This article focuses on the rapidly changing standards of academic law library excellence as the ready availability and diversity of information technologies and digital collections supplant traditional print collections as the determinative measurement of library quality.  The author challenges the legal and law library professions to discard traditional qualitative standards (e.g., print volume and title holdings) and to embrace standards that recognize the importance of meaningful access to information that is not tied to physical ownership or location

Hinckley, Steven D.

English

PennState, The Dickinson School of Law: Penn State Law eLibrary

Penn State Law eLibraryJournal Articles Faculty Works2007Redefining Academic Law Library Excellence in aTechnological Age: From Evolution to RevolutionSteven D. HinckleyPenn State LawFollow this and additional works at: http://elibrary.law.psu.edu/fac_worksPart of the Law Commons, and the Library and Information Science CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Works at Penn State Law eLibrary. It has been accepted for inclusion in JournalArticles by an authorized administrator of Penn State Law eLibrary. For more information, please contact ram6023@psu.edu.Recommended CitationSteven D. Hinckley, Redefining Academic Law Library Excellence in a Technological Age: From Evolution to Revolution, 17 Trends L. Libr.Mgmt. & Tech. 45 (2007).Volume 17rencsIN LAW LIBRARY MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGYEdited by Philip C. Berwick - -For academic, firm, corporate, and government law librariansRedefining Academic Law LibraryExcellence in a Technological Age:From Evolution to RevolutionBy STEVEN D. HiNCKLnEY, The Penn State University Dickinson School of LawW hen I served on the ABA Law Libraries Committee for a few years atthe beginning of this decade, the near constant agenda item that wediscussed was how to make our traditionally print-oriented statistical surveysproduce data that provided an accurate picture of library resources and quality inan increasingly technological age. Oh sure, we were all aware of the presentationsmade and the position papers published by library colleagues over the last twentyyears or so predicting the inevitable seismic shifts that libraries would experienceas digital information access began to supplant on-site print ownership as the sinequa non for libraries in the 21st Century. And, certainly, we had each personallywitnessed the effect of digitization in our own law libraries over the last thirtyyears brought about by Lexis/Westlaw, the explosion of digital publishing, andeventually by the seemingly limitless resources of the World Wide Web. Yet,(2007) 4Trendsdespite the fact that our committee at that time featured some of law librari-anship's most dynamic and innovative individuals, all armed with knowledge thata paradigm shift of historic proportion was on the horizon that would affect howwe would build collections and serve research interests in the future, I left mostof those meetings with the feeling that academic law libraries (and perhaps moreto the point, their parent institutions and the legal professional itself) simplyweren't ready to embrace the new paradigm spreading throughout libraries inother disciplines.Despite our best efforts to think expansively into the future, it seemed thatwe couldn't imagine proposing anything that appeared to abandon the increasinglyromantic Langdellian image that library excellence is measured principally by thenumber of books (or other tangible information delivery formats) locally ownedby each law school. We educate and serve a profession that, it would be charitableto say, is slow to abandon its traditions and for them, the primacy of recorded(read, printed) precedent is just too vital and delicate to the legal justice systemto trust to the more ethereal qualities of digital publication.The rise and (inexorable) fail of the parallelcollections rationaleAs a result, academic law library collection development over the last century hasresembled an arms race of sorts in which everyone wished their holdings could belike Harvard's, Yale's, Berkeley's and the rest of the limited number of truly elitelegal research institutions that, by virtue of almost unlimited resources andinstitutional vision, have built what everyone would agree are among the greatestlegal research collections in the world. Despite the quixotic nature of the quest "tobe like the big guys," we spent many decades seeking, and often getting,increasingly larger book warehouses and buying everything our budgets wouldallow us to have to populate them. That approach was fed by the ABA and ourown profession through the implementation of accreditation standards thatemphasized information ownership over information access thereby at leastimplicitly associating the raw size of physical collections with library quality.Volume 17TrendsUntil the advent of massive full-text digitization of much of the coreAmerican law collections by Lexis and Wesilaw in the mid- I 970s, such a strategymade sense because