While I don't want law publishers to advertise on law-lib, I do appreciate
having new books, and other services (LOIS comes to mind) brought to
my attention, especially those from small publishers. We are deluged
with ads, vendor slips, faxes, and the like, from big publishers (need I
name names!), but it takes a lot of time tracking down some of the small
and/or independent publisher offerings. And I do miss many of those
titles.
A listserve is one way for small publishers to get this information out,
and it does even the playing field if only a little bit. And, while I agree that
ads should be kept off of law-lib, if we are serious about keeping SOME
competition in the law book business, we do need to support some, not
all, of the efforts of the small publishers to get the word out about their
products. This may mean merely (!) subscribing to one more listserv.
Is the NEWLAWBOOKS list still alive? I'll check it out again myself when
our system is back up to speed next week. Or, maybe the small
publishers could start their own listserv (I could be asking for trouble
here :-)).
In the meantime, I still read the tiny ads in the various book trade and
review mags, scan footnotes in law journals for book titles I may not
know about, and subscribe to way too many listserves just to keep an
eye out for fugitive titles from publishers whose budgets don't allow
mass mailings, telemarketing, etc.
Laura
P.S. On a more frightening note :-) I just talked to 2 law students who
not only never heard of but didn't recognize a Fieffer cartoon! What is
the world coming to?
P.P.S. One last note: before setting out your blood-sweat-tears new
Web page, have a couple of people who are color-blind look it over. You
might be surprised, even astonished (yes, I know the old joke), at what
they [don't] see.
Laura "question virtual reality" Orr
Reference Librarian
Lillian Goldman Library
Yale Law School
127 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06520-8215
Email: laura.orr@yale.edu
Phone: 203-432-7535
Fax: 203-432-9692
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