Kathie Sullivan of the CRIV committee asked that I contribute the
insights of a county law librarian to the discussion on conversion of titles
to pamphlet format. As a California county law library, we are suffering
from a severe drop in funding. When reviewing two titles for retention, we
must now consider format.
The Alameda County Law Library has found that the conversion of books
to pamphlet format hinders our ability to provide up-to-date information to
the public because of theft and a library policy to not allow the
circulation of looseleaf tiles. The conversion also increases our processing
costs at a time when we are cutting titles. If the publishers feel that
conversion to pamphlet form is necessary, then locking three-ring binders
that patrons can not open must be available to maintain our investment in
publicly available legal information.
Theft has increased in the library.. We are no longer loosing single
pages, but entire chapters and pamphlets. We tattle-tape individual
pamphlets, which increases the cost of processing a title, but dishonest
people can sneak pamphlets into their briefcases and override the sensor.
Staff cut-backs do not gives us the manpower to check every brief case and
bag that comes into the library; we cannot selectively search patrons
because of discrimination issues.
The publishers have been very helpful in providing replacement pages,
but while we wait for replacement pages, the effectiveness of our library is
compromised.
We try to limit the problem by prohibiting the circulation of
looseleaf materials, but more and more titles are converting to looseleaf
format. Attorneys want to check out titles and we have suffered a drop in
attorney patrons since we have stopped circulating many titles.
Jacqueline Cantwell
Alameda County Law Library
125-12th Street
Oakland, California 94607
510-272-6465
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