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26 Legal Info. Alert 1 (2007)

handle is hein.lbr/leinfal0026 and id is 1 raw text is: hat's new in legal publications, databases, and research techniques         Volume 26, No. 1     January 2007

Contents

Reflections of a Mad
Cybrarian: The State
of our Profession
Database Report
New Sources

Publishers 15
Index 15

Reflections of a Mad Cybrarian:
The State of Our Profession
by Linda G. Will
At least I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been
changed several times since then.
- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Life is much like a game of cards. We are dealt hands that we may or may not want
to play. Nonetheless, it is our hand, and how we play it out depends on our own wit
and intuition. To me this is what my journey in law librarianship has been for the
last 30 years: one of shuffling, dealing, and playing the hand I was dealt.
With the advent of the New Year, I decided to peruse some of the literature
published in the last six to eight years, to see if I could discern any trends in the
profession. The findings from   my empirical study were interesting.
Responsibilities such as the annual budget of the Information Resources Center
(IRC) resources had gone unchanged, while other responsibilities such as contract
negotiations and content administration had evolved. Some responsibilities such as
the IRC's role in marketing and competitive intelligence, which did not even exist
a few years back, had taken center stage.
Budgets and Price Increases
Budgets and the management thereof have seemingly forever been the bane of our
existence as librarians, and I do not see this changing. Indeed, information resource
centers or libraries are generally found nestled in as the fourth or fifth line item on
a law firm's overall budget. (At Dorsey, the IRC is right after Real Estate,
Associates Salaries, and Malpractice Insurance on our annual budget.) So IRC
continued on page 4

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