The Effect of economics and electronic resources on the traditional law library print collection

Law Library Journal

Volumn 101, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 177-205

  Runyon, Amanda M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 66849099711     PISSN: 00239283     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (51)

1. ABA SECTION OF LEGAL EDUC. & ADMISSIONS TO THE BAR, 2008-2009 STANDARDS AND RULES OF PROCEDURE FOR APPROVAL OF LAW SCHOOLS Standard 601, at 44 (2008), available athttp://www. abanet.org/legaled/standards/standards.html [hereinafter ABA STANDARDS] .
2. Id.
3. The U.S. News and World Reportrankings consider a law library's role in two of their twelve ranking factors. Of the total overall score, 0.75% is based on the total number of volumes in a law school library, and 9.75% is based on the average per capita expenditures for the current and prior year for instruction, library, and supporting services. Brian Leiter, The U.S. News Law School Rankings: A Guide for the Perplexed (May 2003), http://www. leiterrankings.com/usnews/guide.shtml.
4. See, e.g.,Sandra Block, Cost of Higher Education Gets More Pricey: In Some States, Budget Gaps Push Tuition up 10% or More,USA TODAY, July 27,2007, at IB; Daniel J. Hurley, Colleges Restrain Spending, USA TODAY, Apr. 7, 2008, at 13A.
5. ABA STANDARDS, supranote 1, Standard 606, at 46.
6. For an excellent annotated bibliography of relevant books and articles concerning the print versus electronic debate, see Paul E. Howard & Renee Y. Rastorfer, Do We Still Need Books? A Selected Annotated Bibliography,97 LAW LIBR. J. 257, 2005 LAW LIBR. J. 15. Other notable resources include, e.g., LAW LIBRARY COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT IN THE DIGITAL AGE (Michael Chiorazzi & Gordon Russell eds., 2002); Penny A. Hazelton, How Much of Your Print Collection Is Really on WESTLAW or LEXIS-NEXIS?,LEGAL REFERENCE SERVICES Q., 1999, no. 1, at 3; Mary Rumsey & April Schwartz, Paper Versus Electronic Sources for Law Review Cite Checking: Should Paper Be the Gold Standard?,97 LAW LIBR. J. 31, 2005 LAW LIBR. J. 2; Gordon Russell, Re-Engineering the Law Library Resources Today for Tomorrow's Users: A Response to"How Much of Your Print Collection Is Really on WESTLAW or LEXIS-NEXIS?", LEGAL REFERENCE SERVICES Q., 2002, no. 2-3, at 29; and Michelle M. Wu, Why Print and Electronic Resources Are Essential to the Academic Law Library,97 LAW LIBR. J. 233, 2005 LAW LIBR. J. 14.
7. See Kent Milunovich, Issues in Law Library Acquisitions: An Analysis,92 LAW. LIBR. J. 203,203, 2000 LAW LIBR. J. 18 1) 2.
8. Id.("During the period from 1973 through 1996 ⋯ the Consumer Price Index showed an increase of 253 percent [while] the average cost of legal serials rose 495 percent. During that same time period, the most dramatic increase was in the category of legal continuations, which rose an astounding 1,006 percent." (citation omitted)). The Consumer Price Index measures the inflation rate in the overall economy.
9. Id.at 204,¶2.
10. AM. ASS'N OF LAW LIBRARIES, PRICE INDEX FOR LEGAL PUBLICATIONS (4th ed. 2006), http://www.aallnet.org/members/price-index-2006.asp [hereinafter AALL PRICE INDEX] (available only to AALL members).
11. The Consumer Price Index increased from 195.3 to 201.6 between 2005 and 2006, which is an inflation rate of 3.22%. See id.
12. Id.The inflation rate for some types of legal materials was negative; some examples include digests, which decreased in price by 53.68%, and legal encyclopedias, which decreased by 46.63%. A cursory glance at the sample sizes for the materials with negative inflation shows that there are fewer titles in those samples than in the samples with positive inflation; the legal encyclopedias (which has a negative 46.63% inflation rate) data set includes 3 titles, while the commercial periodicals data set (which has an inflation rate of 18.75%) contains 167 titles. Id.
13. Robert Becker, Trends in Legal Publishing, in FIRST UPDATE SUPPLEMENT: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE 370, 370 (Miriam A. Drake ed., 2d ed. 2005).
