HOW DOES TODAY’S LAW LIBRARIAN UTILIZE TECHNOLOGY TO ACHIEVE THE FIRM’S BUSINESS GOALS?
July 14, 2016
This July 16-19 in Chicago, the Thomson Reuters Legal Solutions team will once again have the opportunity to meet with our law librarian customers during the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Annual Meeting and Conference. Each year at AALL, Thomson Reuters gains valuable insights from meeting with today’s knowledge management professionals who are helping meet the business goals faced by large law firms – goals like responding to clients who demand more for less; improving efficiency; and integrating technology solutions, to name a few.
Last year, at AALL 2015 in Philadelphia, Thomson Reuters announced the launch of two approaches for large libraries to manage their growing eBook content: ProView Internet Protocol (IP) access and ProView Library Management System (LMS) integration with EOS. These platforms are uniquely designed to help law librarians succeed at their roles in technology management, creating efficiencies and improving client responsiveness.
This year at AALL, we will again demonstrate our eLibrary solutions. We will also share improvements made since AALL 2015 and the ways they help knowledge management professionals continue to be the superheroes of the large law business.
What Both eLibrary Solutions Have in Common
Both eLibrary platforms are approaches for managing the firm’s ProView eBook titles, providing users with the convenience of digital content while maintaining a book-like reading experience that many attorneys prefer. Today, the number of titles available on ProView is over 1,500 (up over 40% from 2015) and growing.
The proprietary ProView platform is built for the way attorneys work, and we’ve made a number of improvements to its functionality based on user feedback, such as:
- Easily find what you need in grouped multi-volume sets: Finding information in multi-volume eBook sets may be challenging, requiring the user to know exactly what they are looking for and in which volume, or risk wasting valuable time searching volume-by-volume. ProView solves this problem by making it easy to search across multi-volume sets like McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition, 4th, or Norton Bankruptcy Law and Practice, 3rd.
- Save time by saving search queries: ProView users may now save search queries and sync those saved queries across all of their devices. That means ProView users retrieve information more quickly, without repeating steps they’ve already taken.
- Collaborate more easily with create-and-share links: Collaboration with colleagues has become simpler with create-and-share link functionality. Users can create links to their chosen content within their own eBooks. They can also save links in their work product and send those links to colleagues who have access to that eBook title.
As before, ProView users may also:
- Access their eBooks on up to four devices.
- Create color-coded notes and highlights, which transfer automatically to new eBook editions.
- Link to Thomson Reuters Westlaw™.
How Your eLibrary Options Differ
What’s different about your two eLibrary options? The right choice for your firm depends on whether concurrent eBook access or library management system integration is the better fit.
Concurrent Access: ProView IP
With the IP eLibrary, all individuals across the entire organization, regardless of office location, can easily and transparently sign on to the ProView browser simultaneously through internet protocol (IP) authentication access. Members of the firm have concurrent access to the entire ProView eBook library.
Library Management System Integration: ProView LMS
The second eLibrary option is the library management system (LMS) eLibrary. LMS integration access is similar to a traditional print library check-in/check-out system. Users can check out an eBook for a specific period of time; the eBook returns to circulation once the check-out period has ended. Our current LMS-ProView integrated offering is in partnership with EOS, a SirsiDynix company.
