For some time, at least since the explosion of the availability of electronic resources via media, databases and the internet, librarians have been concerned that the traditional measures of academic law library collection assessment have little or no relation to the reality of today’s world of legal research.
The most important collection assessment tool for academic law libraries is Part III of the Annual Questionnaire administered by the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar {the Section}. This instrument is intended to collect data from law libraries that would support and demonstrate compliance with law school accreditation standards administered by the Section. The questions concerning the library collection, then, track the requirements of Standard 606 of the Standards for Approval of Law Schools. Historically, Standard 606 and its Interpretations and the collection questions in the Annual Questionnaire contemplated a print collection measured by title and volume counts (even as to the artificial formula for reporting microforms as “volume equivalents”). The Comprehensive Law Library Statistical Tables published by the Section have been a valuable by-product of the questionnaire process, used by law libraries for peer comparisons and other purposes.
Throughout the nineteen-nineties and into the new millennium, attempts were made to bring the questionnaire in line with the fast-moving phenomenon of electronic collections. Standard 606 itself was revised to provide more flexibility as to formats. The Section’s Law Libraries Committee, which is advisory to the Questionnaire Committee and the Council of the Section of Legal Education, the governing body of the Section, proposed revisions to the questions, instructions and definitions but it was all moving too fast. In 1991, for instance, the electronic resources question asked: “Number of CD ROM disks held.” In 1992, this was changed to “CD ROM titles held or leased,” with a separate questions about “CD ROM titles or tape load titles accessible through the campus network,” and in 2000 it was changed to “titles of web-based products to which the library subscribes,” while CD ROMs were included in “non book titles.” Meanwhile the definitions of the serial subscriptions were also changed to include serials “regardless of format,” and specifically contemplated that electronic serial titles would be included (within some parameters). As these questions became murkier, the value of the comparable collection data in the Comprehensive Law Library Statistical Tables declined.
By 2003, it was recognized that the questions were broken and there was no clear and consistent method of counting among law libraries. The electronic titles question was dropped until a solution could be developed, and since then the academic law library community generally and the Law Libraries and Questionnaire committees specifically have been working to revise the questionnaire to better capture the nature of our collections.1
In Fall 2006, the Law Libraries Committee presented proposed changes to the collection questions in the annual and the sabbatical site evaluation questionnaires. These changes were considered by the Questionnaire Committee and in November were put out for comment to deans and library directors. An open session was held at the AALS annual meeting in January 2007. The Questionnaire Committee met again in April and forwarded the proposals to the Council of the Section of Legal Education for consideration at its June meeting. As of this writing, the proposals are pending before the Council.
There are three sets of changes. Most of the substantive changes go to the collection measures in Part III, Section I - Information Resources, in the annual questionnaire. Additional changes are proposed for Part VI, Fiscal, relating to section D. Library Salaries and G. Library Operations. The third set of changes relates to the sabbatical site evaluation questionnaire.
Highlights of the proposed changes include:
The big job lies ahead: the Law libraries Committee, the AALL Academic Law Libraries SIS and colleagues in the academic law library community will work to develop methodologies and clarifications regarding the new questions on electronic resources. And new measures, focusing more on “outputs” and library quality, need to be developed.
1 Academic law libraries have not been alone in seeking ways to address the dramatic changes in their collections. See Association of Research Libraries Task Force on New Ways of Measuring Collections, Final Report; January 31, 2007, available at www.arl.org/stats/aboutstats/tfnewways.shtml. The themes discussed in this report are remarkably similar to the debates that occurred within the Law Libraries Committee.
2 The Committee initially proposed immediate cessation of volume count reporting, but concerns were raised by some library directors that they use this data for planning and management purposes. A phase out period is proposed, giving the law library community time to develop alternative approaches to continued collection of this information if it continues to believe that it is important and useful.