This 200+ page study present detailed data and commentary about how law librarians are using Google and its apps and features such as: Gmail, Google Scholar, Google Drive, Notifications, Alerts, Google Books, Google Maps, Chrome, Google Images, Google+, Google Hangouts , as well as Forms, Calendar, Translate, Google Public Data Explorer and many other applications. The reports presents data on how valued each of these services are and who is using them, how much and with what impact. Google is a major productivity tool and its proper use enormously benefits law librarians who know best how to exploit its many free and relatively low cost features. This report quantifies and details their efforts. Data is broken out by many criteria such as type of law library, work title of librarian, age, gender and compensation level of librarian, among others.
Just a few of this comprehensive study’s many findings are that:
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Use of Google accounted for 73.23%, on average, of respondents total search engine use.
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A majority (80.96%) of respondents reported Google Maps to be either useful (16.67%), quite useful (45.24%), or essential (19.05%).
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Just under half (45.24%) of respondents used Google Patent Search. A strong majority of these respondents were associated with law firm libraries.
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A small minority (7.14%) of the sample noted that Google Public Data Explorer was useful, quite useful, or essential to them, with younger individuals (30 to 49) and those from government agencies/private companies being most likely to feel that this application was useful.
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Respondents spent, on average, 35.81 hours per month using Chrome for work.
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Respondents spent, on average, 2.90 hours per month using Google Drive for work (range: 0.00 to 30.00 hours). Those from college/universities and those from law firm libraries spent the most time using this tool (mean: 4.26 hours and 3.20 hours, respectively).
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Respondents reported spending 9.34% of their time spent on legal research using Google Scholar or Google Books.