it was the best assurance that each school's students andfaculty would have the quality of resources needed to support credible teachingand research programs. Furthermore, in the earliest years of Lexis and Westlawavailability in academic law libraries, we displayed appropriate caution towardthese new electronic services, realizing that they were too untested and technolo-gically limited to serve as a true substitute for locally-owned print collections. Ifanything, the digitization of legal materials simply heated up the collectiondevelopment arms race as academic law libraries felt obliged to embark upon aparallel universe in which they owned as much print and microform as possiblewhile fully embracing the emerging wonders of the computer age. This collectionand service duality has largely dominated the way that all but the most experi-mental start-up academic law libraries have done business to this day despite thefact that the underlying justification for our dogged devotion to local print andfilm ownership arguably began to disappear almost a decade ago.Having spent the early part of the 1990s getting law school faculty andstudents used to the concept of engaging in online research using proprietary dial-up software, Lexis and Westlaw turned the way we viewed legal research on its earwith the introduction of Web-based versions of their systems in 1998. In waysthat many of us immediately realized were revolutionary without being able tofully predict the long-term effects this would have on our traditional ideas aboutcollections and services, Lexis and Westlaw's availability using the user-friendlyinterface and technology of the Web began an inexorable shift in the way that ourprimary clientele conducted legal research. That shift has been compounded byother publishers' rush to make their formerly print-only collections available viaWeb-based subscriptions.Evidence, even if anecdotal, that this digital revolution in publishing has hadserious implications for the way academic law libraries are being used by today'sclientele is too compelling to deny. For better or worse, students now conductmuch of their research online, typically from somewhere other than the lawlibrary. Our faculty colleagues are not far behind in most cases. Most of us would(2007) 47Tredadmit that use of our facilities and onsite collections has been declining overrecent years and is nothing like it used to be in the days when the most senior ofus went to law school. While we have done a great deal to alter our libraries tomake them more comfortable and relevant to today's users (ubiquitous computernetwork/Web access throughout our libraries, installation of collaborative workspaces and seating, and even the now commonplace introduction of library-basedcoffee bars) I am still amazed at how reluctant we in academic law libraries and,to some extent, the legal profession and our parent institutions are to admit thatthe very core concepts that have traditionally guided us are in need of retooling.It's time for a new academic law library collection and service paradigm, but onewonders how much resistance there will be before this is allowed to happen.Penn State Dickinson: embracing change withoutcompromising qualityWhy am I ruminating about these things and suggesting that you should ponderthese issues, too? Well, as I write this, I am responsible for drafting plans for lawlibrary operations at the "new" Penn State Dickinson School of Law. I say newbecause, while the Dickinson School of Law has been operating as an independentlaw school for over 170 years from its base in Carlisle, a now nearly decade oldmerger with Penn State University and the School's decision to open a secondprogram site on that university's main campus in University Park in 2006 funda-mentally changes the way our program operates. Because our school has chosento operate as one unified program seamlessly offered at two geographically sepa-rate sites, there is no question that the programmatic challenges of supporting theteaching and scholarship of faculty and students as if they are in the same build-ing, despite the reality that they are separated by 90 miles, are significant.Our aspiration, over time, is to compare favorably with other Big 10 lawschools in scholarly productivity and teaching excellence. That's a pretty fastcrowd to want to emulate, especially in light of the fact that the Big 10 includessome of the most highly regarded law schools in the country with long establishedbases of traditional programmatic excellence. Penn State Dickinson's opportunity48 Volume 17Trends(or dilemma if you choose to see it that way) is that we are setting ourselves onthis path in the post-Web world of today rather than in the environment in whichour established Big 10 peers developed their programs more than 100 years ago.With the exception of relative newcomer Michigan State University College ofLaw, Big 10 law schools built their facilities and programs on the traditionallarge-scale model and their law libraries reflect that approach. Other thanMichigan State and Penn