The Tension Between Library Collections and Other Work in Law Libraries
There has been an interesting trend in law firms recently of gradually reducing staff in libraries, but adding information specialist positions with various job titles to business development groups. It seems like a missed opportunity for firm libraries to redefine their roles, and for library staff to explore interesting work that increases the return on investment of the library budget. Wondering why this is happening in this way, I started to think about what work takes the majority of library staff time in a firm. It seems that the likely target is the commitment to maintaining print collections, which still take up so much of law libraries’ resources.
Over the last several years, corporate libraries in many industries have been closed as print resources become less important to employees’ daily tasks, office space has become more expensive, and professional staff in many fields are expected to do many things for themselves that they used to have done for them. This has been less prevalent in law firms than in other sectors, though law libraries have also been pressured for space and budgets. Partly this is because the opportunity costs of having lawyers do unbillable tasks for themselves are high and partly because the cost of the risks associated with incomplete research are higher still.
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