Monday, April 27, 2015

#CILDC : What do you do when you can't just Google it?

National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden
Jill Meyer (Dykema Gossett - law firm)

Moving from print to digital, and fee-based digital resources.

Who needs to research when you have Google?
  • 48,500 searches are run every second on Google.
  • 64% of Internet searches are run on Google.
When digital collections came into law libraries, they were initially able to keep the print resources.  After 2008, the economic shift caused law libraries to move more towards digital and to drop the print equivalents.
Now attorneys want to access information wherever and whenever.
What are attorneys looking for?  Everything from case law to expertise witness info, to client news, to legislative history.  Everything must be current.
The transition has not been easy. Some attorneys have come into the 21st century kicking and screaming.

Their goal is to make things as easy to find as possible, and she admits that they aren't there yet. They also want to modernize their local catalogue.  

In the catalogue, they put links in the records to the digital version of the source, along with sign-in info, if necessary.

Current awareness is a big deal for attorneys.  They are doing a lot on current awareness for their attorneys, including email alerts from their content providers.  These emails are causing attorneys to check out resources and get comfortable with them.

Transitioning users:
  • Communication - need to communicate more and in different ways
  • Pesky passwords - using OneLog.com, mostly for research tools
  • Training...training...and even more training!  
Moving forward:
  • Single search access of all accessible content
  • Ebook transition ideas
  • Current awareness platform
  • Dynamic and interactive intranet page
Jill's commentary: It was interesting to hear her and people in the audience talk about things that public and academic libraries have already faced. We think that different libraries are learning from each other, but how do we really make that so?

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