State, Big 10 law libraries boast some of the largest printcollections in legal academia holding an average of more than 583,000 printvolumes each. By virtue of their incredibly deep research collections and traditionof extraordinary service, these libraries have earned their place among the best legalresearch facilities in the world and I don't mean to suggest that they will fall fromthose ranks in any way. I do suggest, however, that the future holds a new andequally acceptable path to academic law library excellence that recognizes that noinstitution building a law school program in today's environment should, or evencould, try to adopt the model law schools all around the country have dutifullycopied for the past 100 years.Librarians have faced questions for years from deans and university admini-strators about when they could expect to see the impact of technology on the costof collections and the size of library space needed. Over the past twenty years,most ofus have answered, not inaccurately, that our need to accommodate parallelprint and digital worlds in our libraries had, if anything, increased overall costsand space needs, Penn State is making the largest investment in law schoolconstruction in this young century, spending $110 million to provide Dickinsonwith what are essentially two new buildings to house our newly-conceptualizedlaw school program. In this time of runaway construction costs, our new buildingat University Park (being built now and slated to open in January, 2009) will costapproximately $500/sq. ft. to build. Our combined new construction/renovationproject in Carlisle (expected to break ground early in 2008 and to open two yearslater) will not be much less expensive. Try telling today's law school and univer-sity administrators who have to cram a lot of diverse programmatic needs intobuildings this costly that you need an extra 10,000 or 20,000 sq. feet, at$500/sq. ft., to house sets of reporters, superseded materials, and print journals(2007) 49Trndsthat you know, largely because of their availability online, probably haven't beentouched in the last decade or so except to dust. See what their reaction is whenyou tell them that you need to have a seat for everyone in your student body whenusage patterns indicate that students simply are not populating the library forhours on end as in the days of old. And look at yourself in the mirror when youdescribe your future needs for technical processing staff and workspace in anenvironment where it is likely that a reduction in print collection purchasing andprocessing will radically change this enterprise in many of our libraries. The endresult is likely to be that our academic law library facilities will be much smaller,on average, in buildings built in the next few decades than they have been inbuildings constructed during the last century. In fact, the space devoted to ournew law libraries at Penn State Dickinson will total approximately 35,000 netsquare feet. On-site shelving space will be limited in our new buildings ascompared to the typical model of the past with our emphasis being placed ontechnologically-equipped collaborative study space and enhanced research supportpersonnel.Lest our choice of smaller library facilities and less book shelving space beseen as a mere budgetary compromise, we intend to provide a research supportoperation that is the modem equivalent of the best traditional libraries througha combination of old school and new school methods. At least initially, we willnot totally abandon print; in fact, we are developing what we call our "criticalcore" collection of state and federal primary materials and seminal secondarymaterials that we still believe are so important to law faculty and students on adaily basis that we will maintain those collections in both of our buildings. Ouraim, however, is to cap those collections at between 50,000 and 75,000 printvolumes at each site and it is anticipated that titles included in the critical core,particularly secondary works, will change over the years to reflect their availabilityin electronic format. Perhaps out of an excess of caution, we will not go coldturkey on other print collections, choosing instead to weed and sharpen ourcurrent print holdings to allow an additional 125,000 volumes of still important,but somewhat lesser used titles to reside in a Penn State University Libraries-managed off-site storage facility that we hope will provide 24- to 48-hourso Volume 17Trendsretrieval and delivery of requested items. We will monitor the use of those itemsin the earliest years in our new facilities and will almost undoubtedly remove anythat we become convinced are simply not in regular enough demand to warrantthe cost of local ownership and housing. An obvious corollary to our decision todraw down our print holdings is that we are willing to rely upon the fact that somuch of what we have housed in print is now available on at least one, and oftenmultiple online services that are fully accessible by our law school clientele and,increasingly, by our non-law school