Palfrey: "Libraries must perceive our primary function as serving communities rather than building collections."

"Our information environment, now and in the foreseeable future, is best described as a world of 'digital-plus,'" a hybrid era of print and digital legal materials, writes Harvard's John Palfrey in Cornerstones of Law Libraries for an Era of Digital-Plus (LLJ, forthcoming) [SSRN]. More:

The central idea is that new works are, and will continue to be, created and stored in digital formats as a default. The dominant mode of information creation and access will continue its shift from analog to digital. Students and faculty will access almost all legal information, at least as a starting point, through digital means.

But print and other analog formats will not disappear. Some users will continue to print out materials (whether on a personal printer or through a more elaborate print-on-demand system) to read them, to carry them around, and to mark them up by hand. Others will use printed copies of books in the practice of law as a starting point to begin their research, as they have in the past. Others will want to access rare and unique materials found in special collections—to touch the paper, to smell the must, to examine the handwriting in the margins, and more. The paper-based format can facilitate access to legal information in ways that remain critical.

Palfrey proceeds with a series of observations about the transformation underway in the dissemination and use of legal resources as a lead-in to identifying six cornerstones for the role libraries perform in this "digital-plus" era. If I have any nit-pick with this, it is that cornerstones are laid on a foundation and the first cornerstone Palfrey identifies is foundational, namely, law libraries must perceive their primary function as "serving communities rather than building collections." Coming from the head of one of the largest (and fairly well-funded) academic law libraries in the country (read I've worked in law schools whose entire budgets were less than the HLS library budget), this may seem like a controversial statement. But times have changed.

In this "digital-plus" era, the view that the largest academic law libraries have a responsibility to build and maintain a print collection to serve the "greater good," meaning the entire law library community that once viewed the nation's great academic law libraries as libraries of last resort is an antiquated notion because electronic resources has leveled the playing field somewhat. As the Harvard Law School Library's recently revised Collection Development Policy states:

The primary mission of the Harvard Law School Library is to support the research and curricular needs of its current faculty and students. The Library also supports the greater Harvard community and, to a lesser extent, the community of scholars and researchers around the world who are interested in subjects of or related to the law.

"To a lesser extent" has always been the case but it is now underscored because of the rising cost of print egal materials and current state of library economics, changes in collection development format preferences and  end user research habits. This does not mean that larger academic law libraries don't have a role to play in this "digital-plus" era for the benefit of the larger community. They certainly do, for example, in developing electronic collections by digitizing legal resources in a more coordinated way to maximize the efforts being made, as identified by Palfrey as one of his six cornerstones. Here they are:

The first cornerstone is alignment with the goals of the institutions we are part of, whether schools, firms, or agencies. Libraries must perceive our primary function as serving communities rather than building collections.

A second cornerstone of our libraries needs to be a system for understanding the changing ways in which users are learning—accessing information, performing research, creating new information, and remixing old information.

A third cornerstone is a system to coordinate the digitization of legal materials.

A fourth cornerstone is to agree to put our collection policies in writing and to share them with others publicly.

A fifth cornerstone involves making our own systems more efficient using back-office technology improvements.

A sixth cornerstone must be our process of developing our human resources. Librarians need to be change agents who listen and respond, all the while having a backbone.

If we start with the proposition that libraries must perceive their primary purpose as serving communities rather than building collections, then, as Palfrey observes "each law library is laying cornerstones for its own future." Like it or not, the "digital-plus" era is one where the law library, regardless of type, more narrowly focuses on its more immediate user population. Those law libraries with the sufficient resources available -- financial, technological and staff -- still contribute to the larger community but in substantially different ways now.

Palfrey's six cornerstones are "meant as suggestions, as provocations, as part of a process of articulating a full series of building blocks." His forthcoming LLJ article is best read in the context of Harvard Law School Library's revised collection development policy and it's likely impact on academic law libraries generally. See Digital-Only: The Shed West Era Has Been Officially Institutionalized in the Legal Academy.

Cornerstones of Law Libraries for an Era of Digital-Plus is not the sort of think piece just any old academic law library director might see published in LLJ, if submitted. But Palfrey inherits the mantle of academic law library leadership by virtue of the postion he holds at HLS. It's interesting to watch him grow into his position and apply his expertise to the field of academic law librarianship. 

As stated in a July 2008 post, I doubt Palfrey would meet the requirements of ABA Accredition Standard 603 (c) for law library directors ("A director of a law library should have a law degree and a degree in library or information science and shall have a sound knowledge of and experience in library administration.") but the ABA will not even take notice. It's HLS, after all. See A Standard is a Standard is a Standard Unless It's Not Enforced By the ABA ("As for John's appointment, I don't think our profession is so devoid of talented academic law librarians that HLS couldn't have found and hired one, but I think most academic law librarians would approve his appointment if given an opportunity to review it in [the context of making an appointment under "extraordinary circumstances" like the qualification issues presented in John's appointment]")

As previously stated in Digital-Only: The Shed West Era Has Been Officially Institutionalized in the Legal Academy, Harvard's revised collection development policy is not innovative but it is attention-getting. (Hell, even West stood up and took notice according to private communications I have had with folks in the land of 10,000 invoices.) Several other very innovative academic law librarians have promoted the cause of format neutrality in collection development for years, long before Palfrey's appointment, and many academic law libraries took the digital-only option in this "digit-plus" era in recent years, long before HLS Library's recently revised collection development policy made it "official." Like Harvard's revised collection development policy, Palfrey's forthcoming LLJ article, Cornerstones of Law Libraries for an Era of Digital-Plus {SSRN] is one for the "history books" and is well worth the time to read and think about. [JH]