THE VALUE OF THE CORPORATE LAW LIBRARIAN
by the PLL/SIS Corporate Law Librarians' Group
The Corporate Law Librarians have developed this document to present to the AALL Task
Force on the Value of Law Librarians in the Information Age. As a group, we are threatened
by the outsourcing trend and we believe that the decision makers in our corporations do
not have accurate information when they evaluate outsourcing law libraries as a
cost-cutting method.
We are very hopeful that the Task Force can work with us to provide concrete guidelines
on educating the decision makers about what we do and how our expertise benefits the
bottom line; to suggest avenues for communicating appropriate functions to oursource; and
to provide support and leadership to AALL members on how to present the best case to
management. Perhaps the Task Force might consider distributing a newsletter, establishing
a listserv, or organizing a hotline or crisis team to assist AALL members throughout the
year.
We have developed the following list of assets to describe the corporate law librarian.
WHO WE ARE
- Evaluators and purchasers of on-line, CD-ROM and traditionally (printed) legal
resources. SIGNIFICANCE: We are the only professionals in our respective corporate
departments with the right training and skills to perform these functions effectively.
- Trainers of legal department attorneys and paralegals. SIGNIFICANCE: We know how
to bring other staff uo-to-speed quickly and efficientlyin their usage of legal resources,
regardless of the medium in which the information is packaged. None of the other
professional staff in our departments has the time or skills to train end-users.
- Researchers in legal and non-legal databases. SIGNIFICANCE: We perform and
coordinate legal and non-legal research, keeping abreast of the latest technology and
sources of informationfor our company's needs. Working in-house enables us to keep current
with the ever money which would have been expended on outside commercial information
brokers or ourside counsel.
- Managers, in vendor contract negotiations, in budget preparation and monitoring, and
in supervision of library personnel. SIGNIFICANCE: We are "one-of-a-kind"
within our corporations; normally, we do not have other colleagues within our companies
who could perform any of the above duties, nor do we report to staff who could assume
those duties in our absence.
- Information stars/czars. SIGNIFICANCE: Our training in information management and
retrieval enables us to help our clients clearly define the information they need. Our
understanding of, and commitment to, our unique corporate culture promotes confidence in
our clients that we will deliver exactly what is needed to enable business decisions. The
value-added benefit of professionally trained in-house law librarians is their expertise
in obtaining information efficiently and cost-effectively.
We believe that in the information age we truly are information professionals and
should never be viewed by management as simply developers and custodians of large book
collections. We are continually frustrated that this same management can look at our
operations and categorically classify them with mail room and other clerical intensive
departments in the corporation.
We need to make sure that this one message gets through loud and clear to our
respective managements: Permitting other professionals in our organizations means of
access to information does not in any way guarantee or secure retrieval of information.
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