Law Library Trends Survey Published

Primary Research Group Has Published Law Library Benchmarks

Stumbled on a useful study which presents data from a survey of 84 law libraries. The results are interesting:

 Close to half of the libraries in the sample have decreased the size of the library within the past five years, and more than half of the law firm libraries have done so. Both small and large libraries have tended to decrease their size.
 More than 70% of the law libraries in the sample increased their budgets in 2005 and only a shade more than 3% decreased their budgets.
 Sixty five percent (65%) of the law libraries in the sample expected their budgets to increase in 2006, while only 8.33% expected a decrease.

Law Library spending for contents and materials:
 The libraries in the sample spent a mean of $561,537 for online databases in 2005. One library spent nearly $7.5 million. The law firm libraries in the sample spent by far the most, spending a mean of $1,036,920.
 Perhaps surprisingly, expenditures on print resources still account for more than half of the materials/content spending for the libraries in the sample. Only law firm and private company law libraries spend less than half of their content/materials budgets for print resources.

Reference and research policies
 Overall, less than 8% of the libraries in the sample say that intellectual property issues are involved in as much as 30% of the library’s research. Indeed, for more than half of the libraries in the sample intellectual property issues are involved in less than 5% of library research projects.
 For about 70% of the libraries in the sample, questions involving mergers & acquisitions were involved in 5% or fewer of their research projects. As might be expected, law firm and private company law libraries were the most likely to be concerned with mergers and acquisitions as a primary research theme.
 The law librarians in the sample spent a mean of 4.23 hours online per day, a figure that is generally and surprisingly low for knowledge workers in highly information intensive industries. Print still matters in the law library world, much more so than in the general corporate library world.
 Spending on print reporters by the libraries in the sample fell in 2006, with mean spending dropping from $34,815 to $32,819, or by 5.73%. Spending by law firm libraries fell to $40,172 from $46,061, or by 12.8%.

Blogs, Listservs and RSS feeds
 The librarians in the sample spent a mean of 3.93 hours per week reading blogs and listservs.

Internet search skills of attorneys
 Most librarians in the sample characterized the internet search skills of the attorneys in their organizations as “Average” but only a shade more than 17% considered them “Proficient” or “Highly Proficient.”