Legal research and law library management

Rowland, Sarah

Marke, J., & Sloane, R. (1982). Collection Development. In Legal research and law library management. New York: Law Journal Seminars-Press, 132.

Summary: This is a looseleaf and the one I looked at was last updated in 2006. I read chapter 2 which was a nice overview of what collection development is along with specifics dealing with an Academic Law Library, County Law Library or Law Firm Law Library. The chapter right away tells you how laying out collection development policy can help, “Every library is unique, yet al library collections benefit when they grow in a thoughtful manner following guidelines set forth in a formal collection development policy (p. 2-5). It gives information on what to include in a collection development policy such as the mission, overview of the collection, selection guidelines, retention and weeding procedures. I liked that it gave examples from other law libraries along with giving specific references to other collection development tools to help develop a law libraries collection. It also had a section on acquisitions policy and things to consider such as need, cost, quality, duplication, currentness and availability.

Evaluation: The chapter of this book really helped me throughout the semester because I wasn’t only an academic library I was also a special academic library with a focus on law and having no background in law. However, I feel like it was laid out in a way that even with no background in law it gave me a great understanding on what a typical law library should look like. One example is that I noticed I didn’t have anything dealing with intellectual freedom in our collection development policy whereas other academic library did. The authors let me know that this is typical for law libraries to overlook having one even though they should. I would highly recommend anybody who finds they are working in a law library to especially check out the chapter of the book for a nice overview. It really helped me feel less lost during the semester when I had a question specifically about law libraries. I’m hoping the rest of the book is this useful.