More Westlaw Workers Laid Off At Eagan: So Much For Library Relations

Twin Cities .com is reporting that another 60? Westlaw jobs have been lost at Eagan. And remember all their shouting about how important library relations were to them late last year and early this year.

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In the end the library relations team was obviously beefed up around the launch of WestlawNext.. let’s pretend sales people are actually “Library Relations” must have been the approach. And now they have outlived their use they’ve been moved on/ disbanded.

Twin Cities write

Article: Thomson Reuters cutting 60 jobs in Eagan


http://www.twincities.com/business/ci_16639424?nclick_check=1

Thomson Reuters, the New York-based publishers of Westlaw and other legal information services, will lay off 60 workers at its campus in Eagan.

The company is restructuring and creating jobs while eliminating others in Eagan, which is home to its legal division, Thomson Reuters spokesman John Shaughnessy said today.

“Once the entire process is complete, we expect to have around 60 fewer employees on the Eagan campus,” he said. The company did not say when the layoffs would take effect.

The economy has hammered the legal industry for the past couple years and the company says it expects a slow recovery.

The Eagan campus employs 7,000 people, Shaughnessy said.

Thomson Reuters eliminated 120 jobs in Eagan last December and this September it was looking for 130 workers from Eagan and an office in Rochester, NY to accept buyouts as it transferred work to India and the Philippines.

We presume this story on 3 Geeks and a law blog referes to the same job losses

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As Westlaw Axes More Library Relations Managers ? Where’s the “Value” In “Library Relations”?

http://www.geeklawblog.com/2010/11/as-westlaw-axes-more-library-relations.html

[Guest Blogger – Janice Henderson]

Shocking news has occurred with the West Librarian Relations Management (LRM) team with major layoffs.? This was the second round of layoffs for the West LRM in less than a year. According to insiders, long time colleagues: Mark Schwartz (Director), Elaine Lee, Craig Griffith, Michelle Lucero and Erika Beck have been given their walking papers.? Anne Ellis and Lori Headstrom have missed this new development and are still employees of Thomson Reuters.? But for how long?

The question you may ask is why is this happening.? Is the answer purely economic?? I think the bigger question is what Thomson Reuters and to a lesser extent LexisNexis thinks about the librarian community.? The firing of the Librarian Relations Managers indicates that the companies feel that contacting librarians to purchase their products or maintaining a robust librarian relationship is no longer of value to them.

We are seeing this in Thomson Reuters sales strategies for WestlawNext. They are bypassing the librarians and going directly to the CEOs and COOs.? The best way to counteract this strategy is to have our executives push back and have the companies contact us as their experts in negotiating contracts.? If you don’t have this relationship with your COOs and Managing Partners, you need to start creating that relationship now or find your self looking in from the outside instead of being a vital part of management.

It took us years to earn the respect of our management teams.? But we seem to be sliding back to where we were pre-1990s. We have been steadily losing ground.? We lost ground in the 1990s when firms started putting IT Directors in charge of the library.? We’re losing ground in this decade as the Marketing Department is overshadowing us with business research.? In law schools Library Director positions are being filled by? non-librarians.? If we want to go the way of the Librarian Relations Managers, then sit back and do nothing.? But if you want to remain a viable member of the management team, you need to get up and remind them of your value.

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