A collection of the signs I removed from my library

I  never thought I would care passionately about library signage, let alone write a blog post about them, but here we are.

My job title is “Faculty Services and Outreach Librarian” and I have joked that “Outreach Librarian” is the job duty equivalent of “other duties as assigned.”  For me, anyway,  “outreach” includes making the library a welcoming, friendly place for our patron base.

You know…marketing.

Unlike my academic and public library brethren, when I think about marketing and the library, I don’t really have to worry about getting bodies in the door.  Law students will pretty much always use the library.  Heck, they’d live here if we’d let them.

Why bother trying to make them feel welcome? Marketing goes beyond getting them in the door. Or even checking out books (especially in an academic law library where much of the collection doesn’t circulate.)  I hate to break it to you, Gentle Reader, but students don’t always separate the “library” from “the librarian.”  For all they differentiate, you might as well be physically attached to your reference desk.

If the library doesn’t feel friendly and welcoming, then the librarians don’t seem friendly and welcoming. If the librarians don’t seem friendly and welcoming, then the students are not going to feel comfortable asking us questions when they need to.  (Law students are already having to overcome the perceived sense of weakness by having to ask for help in the first place – let’s not make it harder than we have to, eh?)  So I’m implementing alternative venues for students to ask questions and making the website more user friendly and pondering creating Social Networking profiles and revamping the blog and yes, worrying about the library’s signs.   Any gateway to the library, be it real or virtual, is getting the once over from me.

So, let’s talk about the signs.

The picture above is a collection of the signs I removed last week from my library’s walls.   Every day, in getting from the front door of the library to my office and then to the magic coffee machine in Tech Services, I would pass by six of these.  An outdated picture of a cellphone with a giant international no sign over it and “CELLULAR PHONES PROHIBITED” in capital letters.

Granted, I have a well-documented problem with Authority and The Man, but these signs just seemed unnecessarily harsh.  I’d look at them and think, “Geez, did cell phones make fun of your mom? Did they run over your dog? Did one steal your prom date?  WHY THE HATE FOR CELL PHONES???”   Not only were they harsh, but they were also inaccurate.  We don’t care if people text or play games or surf the web with their phone. (I guess there’s also a chance they might be using them productively.)  All we cared about was that the library stayed quiet so that our patrons could study.

After clearing it with the Powers That Be and consulting with the library communities on FriendFeed, I came up with the following new sign….TA-DA!

New Library Cell Phone Sign

This is for the front doors of the library and there are similar ones for the restrooms, stacks, etc.  Clean, peaceful, friendly and up-to-date.  Instead of telling our patrons what they CAN”T do, we’re telling them what they CAN. Plus, it accurately reflects our cell phone policy.   I am pleased.

Sometimes it’s the little things.

With WestlawNext (WLN) finally going live for law school faculty, librarians and staff yesterday afternoon, many law school librarians are finally getting permanent access to the much-hyped interface. This comes only a couple of weeks after Julie Jones's fascinating panel at the AALL Annual Meeting, "The Economics of Interface: Vendors Respond." Following presentation's by Thomson Reuters' Mike Dahn, LexisNexis' Molly Miller and Fastcase's Ed Walters, Larry Abraham of Fordham Law stepped up to the audience microphone and told the vendor representatives that their interfaces discourage users from using secondary sources, instead emphasizing primary law materials. Following Laurence's comments, a few other audience members (myself included) complained to the panel about how vendors treat secondary sources both within their systems and in training provided to subscribers.

With that fresh in mind, I wanted to hit on some specific problems I've encountered while searching secondary sources in WLN. My concerns aren't new. I mentioned them in my initial review of the product back in January. Specifically, when searching state-specific secondary sources, the results are often cluttered with irrelevant materials at the top of the results list. Here's part of what I had to say back in January:

The search algorithms for secondary sources are also problematic. When I select California as my jurisdiction, if there are California-specific resources available on my topic, those need to show up first in my results. Period. When I ran a search for the term "rape," the first 12 results were from "National" sources such as Am.Jur. Trials, Am.Jur. Proof of Facts, and several law reviews. More alarming, none of these were general overviews of rape law, but instead provided information on specific aspects of rape law in various jurisdictions. I discussed this problem with Mike Dahn, vice president of new product development at Thomson Reuters Legal. He assured me that this was not by design and that they were working to make sure jurisdiction-specific resources for a user's selected jurisdiction float to the top of search results, but as of now this isn't working correctly.

The problem I described then still occurs. Here's what the top search results for the Secondary Sources facet look like when I select California as my jurisdiction and search for the word "rape":

The first result from a secondary source covering California law doesn't appear until the 11th result. This means a researcher, despite having already selected a jurisdiction, has to wade through numerous off-topic, out-of-jurisdiction articles to find the ones that are on point for the search.

