FROM THE CHAIR
by Jean P. O'Grady, DLA Piper, Washington,  DC 

What are You Worth?

AALL recently announced that  it has awarded a contract to HBR Consulting to undertake a study on the Economic Value of Law Libraries.

I can't help but wonder if there should be two separate studies:  one asking for the value of the services provided by libraries the second would ask about the value of various services without mentioning the word "library."  It would be interesting to see if using the word "library" would cause the services to be credited with greater or lesser value?

Will one size fit all?  The survey will address the value of academic, private firm and court and government libraries. As we have seen the AALL Salary survey is not designed to address the organization or multitude of new staffing issues  such as centralization, globalization, outsourcing and onshoring  which are  issues unique to  law firm libraries.  It is my hope that the designers of the value study will not  create one survey which is generic enough to cover all types of libraries but which is fail to inquire about the unique non-traditional offerings in private firms such as competitive intelligence, listen platforms, embedding.  So many facets of the work under taken by private firm librarians such as  knowledge management, competitive intelligence has no counterpart in other environments. And in fact may many new high value services may even be overlooked by respondents such as partners if they are only asked about "library services" which conjures the traditional management of books and research support.

Libraries or Librarians? My biggest concern is that the survey remains focused on the value of  "libraries" rather than on the value of " librarians or information professionals." As I have said before " Libraries have no strategies, develop no plans, do not innovate, perform no research, teach no classes, do not lead change  and are not self-organizing. It is people, information professionals, who  lead, plan, strategize, teach, research, organize."   Steve Anderson  the President of AALL has assured me that the goal is to actually focus on the value of our professional services to our institutions not the library itself. But the quality of the responses may well be determined by whether the questions are about libraries or information professionals.

Here is one more challenge: Measuring the value of risk mitigation. Much of what we do in private firms directly impacts the control  and mitigation of risk. We provide access to the best resources to reduce the risk of malpractice or bad client outcomes. We are masters at negotiating licenses scaled to the needs and workflow of our lawyers which reduce the risk of copyright infringement and breach of our licenses. We put technologies in place to control access to licensed content. These risks have exploded over the past decades as research resources shifted from print to online and as new digital resources delivering high value practice news permeate all aspects of  the law firm environment. I am not aware of any law firm being sued for breach of a license or copyright infringement in recent history. It is hard to celebrate a victory  which is demonstrated by a non-event. Maybe another way to highlight our value is for AALL to talk to engage in conversations with ALAS and other companies that provide insurance to law firms. Should the hiring of a professional librarian to mitigate these risks lower the firms insurance rates? Good question - has it ever been asked?

Our colleague Bob Oaks from Latham & Watkins is Chair of the Special Committee on the Economic Value of Law Libraries. I wish the committee good luck in overseeing this very complex study..