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Library Management Systems and the Legal Sector

The Library & Information Gazette has published two articles in its February 13 edition, which will be of interest to anyone working in the Legal Sector who has an interest in Library Management Systems (LMS)

In the first "We need all the answers" Alan Lewis of Moore Stephens LLP says that "...the most urgent need is for users to know what is available in all media formats" This is an interesting article discussing the potential for LMS the article continues "...the norm will be for partners and staff to search the Web through the Library Catalogue, then download and use the material"

This is a long way off in my mind, especially if you don't currently use an LMS or your firm already has a well established Know How Management System which federates a number of sources including the LMS and online databases. Also as Alan mentions "...none of this will be possible without a rethinking of intellectual property rights and copyrights"

Alan then asks a series of questions, which unfortunately I don't have all the answers to, they include "Will Law Firms...share their knowledge bases? will competitiveness act as a barrier to information sharing of non-confidential material?" On this matter there are already some examples of law firms pooling or sharing their Know How and making it available to their clients. This is a really interesting, albeit short piece on the potential for LMS.

In the second article Guy Mitchell from Clyde & Co discusses "whether the LMS is developing to cope with...legal publishing" But what does this actually mean? Well for a start the LMS "...needs to accomodate...Looseleaf Works, vast mulit-volume sets, supplements, a rapid turnover of new editions and items with hardcopy and electronic elements" but don't other Libraries, perhaps not all share these types of issues when it comes to cataloguing their materials?

Guy makes another point in his articles which is quite interesting "...most catalogues could be usef for linking to online services/website and index Know How and would probably be cheaper and have better search facilities" I'm not sure about this. Certainly LMS can be used to link to other materials but where firms have invested time and money in either an Intranet which contains links to these resources or a Know How Management System the LMS may not be the first place people look to find these resources, certainly not on in the Legal Sector.

There is also the perennial problem of users bookmarking the resources you have linked from your LMS or asking the Library for the URL of a source they want to use. Having said all of that there is some potential for the development of LMS now and in the future, which makes now an exciting time to be involved with them.

Full post as published by The BIALL Blog on February 16, 2009 (boomark / email).