ABA Law Libraries Committee Questionnaire Update

Source: E-mail from Carol Avery Nicholson, ABA Law Libraries Committee, August 17, 2007.

• As you know the ABA has made changes to the annual questionnaire, based upon recommendations from the ABA Law Libraries Committee. In addition to providing an ongoing review of the questionnaire with resulting recommendations for changes, the committee specifically addressed the problem of how we can better report the electronic portions of our collections. The new questionnaire therefore allows us to report dollars we spend on both licensed and owned databases as well as separate figures for licensed databases and owned electronic titles.
• The new questionnaire is the result of extensive discussions both within the committee and with various others who have thoughtfully given us their suggestions and comments. We also examined how other library organizations gather this type of information. For every “perfect solution” one of us was able to devise, two other people were able to identify reasons why that solution was not manageable for others or would not accurately reflect another library’s holdings. For now, we have a document that we hope is a significant move in the right direction, and at minimum, we will have better consistency in the information that we do collect about our electronic resources.
• To provide you and your staff with help in answering the new questionnaire, we have prepared a list of frequently asked questions. This list is posted on the AALL Academic Law Libraries SIS home page at http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/committees/statistics/index.asp. We will continue to update the FAQ list as needed. If you have questions, please send them to Rita Reusch, reuschr@law.utah.edu
• Moving forward, the committee will continue to address the difficulty of having the annual questionnaire accurately reflect both our collections and our services to our schools.
• Thank you.
• Rita Reusch, Chair, 2006-2007
• Paul George, Chair, 2007-2008ABA Law Libraries Committee