This study presents detailed data and commentary on library plans and operations from 43 law libraries in the United States and Canada. The report gives detailed data on the extent to which librarians and professionals in their parent organizations are working from home, on the impact of the pandemic on the flow of traffic to the library, and on communications methods for relating to online library patrons and staff.
It looks closely at current and planned library budgets, with specific data sets for salaries, materials spending, spending on digital resources and spending on print resources. The study also emphasizes how law libraries are coping with the significant increases in inflation in the United States and Canada. The report also looks at plans for spending on many specific, major legal publishers, and at librarian views on new innovations in legal publishing, particularly the use of artificial intelligence.
Also covered in detail: plans for in-person conference attendance, plans for the law journal collection, use of interlibrary loan, and the frequency of consulting with law librarians in other libraries for assistance and advice.
Just a few of this 100+ page report’s many findings are that:
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18.69% of libraries surveyed say that the number of visitors to the physical library facilities have returned to pre-pandemic levels.
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Almost all law firm librarians in the sample characterized the economic outlook for their parent organizations in the coming year as “good” or “excellent.”
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63.64% of Canadian law libraries in the sample used Microsoft Teams.
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58.14% of librarians sampled felt that their salaries would increase in the next year but by an insufficient amount to keep up with inflation.
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University law libraries reduced spending on print resources in the past year by 1.25% in nominal terms.
Data in the report is broken out separately for US and Canadian libraries, by number of employees, and by library type, specifically for law firm libraries, university law libraries, courthouse libraries and all others