Once Again We Must Ask –What business are we in?

Over the years when speaking to library and knowledge management audiences, I have often invoked the importance of knowing what business we are in.

,I became a librarian because “I loved books.” Yet on the day when I started my first law library job, a hulking piece of equipment was rolled through the door of the Pace University Law  Library. This was an omen, like a comet across the night sky, my career path would pivot in unforeseeable directions. The Lexis DeLuxe research terminal was the size of a washing machine, and it connected to Mead Data Central computers in Ohio via a dial-up modem. This “state of the art” equipment provided access to Ohio statutes and cases. Within 10 years the Lexis and Westlaw WALT terminals would shrink, the World Wide Web would be born and the stacks of books would be compressed into bits of data accessible on everyone’s desktop.

I love the “Black & Decker marketing strategy that recognized that their customers “don’t want a drill they want a half-inch hole in a board.” And librarians who thought lawyers and law firm administrators only needed books became flotsam in a surging tide of technology. Librarians and knowledge managers need to be aligned with what lawyers really need and  that they have the unique expertise to deliver: information that gives them a competitive edge, new clients, happy clients, predictive and  actionable insights , efficient workflow, and tools that make their lives easier. (Read the full post at Legal Tech Hub)

Seizing the Technology of the DayContinue Reading AI and the Future of Law Libraries : Opportunity or Armageddon

Ellyssa Kroski, the Director of Information Technology at the New York Law Institute  assembled a group of law library and technology thought leaders to contribute to her new book “Law Librarianship in the Age of AI” which was released last week by the American Library Association.

I was honored to have the opportunity to

Today American Lawyer posted an article about what the author described as a “growing trend in law library outsourcing.”  Nuance doesn’t grab headlines, and this article
raises more questions than it answers.  A  few key clarifications are in order.  Are law firms throwing away institutional intelligence instead of just tossing the books? Will they pay

“The
future is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed.”
William Gibson,
author and futurist.
 
The
uneven “distribution of the future” is fueling an intense debate within the
American Association of Law Libraries. Last week the  organization
announced that the Executive Committee had voted unanimously to change the name
of the organization to the

The July Issue of Practice Innovations is out and just in time for the American Association of Law Libraries Conference, the issue is focused on legal information and knowledge professionals. Since law firms are knowledge intensive organizations, legal information professionals can play a critical role creating new workflows, driving productivity and innovation across law firm

This past week ALM released their Annual Law Librarian Survey and the American Lawyer published a companion article “The Bookless Library “  by MP McQueen, which describes the transformation of law firm libraries into new kinds of environments offering new kinds of services. I have previously written stories about innovative library spaces but I love