There is, however, a way around this problem. Having already narrowed the search results to the "Secondary Sources" facet, the left sidebar now displays additional filters. Find the one labeled "Jurisdiction" and select "California":

With this one tweak, the results reflect more of what a researcher expects to see when performing a jurisdiction-specific search:

The jurisdiction sub-facet illustrates part of the problem with the original set of results. Despite a researcher having selected California as the jurisdiction before running the search, WestlawNext still includes "National" sources in the results. In a state with fewer high-quality secondary sources than California — say Nevada — including these national sources is probably a necessary evil (though one would hope these national search results would be more on point). Just realize that if you want only state-specific resources you'll need to do that extra step of filtering.

Oddly, even if you narrow your search target to only "California Secondary Sources" by browsing the WLN sources before running your search, WLN still considers those national sources to be "California Secondary Sources," so you'll again need to apply a post-search jurisdiction filter to get true state-specific results.

But the problem with secondary sources in WLN doesn't go away by selecting a sub-facet. This refers back to another problem I discussed in January:

In these results, very little specific information about each source displays. Most of the time what a researcher sees is the title of the specific section, the title of the source, and a couple of text snippets in which the search terms are highlighted. Little to no information about where within that source the section appears shows in these results. For example, when a section of "Witkin and Epstein's California Criminal Law" title simply "Generally" appears, that's the extent of the citation information displayed. The precise article within "Witkin & Epstein" in which this section appears is nowhere to be found, so researchers won't know until viewing the document itself whether it's from an article about sex crimes, robbery or murder. The threaded information available in search results for statutory sections (Title, Chapter, Subpart, etc.) needs to be included in secondary sources as well, or else the results are confusing at best and unusable at worst.

Take another look at that last screenshot showing results from California-only secondary sources. This uses WLN's default "More Detail" display type. In these results, the first result looks to be the most relevant. After all, it is titled "Rape" in big bold print. The second and third results also look to be on point, but the information provided is rather cryptic about what specific crime they refer to. If the source in question isn't part of your subscription plan, the only way to find out if they're relevant is to click on each and incur an out-of-plan charge. Not exactly the best way to go about cost-effective research. Worse still, that first result — the one titled "Rape" — that looks so relevant? It turns out this is a section from an article about First Degree Murder that only discusses rape insofar as it pertains to the commission of a homicide. The second result ("Nature of Crime") is the only one in the top three actually from Witkin & Epstein's article about the crime of rape. The third document in the results ("In General") is, like the first, about homicide.

There is a more detailed view available than this one, but it doesn't solve the problem. To change the display type, go to the display options at the top of the search results (the icon showing one to three horizontal lines) and select "Most Detail":

Even with the most detail display available for search results, however, the full threaded information isn't included and it's still impossible to tell whether each result concerns the specific crime of rape without retrieving the document itself:

This isn't a problem so long as the source is part of your subscription plan and you can pull up as many documents as you want. But if "Witkin & Epstein's California Criminal Law" isn't in your plan, you might be faced with quite the dilemma when deciding how important it is to find the right document. Or perhaps you'll skip secondary sources altogether, jumping instead into the primary law results directly.

Truth be told, the more specific your search terms ("unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor" vs. "rape"), the stronger likelihood of having relevant search results float to the top. This is true of any search engine, and I'm not suggesting the search algorithm is the problem. It's the display. Given that general searches like "rape" are common in legal research, particularly when searching secondary sources, the lack of useful identifying information about a document is a problem that needs to be addressed by Thomson Reuters Legal.

I don't want this post to be interpreted as a negative review of WLN. Most of my review in January was positive and I stand by that overall opinion. WestlawNext is a vast improvement across the board over Classic Westlaw, and I don't share the opinion of many that it "dumbs down" legal research. To the contrary, I've found that it adds considerable power to most of the research I've done using the new system. Figuring out what database I need to search in Classic Westlaw doesn't mean I understand the sources of law any better. It just means I know what database I need to search in Westlaw.

But as superior as it is to its predecessor, it still has legitimate problems. The issues associated with secondary sources in WLN need to be highlighted. Even if Thomson Reuters opts to not fix these problems, we as researchers need to be aware of them. And as instructors — both in the classroom and at the reference desk — we need to be prepared to educate others about them, too.

Over the past day, I’ve probably seen at least a dozen links via Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed to NPR blogger Linda Holmes’ recent assertion that Libraries may be the next big pop-culture wave. And just last week, spurred by Andy Woodworth, the “Old Spice Guy” made a short video promoting libraries. It even got picked up by the Huffington Post! Yes, libraries may just be having their moment as a pop-culture phenomenon. Everyone’s thrilled.

Except me.

Listen, I’m really not trying to be a Buzz Killington here. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the Old Spice Guy’s video. Nor is there anything bad about creating and encouraging other pro-library “fluff” like a library themed Ben and Jerry ice cream (a movement also spear-headed by Mr. Woodworth, who I swear I am not trying to pick on and actually respect quite a lot), the Librarians Go Gaga video or book truck drill teams. I can appreciate and enjoy those types of things. Not everything that publicizes libraries or gets librarians excited and active has to be serious or weighty. Hell, I even participated in and liked the Library 101 video.

