A Little Light Reading on Best Practices for Government Libraries from Lexis

LexisNexis has released its 2011 Best Practices for Government Libraries. This year's theme is expressed in the document's subtitle: "e-Initiatives and e-Efforts: Expanding our Horizons." I would list the TOC but it is way too long. Granted the document is 280-plus pages but, like past annual editions, the articles tend to be very short, too brief to be all that informative. Many articles are written by practitioners but, of course, some of the articles are written by LexisNexis folks. This is light reading material that could be improved by asking practitioners to provide more detailed, longer contributions. If space is an issue, omit the LexisNexis generated content next year.

I had the same issue with last year's Best Practices for Government Libraries 2010: The New Face of Value ("Unfortunately the articles are so damn brief they leave me with little to think about except for wondering who hires the best looking models or buys the best stock photos of them: Lexis, TR Legal or AALL Spectrum?") At least the stock photos of models have been omitted by Lexis from this year's edition.

A very quick scroll through the PDF may be a good way to find something of interest to read. Lexis also has used Adobe properly to bookmark articles for easy navigation of this 280-plus page PDF.  [JH]