The Law Librarian Blog has published the results of its poll which asked…..
Joe Hodnicki writes:
Faced with substantial budget cuts to law library collections and legal research policy changes, LLB launched an informal poll on April 13th looking into what impact the current economy may have on LexisNexis and Thompson West print products and online legal research services and whether any impact would having lasting consequences.
The results are now in and note the conflicted situation we are in. On the one hand, participants see a permanent shift to free and low cost online legal research services, presumably for primary legal materials. On the other hand, reliance on LexisNexis and West online services for secondary materials may trend upward, but at the expense of libraries canceling LexisNexis and West print title continuations that are duplicated online.
Is it too far-fetched to contemplate that their duopolistic pricing practices may end LexisNexis’ and Westlaw’s dominance of the market for online primary legal materials someday? Considering the content-rich, and better designed products offered by BNA and CCH in their web-based services, will libraries eliminate from their plans LexisNexis and West online secondary legal materials covered by BNA and CCH someday?
Will legal publishers like BNA, CCH and Aspen-Loislaw see this as an opportunity to expand their online offerings into subject areas they may once thought they could not be competitive? Expand by offering competitive fundamental research tools like comprehensive and reliable online citation indexes for example
Link to the following url to see the poll results charted
We hope that the answer to this following question also alerts users especially the bigger law firms to look at ways to help support the free information providers
Will the current economic situtaion be "good" for free and low cost online legal research services — do you see or expect to see patrons use them more frequently than in the past?