My fear is that by becoming just another pop-culture icon, libraries and their advocates will, in the long run, lose out on assistance and support they could be getting from people. I guess I just don’t want “Save the Libraries” to become another “Save the Whales” type cultural event where everyone gets really excited for a hot second and then they move on the next thing.   Fortunately for libraries, we’re sort of used to being uncool, so the shock won’t be too great.

I also fear that this sort of popularity makes possible advocates lazy. For example, there are few things that annoy me more than ribbons that people wear on their lapels, cars, etc. Wearing a colored ribbon doesn’t mean that you are helping to fight the battle against anything. It means that you pinned a ribbon to yourself and are letting people know what cause you support. This has its uses, but it’s nowhere equal to writing legislators, donating money or volunteering time. Likewise, watching the Old Spice video and getting its YouTube hit numbers up doesn’t do anything to support libraries. These are good steps to introduce people to the issues, but we need to make sure we don’t leave people out on the stoop once we open the door.

I am recently returned from my 5th AALL annual meeting.

There are many things I could write about with regards to this meeting…the fun of hanging out with Internet friends in meatspace, my nervousness at having my sister be a presenter, the excitement of finally getting to “meat” people that I’ve only known online, reuniting with former co-workers and old friends, the great programs I saw, my annual fear that my near pathological shyness would be interpreted as snobbery by those that don’t know me well, the exhibit hall madness, the rush-rush nature of AALL…but I’m not.

Do you know why?

Because I’m exhausted, y’all.

Which brings me to the thing that I do want to talk about.

I am on the AALL Annual Meeting Program Committee for the AALL 2011 in Philadelphia, so I tried to pay particular attention to the programming this year, seeing what I liked and soliciting advice from the librarians I met while at the conference.  If you’re reading this, that means you likely read other law librarian blogs, which means you are aware of the controversy about AALL program planning that sprang up in the days preceding this year’s annual meeting.  Given my membership on the AMPC, I didn’t want to get involved in that online discussion prior to meeting with the committee at AALL in Denver, but now I feel a little more free to shoot my mouth off.

CAVEAT LECTOR: I am not speaking for the AMPC in the following.

First of all, I was really excited to see that the law library blogosphere get whipped up on AALL program planning.  If I thought the process was perfect or that everything with program planning was hunky-dory, I never would have applied to be on the committee.  I hope now that the meeting is over and the annual meeting is fresh in everyone’s mind, more suggestions are offered as to how the meeting should be programmed.  Even if you’re not a blogger, the AMPC contact information is available on the above linked site and I really hope you suggest changes if you have an opinion.  There was an open committee meeting and Open Forum at AALL.  No one besides committee members showed up to the committee meeting, so no outside suggestions were offered there.   I wasn’t able to attend the Open Forum as I had another meeting to go to, but from what I understand  a discussion of changes to the Annual Meeting programming did not happen, even though some of the bloggers were in attendance.  I’m disappointed by this, but, again, there’s still time to offer an opinion!  I really do want to hear it!

That being said, I must admit that I had to work to  not take some of the criticisms of the AMPC personally.  Especially the “advance criticism” that we were getting. By this I mean, broad statements of “what AMPC is looking for.” Or, more maddening,  people saying that they would submit a certain program, but the AMPC probably wouldn’t accept it because they didn’t accept something similar a few years ago, so they’re not going to bother.

The AMPC changes every year. It’s not a faceless, secret organization determined to make AALL annual as awful as possible.   It’s me. And Anne Myers. And James Senter and Ruth Bridges and Ann Matthewmen and and April Schwartz and Linda Tesar.  We’re just a bunch of AALL members and, unless they’re having secret meetings without me, not once have I heard any secret agenda or list of people who automatically get programs accepted.  It’s sort of stunning how little of an agenda we have besides wanting the best program that provides the most educational value for as many members as possible.

But here’s the thing: AMPC’s hands are really tied. We can’t create an awesome slate of programming unless members propose and create the sessions.   This brings me to why I’m exhausted.  Even though the organization is “The American Association of Law Libraries”, it’s run by and for law librarians.  As I said, I wasn’t happy with programming in the past, so last year I submitted 7 program ideas and agreed to speak on 2 others.  Of that, one of each got accepted.  Additionally,  I co-ran an unconference, attended several committee meetings, dragged myself to the AALL business meeting even though I was experiencing an ocular migraine at the time (fortunately I left before the sing-a-long), and made it to a couple of networking events where I actually forced myself to talk to new people.

I really believe that if you want AALL (either the meeting or the organization or both) to change, you have to be the one to do it.   I also have a new personal rule that the statute of limitations for complaining about AALL is 5 years.  That is to say, if something happened more than 5 years ago, you need to buy a ladder and get over it because I certainly don’t want to hear about it.  The nature of AALL leadership is fluid enough that whoever made the decision that wrecked your plans is long gone and you need to try again.  Otherwise, you are just a whiner, and there are few things more annoying than people who complain without trying to do anything to change the situation.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a nap.  I’m exhausted.