Sometimes our library environments create obstacles for researchers to use them comfortably. There remains a tension between quiet and the need to make noise to collaborate. A law library often has a culture that may not be obvious to the occasional user. The use of children’s books in courthouse law libraries seems a way to smooth some of the friction that self-represented litigants might experience. When I was in law school, one of our colleagues…

One tension in law libraries is comprehensiveness. Do we collect or license access to all of the information that our researchers need? The model has shifted, from just in case collection to just in time. It’s an acceptance of gaps. But could we push the envelope further and create bigger gaps without impacting research quality? I went to a thrift shop over the weekend. It’s Halloween costume season and I needed some oddments. It’s also…

“You’ve used too much vacation,” came the voice across the phone. That’s never good news. I also thought it sounded … wrong. We’d gone from a simple spreadsheet system to an online attendance system. Since then, many staff had retreated to double books but I had tried to commit to the online system. It turns out the system was wrong. But more than that, it seems to be broken. When a core system is broken,…

The PDF is pervasive in legal information. It’s over-used by people who prioritize format over usability on the web, but it’s a necessity for law libraries. The tools for working with PDFs have changed just as law library collections have. Where we once bought a license and owned software, PDF tools are increasingly provided by subscription. When I was quoted $2,000 for our team’s annual Adobe license, I knew it was time to look at…

I had coffee with some early career information professionals a short while back and asked them about what they liked and didn’t like about their current organization. One thing that came up was that they both appreciated having autonomy to get their work done. The flipside to employee autonomy is certainty that management will be supportive. It seems to me that you can’t have the one without the other. Those professionals work on my teams,…