Survey: Alberta Law Libraries

Attention: Law librarians

The Law Society of Alberta is seeking input from the legal community on our future involvement in funding of Alberta Law Libraries. The consultation will solicit input from practicing lawyers, the judiciary, law librarians and other stakeholders on library usage patterns, emerging trends in use of online resources, and how the libraries support professional competency.

Please take five minutes to complete the following survey

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PKQ8TFR by Friday, June 27th. Your feedback is appreciated and will be used to inform future decisions regarding the governance and funding of the Alberta Law Libraries.

My perspective: As a law firm librarian, I rely on the expertise of the staff at Alberta Law Libraries, the currency and breadth of their collection, and their presence in Courthouses where my lawyer team members have immediate access to resources.  

There is no way that a law firm, even large firms, can maintain a 'just in case' collection.  Institutions like Alberta Law Libraries are an extremely important industry partner to law firms with in house library staff, just as they are to small and solo practitioners, self-represented litigants and the judiciary.

I hope that stakeholders will take the time to answer this survey.  

If you think that you only use your law firm collection, remember the times that your law firm library staff have "zipped over to the courthouse library" or "called the courthouse library" to retrieve an essential piece of the legal research puzzle. Perhaps you remember attending a Head Start event. Maybe you popped in to the Alberta Law Libraries to use on of the research tools that they license for your benefit. Perhaps you selected a research guide on their website. Maybe you follow their blog.

As for me, I will be hanging out at the Edmonton site of Alberta Law Libraries for the next two days as we partner, through the Edmonton Law Libraries Association, to offer the Head Start legal research training program to 48 articling students and use the essential expertise of ALL librarians and the collections and services they offer as a resource. 

Alberta Queen's Printer Stakeholder Survey

Josette McEachern and I were among a group who participated in a stakeholder session this week about the Alberta Queen's Printer products and services.  To assist with results based budgeting, the QP is looking for feedback about how they deliver services, official products and legislative material.

I was given leave to share an online survey to further assist them in their important work.

In addition to the questions that we asked in the session, we also encourage you participate in our online questionnaire ─ a set of mostly different questions other than what we already asked you ─ so that we may be further informed about your experience with and expectations of Alberta Queen’s Printer.  The survey will take 5 – 15 minutes in length (depends on the length of your answers).  The survey will be open until Friday June 27^th at 4:30 pm.

 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AQP-Customer-Survey

 

Of course, you are always welcome to contact us by email qp@gov.ab.ca or phone 780-427-4952 (AB Toll Free 310-0000) with your questions, suggestions or comments.

I encourage all Albertans and anyone who uses Alberta Legislation to participate.