Academic Law Librarianship
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Carol Morgan Collins; Iantha Haight; and Christy L. Smith
Technical Services departments manage the library’s physical and electronic resources, including all the recordkeeping relating to the resources. Processes include acquisitions, cataloging, electronic resource management, and serials management. Technical Services librarians work closely with publishers, vendors, and collection development librarians in negotiating license agreements, creating approval plans, generating order service plans for the facilitation of data exchange between vendor platforms and the library service platform (LSP), making local cataloging specifications and modifications for services, and troubleshooting electronic resources issues.
- Working in law library technical services requires special tools and skills and differs from other libraries in essential ways.
- Acquisition processes utilize different vendor platforms, purchase orders, and models.
- Web technologies are inspiring innovative services and methods for providing patron access to information.
- Licensing and providing access to electronic resources is taking up an increasingly large portion of library resources.
Depending on the size of the library’s collection or budget, the work can involve a few people or several people. Over the years, technical services have evolved from mostly print resources management to mainly electronic resources management. Some skills are transferable from the print environment to the electronic environment, but employees need to understand how electronic resources are managed as well as how the library’s patrons use them.
Acquisitions
Acquisitions includes the processes involved with purchasing or licensing content for the research, learning, or teaching needs of students, faculty, and other constituencies. Processes include ordering, negotiating, renewing, or canceling titles; paying for resources; and maintaining records. Acquisitions are guided by the library’s collection development policy and usually led by a librarian who understands acquisitions processes and how to make the resources discoverable and accessible.
Types of Orders
Academic law libraries initiate different types of orders. Firm orders are one-time orders for monographs or other resources not normally updated. Subscriptions are orders for resources published on a regular frequency, such as journals or databases that offer service on an annual basis. Standing orders are for titles that are updated but not necessarily on a set frequency. Approval plan orders are usually for monograph titles received on an approval plan. Package plan orders allow the library to receive all publications published by the publisher. Bundled orders include print and electronic subscriptions that are purchased as a package.
As the law changes, publications must incorporate the changes in a timely manner. Because the law can change at any time, publishers sell print primary resources and treatises as