>From Charles Dyer, Director of Libraries, San Diego County Public Law
Library (SDCPLL):
The County of San Diego is planning a new courthouse, and the hope is to
move our Main Library back into this new building. Our County Chief
Administrative Officer (CAO) has asked me to visit some "modern law
libraries" in order to be able to incorporate the latest ideas on
serving our clientele adequately while using as little space as
possible. The CAO is hopeful that computers, online services, and
CD-ROMs can replace much of our present need for space for books. Also,
he believes that we should be able to offer more services remotely,
i.e., through websites, etc., so that our clientele does not have to
visit us at all, thus saving seating space.
Although it is obvious to me that a public law library serving 500+
users a day cannot condense its book collection like a law firm library,
it is not obvious to the administrators at the CAO's office. I have
collected the various articles about this matter, but I doubt I can
convince these folks without a thorough report, giving a cost analysis
to the whole thing. And my report will not be convincing unless I can
show that I have actually visited some of these law libraries out there
doing things better.
In truth, I would undoubtedly learn some things from such trips that
would be applicable here and would save the County some building costs.
And I would get a much better picture about applying some of the fancier
things in our own environment.
I need to develop a list of libraries to visit. Ultimately, these would
be listed as references in my report, and I could note where good ideas
came from. Also, I would have back-up when I list some ideas as not
useful in our environment, i.e., people who use these techniques and
would not recommend thwm to us at our particular type of library.
Rather than begin by contacting the few law libraries that I know have
done some wonderful things, I thought I'd first put out a general
appeal.
If you have a law library that meets the following criteria and would be
interested in hosting me for a day or so in your library, would you
email me, please:
1. You have a fairly substantial collection or access through online
and computerized services to a large volume of materials and are
considered the library of last resort for your community of users. (Law
firm libraries that depend on their county law libraries would not meet
this criterion.)
2. You believe you have done about as much as possible toward employing
computer technology in your environment to save space.
Additional helpful, but not necessary, criteria are:
1. You have a diversified clientele, with great ranges in education
levels and computer proficiency.
2. You are a public law library, or one that considers service to the
public as part of its mission.
The SDCPLL's Main Library was built in 1958, with 35,000 sq. ft., five
floors of stacks and two reading rooms, one on top of the other. A 1990
space study from the County stated that we should have a building of
110,000 to 140,000 sq. ft., but that included a large amount of space
that could be "combined use" (e.g., auditorium, conference rooms) if we
move into the new courthouse. We presently have 215,000 hard copy
volumes and 68,384 non-print volume equivalents at our Main library. We
have an active weeding program. We have plans to put superseded
materials and our California Briefs Depository collection in a remote
site, in lieu of scanning them. Of the remaining materials, our large
legal periodical collection and a fair amount of our treatise collection
is not available in machine readable form, so far as I know.
For those of you who have read this far, I would be pleased to share my
report when it is finally done, some months from now. I will announce
when it is ready. Those of you who help me will get a note of
appreciation, and I'll buy dinner when I visit your town.
Thanks so much.
Charles R. Dyer
cdyer@sdcll.org
cc: Jean L. Willis, Associate Director for Information Systems, SDCPLL
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 14 2007 - 20:49:59 PST