first place. Some products force users to use approved file numbers. While these products can be useful, they may also act as deterrents to database use.

Are you paying a flat fee for this product or are you paying by usage? If you are paying by usage you want to have an idea of who is using the resource. Every librarian has a horror story involving an articling student and several thousand dollars of database costs. If you do not know who ran up significant costs, you will not be able to tell whether these are legitimate search costs or the result of an articling student who needs some remedial database training.
How much personalization does an individual password allow? A number of databases allow personalization, e.g. the default email address for results to be sent to, preferred format of search results or having favourite databases appear on the front page.

Can the organization’s database administrator or user reset the password if they forget it? User IDs and passwords are easily lost, usually at the most inopportune time. If possible, it is important for someone at your organization to be given the ability to reset passwords rather than the vendor’s technical support being the ones to do it. With one general password, users are less likely to lose access to a product as multiple people will know what the password is.

What are the cost implications? Licencing a product that can be used by all members of an organization is generally more expensive than one is licenced to a specific number of people. (Note that this is not always the case.)

If you are using individual user IDs and passwords, you will want to try to minimize the chances that this information will be forgotten/lost by the user. It helps to have a consistent format for your user IDs; email addresses are ideal as they are easy for users to remember and should be unique. However, the vendor may restrict the length of user IDs resulting in an inability to use email addresses. My firm is a good example since the length of our domain name – lawsonlundell.com – can push email addresses past the 25 character limit imposed by some vendors. Furthermore, not all vendors give you the option of choosing what ID is assigned to each of your users; they choose the user ID for you.

One final note: if going the individual password route, make sure that the vendor sends the IDs and passwords to you so that you have a record of them.

According to the Official Google Blog:

Second, today we demonstrated new mobile editing capabilities for Google Docs on the Android platform and the iPad. In the next few weeks, co-workers around the world will soon be able to co-edit files simultaneously from an even wider array of devices.

This is good news for iPad owners who will no longer need to buy an app to edit Google Docs. (Not to mention making a number of iPad-owning SLAW contributors very happy.)

My library is frequently asked what the best tools are for legislative research in the territories. For provincial legislation (with the exception of British Columbia*) CanLII tends to be our resource of first choice. When it comes to the consolidated legislation for the territories, the situation is a little trickier. Free consolidated legislation is not available for all territorial legislation, so in some cases it may be easiest to go straight to the paid source.

The following is a list of the resources available for finding territorial legislation. Please note that in some cases a completely up-to-date consolidation may not be available and that you will have to finish updating the legislation manually.

Northwest Territories

Of the three territories, the Northwest Territories has the most up-to-date legislation available online; the consolidated acts and regulations on the Department of Justice’s website are current to May 19, 2010 (as of August 6, 2010). 

As CanLII downloads its legislation from the government site the consolidations found on its website are also current to May 19, 2010. A very useful feature of CanLII is that it indicates in the version history if there have been changes even when a consolidated version that incorporates those changes is not available. For example, if you look at the NWT Business Corporations Act on CanLII, you will see that the last version that CanLII has covers the period between Aug 1, 2009 and May 19, 2010, but that there is a subsequent consolidated version that came into force on May 20, 2010. The version history on CanLII looks like this:

8. since May 20, 2010 (missing)

7. between Aug 1, 2009 and May 19, 2010 (past)

6. between Jun 4, 2009 and Jul 31, 2009 (missing)

5. between Oct 26, 2008 and Jun 3, 2009 (past)

4. between Nov 2, 2006 and Oct 25, 2008 (past)

3. between Oct 27, 2005 and Nov 1, 2006 (past)

2. between Oct 29, 2004 and Oct 26, 2005 (past)

1. between Mar 13, 2003 and Oct 28, 2004 (past)

In order to determine what the changes are, you will need to bring the statute up to date manually. As an alternative, you can go to one of the paid sources and see if they have an up-to-date version of the statute. 

