SarahGlassmeyer(dot)com in perpetual beta

I’m starting to wonder how  many times I can say to myself “…so that happened.” in a week.

I’ve just survived my first week of the fall semester.  And if you’re one of my students reading this, let me assure you that the first week back transition is just as hard on law school faculty and staff as it is on you. I’ve had tons of ILLs to process, longer Reference Desk hours, lectures to prepare (oh, yeah, turns out I will be teaching 1L legal research this fall…there’s some sturm und drang about that too, but I”ll wait until another post to talk about the *dramatic pause* laptop ban) and welcoming receptions to attend, all while trying to navigate through a town/campus who’s population seemingly quadrupled in 24 hours.

Adding to the drama of the week, on Monday Westlaw sent out an advertisement aimed at lawyers with the headline “Are you on a first name basis with the librarian?” And then goes on to say, “If so, chances are you are spending too much time at the library.  What you need is fast, reliable research you can access right in your office.  And all it takes is West.”  Screnshot here.

As my Grandpa Heller would say, that went over like a lead Zepplin with the librarian crowd.

There was outrage and pearl clutching on Law-Lib and twitter about it.  I tried to not make too many comments until I saw the actual ad or heard an official response from West but I did get a screen grab of the ad and posted it on Twitter/twitpic in the interest of sharing information. You can’t imagine how freaked out I was to keep seeing “mentions” notifications on Tweetdeck with people all over the country retweeting it and then adding their own commentary. For the record, I never said Westlaw “sucked” or “was evil.”  (Also, at about the 400th view of the pic, I noticed that the other two pictures visible were of me and a squirrel and me and the Butter Cow at the Ohio State Fair.  *sigh* Professionalism! I haz it! )  So, anyway, it turns out it was in fact a real ad, and West feels terribly about hurting our feelings.

Well, okay then!

I’ve mentioned before that I have complicated feelings about the vendor/librarian relationship.  I personally try to not accept vendor swag but I don’t think less of my librarian compatriots that do.  I don’t think that Wexis are evil, nor do I think that there’s anything wrong with running a for-profit business. I do wonder why we rely on commercial vendors for information that tax dollars have already paid for and how much profit is “enough” when libraries and law firms are facing massive budget cuts.

As I tell my Legal Research students, I think of Lexis and Westlaw as the Crips and Bloods of Legal Information.  They’re in it to make money.  And, like drug dealers, they’ll give you the first taste for free while you’re in law school in hopes that you get hooked.  But they’re also engaged in a to-the-death battle with each other over the finite customer base and if any one was clearly better than the other, the other would cease to exist. (And if you think I’m mistaken about the battle part, how many people got sent the West ad by their Lexis rep? )  So, basically, keep your eyes open and try to not be a casualty in the war…look out for yourself.

There’s always going to be tensions between librarians and vendors, especially as they expect people to pay for things that we want to give away for free. (There’s another analogy here that I keep coming back to, but there are some things that even I won’t put in print.)  Here’s the thing…they’re not on our side, they’re not our enemies…we’re all just pieces of the same puzzle.  And as soon as we get rid of worrying about being offended by them or always having to play defense or expecting them to kiss our rings for allowing them access to our patrons, we can start thinking about the future.  I really like the ideas that Meg and Tom put out earlier in the week about the West ad issue.   There are some concrete steps that law librarians, as individuals, can take and things to think about with regards to vendors and the role of librarians.

For better or worse, AALL is currently the major unified voice for law librarians.  If you’re unhappy with the vendor/librarian relationship, perhaps  AALL can be used as a conduit.

(Okay, Gentle Reader, I’m sure bitter laughter just rang out amongst some of you.  I know lots of people that I respect and like have major issues with AALL.  Personally, they haven’t really done me dirty yet, so I’m trying to keep an open mind.  I’ll try to work for change within the system, and if that fails, I’ll go outside of it.  I have no problem with going outside of the system and being a lone wolf and in many ways it’s easier, but maybe not as effective or fast.  Like I said, right now AALL has the body count of law librarians that makes it the best bet to effect change.  Refusing West’s funding for the Annual Meeting becaues they wouldn’t give up pricing information was a great start.  So I’m hopeful, but in the meantime I’ll also keep paying my dues to SLA and the Legal and Academic Divisions.  BUT I DIGRESS…)

Perhaps not coincidentally, in the middle of the West brou-ha-ha on Law-Lib, there was a brief message about AALL beginning the process of revising and planning for new stratgic directions for 2010-2013 since the current 2005-2010 strategic directions expire next year.  They’ve set up a blog for AALL membership to add its comments.  There are three questions that are asked:

1. How do we seize the moment and make it our own?
2. Where do we, as law librarians, want to be in the next three years?
3. What is required of us to create the world we envision?

Okay, those are really broad questions.  And yes, generally “strategic directions” and “mission statements” and things of that sort are often just “feel good” messages that aren’t easily transitioned into action and otherwise set off my BS meter.  But maybe they don’t need to be.  Respond to this call for input.  Add concrete ideas.   I need to think more before I figure out exactly how I want to answer these questions.  When I do figure out what I want to say, I’ll definitely post my answer here and there.  I encourage you to do the same.