Law library colleagues, here are the responses from 36 academic law
libraries with some comments.
The handful of bar libraries and law firms on LAW-ACQ either cancelled it or
never had the General
Digest, as was the case when I did a phone survey of Cincinnati area county
libraries and law firms.
Cynthia Aninao
Head of Technical Services/Acquisitions Librarian
University of Cincinnati Law Library
PO Box 210142, Clifton and Calhoun Streets
Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0142
513-556-0156, Fax 513-556-6265
26 academic law libraries still subscribe to the General Digest.
10 academic law libraries no longer subscribe to the General Digest.
One library cancelled in 1997,
4 cancelled in 2004, and 2 cancelled in 2002.
"We've actually kept it and cancelled lots of regional and state digests."
"We still get West's General Digest as well as the regional digests and a
few state digests. They are useful for
training our students and we get a number of public patrons who have
very limited online access."
"...Still subcribes to the General Digest and all of the Decennials. I am
not sure we would stop receiving this.
We have lots of attorneys who might not have other ways of finding case
law."
"We still subscribe to the General Digest, though the topic of how much
longer we will continue various digests
has at least been discussed without a conclusion yet. My thinking is
that the digests are likely to be the
next in-print dinosaur after the Shepard's state citators of a few years
ago. More likely to go before them,
however, are the duplicate subscriptions of all those West reporters."
"We cancelled West's General Digest in 2002. We'll continue to buy the
Decennial as it becomes available."
"We just cancelled our subscription to the General Digest along with most of
the other West Digests. We
basically decided to keep only the Supreme Court, Atlantic, our local
jurisdictions (DC, MD, VA), and
"high interest" (NY,CA)"
"We stopped getting them within the last two years. My argument of who
wants to research both federal
and state cases at one time finally was accepted. No one has even
mentioned it as a question."
"We no longer subscribe to this title and are reconsidering the
subscriptions to all digests."
"We no longer subscribe to West's General Digest. And of course as soon as
we cancelled it someone had a
fuss about it but we argued that it was not a necessary title with all
the online access that we have to case
material."
"Funny you should ask...Just yesterday, I told our West rep to cancel our
standing order for the General Digest.
We're also considering standing orders for a number of state digests.
Except for California, we're dropping
the digests for all the states that are covered by regional digests.
We're keeping California since the Pacific
Digest only covers the supreme court and not the lower appellate
courts."
-----Original Message-----
From: Aninao, Cynthia (aninaocf) [mailto:aninaocf@UCMAIL.UC.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 3:29 PM
To: LAW-ACQ@LISTSERV.UC.EDU
Subject: [LAW-ACQ] Quick question re Wests' General Digest
LAW-ACQ colleagues, does your library still subscribe to
West's General Digest? Please reply to me directly and
I'll summarize for the list if there's interest. Thanks!
Cynthia Aninao
Head of Technical Services/Acquisitions Librarian
University of Cincinnati Law Library
PO Box 210142
Clifton and Calhoun Streets
Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0142
513-556-0156, Fax 513-556-6265
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