Both Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada have consolidated versions of Northwest Territories legislation but these versions are not always completely up-to-date. These services try to have legislation that is current to within four to eight weeks of today’s date. Both Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada indicate the currency of the legislation at the top of the webpage. 

You may also find a consolidated version of a statute on other paid resources. For example, CCH Online has consolidated territorial legislation for specific areas (e.g. business corporations, labour and employment).

Yukon

The Yukon legislation that can be found on the official government website has not been consolidated at all. What the website does provide is a link to the original act along with links to any amending acts. Yukon’s Table of Public Statutes lists all the changes and is updated four times a year with the last update on March 31, 2010. The Regulations of the Yukon are consolidated four times per year, with a table listing any changes between updates. 

Unlike the NWT legislation, CanLII does not have consolidated versions of the legislation. However it does allow you to see when there were changes to the legislation. For example, CanLII’s version history for the Children’s Act reads:

4. since Apr 30, 2010 (missing)

3. between May 15, 2008 and Apr 29, 2010 (missing)

2. between May 2, 2005 and May 14, 2008 (missing)

1. between Jan 1, 2003 and May 1, 2005 (past)

Both Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada have Yukon legislation; this is probably the easiest way to obtain a consolidated copy of a Nunavut statute.

Nunavut

Nunavut has a number of consolidated versions of acts on its website. Unfortunately not all of the legislation of Nunavut is available as an up-to-date consolidation, and of those consolidated versions, not all of them are current. For those acts that have been consolidated, the Department of Justice has helpfully noted any amending acts that have not been included in the consolidation so users can consult the Annual Statutes online to see what the changes are. It is considerably more difficult to determine how those acts which have not been included in the consolidations now read, as the Table of Public Acts of Nunavut only goes up to December 31, 2004.

CanLII’s coverage of Nunavut legislation is based on what Nunavut has on its website. For example, a consolidated version of the Nunavut Commercial Tenancies Act is not available on the government website. CanLII has a copy of the version that was in place until March 22, 2010, along with a note that they are missing the consolidated version of the Act that came into effect March 23, 2010. Knowing that the act changed on March 23, 2010 we can either go straight to a paid source for a consolidation, or we could scan through the 2010 Annual Statutes to find that section 9 of the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2010, S.Nu. 2010, c. 4 amended this act. 

Quicklaw currently does not have any Nunavut legislation although this may change in the future. Westlaw Canada is therefore the best choice for finding consolidated versions of Nunavut legislation. Note that Westlaw Canada does not have all Nunavut regulations, but does include all “key” Nunavut regulations and all new regulations since January 2008.

Citation of Nunavut acts can also lead to some confusion. When Nunavut came into being in 1999 it adopted the statutes of the Northwest Territories, and those adopted statutes are cited R.S.N.W.T. or S.N.W.T. (Statutes that came into being post-1999 are cited S.Nu.) All amendments prior to April 1, 1999 were also adopted. However because amendments subsequent to April 1, 1999 are specific to the territory, a Northwest Territories act may not read the same as a Nunavut act with an identical name and almost identical citation. For example, the Northwest Territories Business Corporations Act, cited S.N.W.T. 1996, c. 19 reads differently from the Nunavut Business Corporations Act, which CanLII cites S.N.W.T. (Nu.) 1996, c. 19. ** 

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* We subscribe to a couple of B.C. specific resources, QP LegalEze and Quickscribe.

** The McGill guide uses the longer citation of " Business Corporations Act, S.N.W.T. 1996, c. 19, as duplicated for Nunavut by s. 29 of the Nunavut Act, S.C. 1993, c. 28"

A January article in Boing Boing talked about loose-leaf publications, marveling about their existence in the same way that the average marine biologist once marveled about the continuing existence of the coelacanth. I'm so used to having loose-leafs in a law firm library that I hadn't considered that they might be considered a novelty elsewhere, but it started me wondering: are loose-leafs going to become the legal library equivalent of the coelacanth? Legal loose-leaf publishing has been around at least since 1915. These early loose-leaf services allowed legal publishers to produce up-to-date consolidations of legislation without having to reprint an entire book every time changes were made to the legislation. In the days before consolidated legislation was freely available, this was a truly valuable service.