14. Id.at 370 n.a (citing SIMBA INFO., PUBLISHING FOR THE PROFESSIONAL MARKETS 2003-2004, at 8).
15. Id.at 370.
16. Id.at 372.
17. Kendall F. Svengalis, PowerPoint Presentation at the 2007 AALL Annual Meeting, Legal Information: Globalization, Conglomerates and Competition-Monopoly or Free Market 2 (July 15, 2007), available athttp://www.rilawpress.com/AALL2007.ppt.
18. Becker, supranote 13, at 372.
19. Michael Ginsborg, Consolidation in the Legal Publishing Industry Means Rising Costs for Attorneys,S.F. DAILY J., Feb. 21, 2002, at 12.
20. Id.
21. Stephanie Marshall, Program A-3: Legal Information: Globalization, Conglomerates and Competition. Monopoly or Free Market?,CRIV SHEET, NOV. 2007, at 3,4.
22. Id.(citing speaker Ken Svengalis, president of Rhode Island LawPress and publisher of the Legal Information Buyer's Guide and Reference Manual).
23. Id.(citing speaker Ken Svengalis).
24. Linda Will, Creative Budgeting of Information Resources,PRAC. INNOVATIONS, July 2005, at 4, 5, available athttp://west.thomson.com/pdf/iii/PractInnovJul05.pdf.
25. Id.
26. Judy Meadows & Kay Todd, Our Question-Your Answers,13 PERSPECTIVES: TEACHING LEGAL RES. & WRITING 113 (2005).
27. Id.at 115. Twenty-seven of the 70 libraries (38.6%) that responded to Beaird's survey were subscribing to all of the regional digests. Additionally, he found that all of the responding libraries owned the Bankruptcy Digest, Federal Practice Digest,and United States Supreme Court Digest.Beaird also found that state digest holdings among the libraries were sizeable; "while only 11 schools reported having all state digests, only 9 schools own only their home state's digest." Additionally, a number of libraries that held the Decennial Digestno longer retained the interim General Digest. Id.
28. Id.at 113.
29. Library Maintenance Agreements (LMAs) are contracts offered to libraries by Thomson West that provide a fixed-rate subscription cost for a library's print materials over a certain time period. LMAs provide a predictable pricing scheme for libraries and enable libraries to simplify their accounting practices by providing one invoice for all West print products instead of issuing individual invoices for each item. See Thomson Reuters, Thomson Legal & Regulatory North American Legal 2006 Investor Meeting (May 24, 2006), http://www.thomsonreuters.com/content/PDF/corporate/ exec-pre/others/ TLRFT2006PresentationOvervil.pdf [hereinafter 2006 Investor Meeting]. LMA contracts are typically for three or more years. Thomson Reuters, 2008 Presentation (Feb. 2008), http://www.thomsonreuters.com/content/PDF/corporate/ exec-pre/others/ThomsonReuters02008 .pdf. Additionally, some libraries subscribe to West Packs through Thomson West, either in addition to or instead of Library Maintenance Agreements. West Packs offer bundled print and online subscriptions for a similar contract length as LMAs, and also offer a discount on print materials over the life of the contract. 2006 Investor Meeting, supra. See alsoSvengalis, supranote 17.
30. This assumption was made because many law libraries that are affiliated with a larger university are able to access Shepard's on LexisNexis Academic, which is a database provided to many university students through their library system; and they have been able to add KeyCite to their offerings for public patrons as part of the West Pack service. As long as public patrons are on-site at these libraries, they are typically able to access these services that are available to the university community.
31. The Law Library Director Listserv is available at http://lists.washlaw. edu/mailman/listinfo/lawlibdir, but is open only to current academic law library directors. The survey was posted to the lawlibdir listserv via e-mail by Professor Penny Hazelton, director of the Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington and the head of the law librarianship program there. E-mail from Penny Hazelton, Associate Dean for Library and Computing Services and Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law, Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, to US Law School Library Directors' Mailing List (Apr. 2008) (on file with author).
32. E-mail from Penny Hazelton, Associate Dean for Library and Computing Services and Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law, Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, to US Law School Library Directors' Mailing List (Apr. 2008) (on file with author).
