Maximizing Law Library Productivity

Book excerpt: This report looks closely at a broad range of management practices of law firm libraries including those from the following institutions: Foley & Hoag; Northwestern Mutual Insurance; Nelson, Mullins Riley And Scarborough; Cornell University Law School; Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt; Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw; Loyola University Law School; Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal; Brinks, Hofer, Gilson & Lione; The Civil Court of the City of New York; Beus Gilbert The many issues covered include: trends in the physical space allocated to the library, print vs. electronic information spending, retention policies on print reporters, uses of blogs, personnel and training policies, outsourcing, relations with records and knowledge/content management, ways to serve multiple offices and locations, use of RSS feeds and weblogs, uses of intranets and other shared workspaces, information literacy training, favored databases, optimizing librarian time management, management of the flow of reference requests, software selection and other issues impacting the performance of law libraries.