A recent (and decidedly unscientific) survey of law libraries in the Vancouver area revealed that over the past eighteen months the majority had cancelled some of their loose-leaf updating services; some services were cancelled outright whereas with others the contents were now being replaced on an annual (or biennial) basis. The chief reason for doing so was cost; for loose-leafs that are updated four or more times a year, the cost of the updates can be double or triple what it would cost to replace the entire contents of the loose-leaf once a year. Whilst the 2009 economic downturn was the catalyst for a number of the cancellations, the general feeling seemed to be that the cancellation of loose-leafs was a trend that was only going to continue.

It should be kept in mind that not all loose-leaf updates are charged for on a per update basis. Other loose-leaf subscriptions are charged for on an annual basis meaning that the library pays a set yearly amount no matter how many updates come.

For many of these cancelled loose-leafs, the perception was that the regular updates did not provide value for money. In some loose-leafs consolidated legislation makes up a significant portion of the publication. Given that this consolidated legislation can be found online for free, and with the added bonus of (generally) being more current than the text in the loose-leaf, a release that contains only legislative material is not considered a good use of money. Both staff time and the library budget dollars can be better used elsewhere.

Another reason for cancellation was the staff time taken to file these updates. Although loose-leaf filing may appear to be straightforward, complicated page numbering and Byzantine filing instructions may mean result in materials being misfiled or inadvertently discarded. If the entire contents of the loose-leaf are replaced on a yearly basis, misfiling ceases to be a problem.

An additional concern is the fact that pages of loose-leafs do go missing, either due to misfiling or someone taking the pages out to photocopy and neglecting to replace them. Again, staff and lawyer time is wasted trying to get copies of the missing pages. Worse, if a page should have been replaced but wasn't, a researcher may inadvertently rely on information that is out of date or wrong.

So, given these all concerns, what does the future of the loose-leaf look like?

Publishers are now offering the content found in traditional print loose-leaf services in different formats, including CD-ROM and online. Online "loose-leafs" are automatically updated by the publisher with no effort required by the library or the end user. With an electronic version of a loose-leaf there is no need to file materials and there are no problems with missing pages. These electronic versions of loose-leafs may exist as stand-alone subscriptions (e.g. Carswell's eReference Library) or as part of an electronic subscription (e.g. Canada Law Book's Labour Spectrum includes Brown and Beatty's Canadian Labour Arbitration). Electronic versions of loose-leafs can take advantage of hypertext links, allowing publishers to either integrate materials from their own database systems or link to materials available freely elsewhere (for example, on CanLII).

Although there are a number of advantages to these electronic subscriptions, they do pose some challenges for librarians. One important one is the way in which online loose-leafs are licensed. With the print version, multiple lawyers can use a single copy of a loose-leaf publication. With an electronic version of the same publication, this might not be the case. Some publishers base their charges on the number of potential users, the cost of which can end up being prohibitively expensive. If a library has a loose-leaf that is used by a number of lawyers infrequently, but the licensing agreement for the electronic version requires a licence for every lawyer who might use the product, the print version may end up being more cost effective.

Publications that are currently provided in a loose-leaf format do not have to become electronic publications. They could instead be printed as books with yearly supplements (as is already done by a number of British and American publishers). Changing to a book format means no staff filing time, no missing pages, and (ideally) lower costs. Another solution is to remove legislative materials that can easily be obtained elsewhere from loose-leafs; this would reduce the amount of staff time spent filing and ideally reduce the costs of the loose-leaf updates.

Over the past eighteen months, many law libraries have dealt with cutbacks that have forced them to re-evaluate their collections policies. Publishers could make their publications more attractive to libraries through innovations that address budget concerns; loose-leafs would seem to be a prime candidate for such innovations. That does not mean the loose-leaf format as we know it is dead. Although it is probable that the number of publications in loose-leaf format will decrease over the next few years, there will always be situations where the format serves a useful purpose.