users. Finally, our users have ready access tothe extraordinarily rich collections of one of the great research systems in thecountry, the Penn State University Libraries, whose print holdings of over 5million volumes and burgeoning electronic subscriptions provide terrific depth ofcoverage and support for interdisciplinary scholarship.While it is clear that the Penn State Dickinson Law Libraries will not lookexactly like the iconic research law libraries that we are all used to, I would arguethat when the collection strategy described above is considered in the aggregate,we will be able to provide ready and reliable access to all but the most specializedand esoteric collections held by the best research supporting academic lawlibraries. We are excited about this future and believe that it is the mostsignificant application of a new paradigm in collections and services that any lawschool associated with a major research university has engaged in, to date.Will our professions acknowledge the inevitableprimacy of digital collections?Of course the devil's in the details whenever library planning is being done and wehave much more to work out to put meat on the bones of the plan that I haveoutlined in this article, We are not unaware that the exact decisions about theprint volumes we retain in our primary buildings versus those we decide to put inoff-site storage versus those we decide to cut entirely in favor of digital access willgo a long way toward determining how successful we will be in fully satisfying theresearch needs of our users and toward gaining acceptance from those in theacademy and legal profession who must endorse our continuing satisfaction ofprofessional standards,(2007) SITrendsIt's here where I worry a bit because while I am convinced that our planpresents the only sensible approach to the building of new academic law librariesin today's world, I am certainly not unaware that many will be reluctant to acceptthis paradigm shift. Having served on a number of ABA law school accreditationinspection teams, I know there is still a visceral connection between the numberof print volumes one sees on a library's shelves and the perceived quality andgravitas of that institution although we know in our heart of hearts that such apresumption is often deceiving. I know our own profession is still struggling withthe question of how we count and evaluate the significance of digital collections,insisting still on trying via the latest ABA Law Library Committee statisticalguidelines to reduce the unprecedented democratization of information access thatacademic law libraries of all stripes may now offer their users via digitalsubscriptions by applying counting rules that hearken back to the traditionalparadigm. (With all respect, what sense does it make to preclude libraries fromcounting the clearly quantifiable individual titles made accessible through aHemOnline or BNA-ALL subscription to name but a few; wouldn't the betterrule be that libraries should be able to report digital titles that are an actual partof their working collections on the condition that they withdraw them if theybecome inaccessible due to a failure to maintain the subscription or the ratherunlikely event that the digital data disappears entirely? How can we spendhundreds of thousands of dollars to gain unprecedented digital access to hundredsof electronic titles for our users and be told by our own colleagues that we mayonly count them as one title and one database?)I agree that we need to work aggressively toward the long term preservationof digital information so that its availability becomes as predictable anddependable as our historic print archive. But, those of us who are pushing forwardwith the new digital-centric paradigm hope to get a fair and encouraging receptionfrom our fellow professionals and to that end, I ask my colleagues to consider thenear certainty that the questions we are facing at Penn State Dickinson willconfront all academic law librarians, in one form or another, much sooner thanthey may realize.52 Volume 17TrendsSteven D. Hincley iAssociateDean forLibraryandlnformation ResourcesandProfessor ofLawat Penn State University, Dickinson School ofLaw, Univer-sit Park, Pennsylvania. Email <sdhI4@psu.edu>(2007)Trend is published byWMilll S. Hem & Co,, Inc. Editor Philip C. Berwick, Associate Dean1285 Main St. / Buffalo, NY 14209 for Information ResourcesPhone: (800) 828-757I; (716) 882-2600 Washington University School of LawFax: (716) 883-8100 Law LibraryEmail: mai[@wshein.com Campus Box I 171ISSN 0893-6773 St Louis, MO 63130The complete collection of articles published Phone: (314) 935-4042; Fax: (314) 935-7125in Tez is avalable in HnOnlineCK@VULAWWUSTLEDL(http:/eisnonline.org) © 2007 by William S. Hein & Co., Inc.

Redefining Academic Law Library Excellence in a Technological Age: From Evolution to Revolution

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Redefining Academic Law Library Excellence in a Technological Age: From Evolution to Revolution

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