33. The geographic regions used in this survey were taken from the 2007 edition of the AALL Biennial Salary Survey.AM. ASS'N OF LAW LIBRARIES, THE AALL BIENNIAL SALARY SURVEY & ORGANIZATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS (2007), available athttp://www.aallnet.org/ products/pub-salary-survey.asp (online edition available only to AALL members). The geographic regions are broken down as follows: New England (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT); Middle Atlantic (NJ, NY, PA); South Atlantic (DC, DE, FL, GA, MD, NC, SC, VA, WV); East North Central (IL, IN, MI, OH, WI); West North Central (IA, KS, MN, MO, ND, NE, SD); East South Central (AL, KY, MS, TN); West South Central (AR, LA, OK, TX); Mountain West (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, UT, WY); and Pacific West (AK, CA, HI, OR, WA). Idat 8.
34. In all tables where results are displayed as x(y), xis the percentage of libraries responding this way, and yis the number of libraries that percentage represents. Nis the total number of libraries answering a particular question.
35. For a complete list of survey questions, see Appendix, infra.
36. Each fall, the American Bar Association requires each of the law schools that it accredits to complete its Annual Questionnaire. After collecting the responses, the ABA compiles the data into a statistical report that they refer to as "take-offs" and distributes the report to the dean of each law school. See The ABA and USN&.WR's Law School Rankings, Posting of Tom W. Bel! to Agoraphila, http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2006/06/aba-and-usnwrs-law- school-rankings.html (June 5, 2006).
37. All survey responses are on file with the author.
38. This definition of electronic resources was taken from the ABA Annual Law School Survey Take-offs, question 43 ("Spent Databases").
39. SeeBureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Dep't of Labor, Consumer Price Index-All Urban Consumers (Jan. 16, 2009), ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special. requests/cpi/cpiai.txt. The annual average CPI numbers were used. The inflation rate is calculated using a simple "percent change" calculation, i.e., [(CPI 2007 - CPI 2003) / CPI 2003] * 100. In this case, the calculation was: [(207.3 - 184.0) / 184.0] * 100 = 12.66.
40. Throughout this section, numbers in parentheses reflect the percentage of the whole being discussed, and then the actual number of libraries in that category. E.g., RIA (64.5%, 20) in this context means 64.5% of the libraries, which is 20 libraries, subscribed to the RIA database.
41. Standard deviation is a measure of dispersion or how values are spread out around the mean. A small standard deviation means that all of the numbers that participants reported were close to the mean. This measurement provides a better picture of how the data looks, and how tightly clustered the reported values are around the mean.
42. ABA STANDARDS, supra note 1, at 46-48 (Standard 606).
43. 2) is a statistical test used to identify differences in frequency data. This test indicates whether groups created within the data by merging two variables together are larger or smaller than they would be if the variables were not related, dfrefers to Degrees of Freedom-the number of independent pieces of information available to calculate the value of a statistical test. Degrees of freedom are used in conjunction with the value of a chi square to determine whether results are larger than a set "critical value." Together, chi square and degrees of freedom verify whether a finding is statistically significant, prefers to statistical significance of data-the likelihood that the result occurred because of chance or a sampling error-p=.O5indicates a 1 in 20 chance that the result is due to chance or error. If pis less than .05, the result is considered to be statistically significant because the odds of the finding occurring by pure chance are very low. For an overview of statistical tests and analyses, see EARL R. BABBIE, BASICS OF SOCIAL RESEARCH (2005).
44. f(28) = 2.15, p < .05; 28 refers to the degrees of freedom, discussed id.,and 2.15 is the t-value. t-tests are used to detect differences between groups using one variable to divide a data set into two groups. The mean for another variable is then calculated for each group. These two means are compared to determine if the difference between them is larger than could be expected by chance.
45. Respondents were not asked which or how many titles in each category that they had stopped updating or canceled. It is likely that some libraries still have a few Shepard's in print. Additionally, it is likely that those libraries that had stopped updating or canceled state annotated codes had done so only for selected states.
46. 2= 1.20, df= 6,p 0.98.
47. Roberta I. Shaffer, Controlling Government: The People and the Rule of Law (May 12,2000) (paper presented at 66th IFLA Council and General Conference, August 13-18, 2000, in lerusalem, Israel), available athttp://www.ifla. org/IV/ifla66/papers/046-160e.htm.
48. For example, the inflation rate from 2005 to 2006 for Shepard's federal, regional, state, and subject-specific citators was 21.14%. SeeAALL PRICE INDEX, supranote 10.
49. Will, supranote 24, at 5.
50. 2= 1.22, df= 1,p= 0.27
51. See Megan Schulz, Summary-West's Library Maintenance Agreement (June 29,2006), available at http://listproc.ucdavis.edu/archives/law-lib/law- lib.1og0606/0393.html.