Post for March 23, 2010

In Mary Whisner’s article, Update to Choosing Law Librarianship: Thoughts for People Contemplating a Career Move, she discusses choosing to be a law librarian. One of the issues discussed was how much law librarians get paid and how it would be less then what others in the organization would be paid. She basically said if you have salary envy you need to find a different line of work and I agree. Now don’t get me wrong, I love money just as much as the next guy but I love freedom even more. I love the freedom of not having to work 50 to 70 hours a week and the freedom of not having to work at a job I hate.

Post for March 16, 2010

Politics! It is not what you know, it is who you know! This is the world we live in and if you want to find a job you better start networking. I knew this was the case in a lot of professions and last week’s class taught me that being a law librarian is no different. In last week’s class we discussed the importance of joining organizations and meeting people and I am so glad we did. So let me take a moment to thank our wonderful teacher (I am not above brownnosing) and guest speakers, because last week’s class convinced me that I need to start getting involved. I don’t have any library experience, so for me joining AALL and CALL are extremely important and I plan on joining right away.

Post for March 2, 2010

After discussing Web 2.0 in the last class, I started thinking about how behind I am with modern technical trends. Ten years ago I considered myself to be technically savvy, but today I have a bit of an “I hate technology” mindset. So I started thinking about why this was and I came up with the conclusion that economics of practicing law forces attorneys to lose their interest in technology. If I had a computer issue when I first started practicing law I tried to fix it myself, but learned quickly that trying to fix a computer problem or installing a new program was not how they wanted me to spend my time. After all, every hour I spent messing around with the computer was one less billable hour for the firm. I don’t know if all attorneys are discouraged from handling their own computer issues, but I suspect they are. So the question is, does being discouraged from handling your own computer issues result in attorneys losing interest in technology in general. With me it did and I will have to change that if I wish to be successful as a law librarian. Now flipping to the other side of the coin, if the economics of practicing law discourages attorneys from being technically savvy then law librarians will be more important than ever.

Post for February 23, 2010

Do they really believe what they are saying? Well Westlaw and Lexis reps are always talking about ways of making people better searchers in order to save money. There is always this feature or that feature that can make the search more fruitful and thus lower the cost. But if they really wanted to save people money they could just charge less. It is a simple enough concept the less you charge the more people save. We now have WestlawNext, which is going to probably make bad researchers into even worse researchers. Now don’t get me wrong I believe in capitalism and think that companies should do what they can to make their shareholders money, so I in no way have a problem with either Westlaw and Lexis. So I just wonder, do they really believe what they are saying is true or do they know it’s just a bunch of malarkey.