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.