The 100+ page study presents highly detailed data from a survey of 66 North American law libraries, including 24 law school libraries, 19 courthouse of other government law libraries, 3 private company law libraries and 20 law firm libraries.
The report helps its readers to answer questions such as: how much are law libraries currently spending and plan to spend on print forms of books, treatises, digests, loose-leaf services, directories, legal encyclopedias, journals, newspapers, magazines and more. What guides print culling philosophies? What mistakes have librarians made in their print purchasing or print reduction programs? What is the role of surveying library patrons about their print vs. online preferences? Are some areas resistant to print culling? Which ones? What has been the impact of interlibrary loan and other forms of print materials sharing on print spending and title maintenance?
The study looks at both primary and secondary legal materials as well as non-legal subject materials.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
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The cumulative 2-year drop in spending on print resources from 2014-2016 by the law firms in the sample is expected to be 22.6%.
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For small law firm libraries the number of subscriptions to print journals went from 66.67 to 51.67 and then to an anticipated 45 over the three year period, a cumulative 2-year drop of 32%.
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Primary works accounted for a mean of 35.53% of spending on print legal materials with a median of 30% and a range of 5% to 90%. For law school libraries, print primary materials accounted for 54% of the total print materials budget, a much higher percentage than for law firm libraries 28%, or government law libraries, 32.86%.