This study looks closely at the involvement of law librarians in market research and strategic planning for their parent organizations. The 70-page report gives detailed information on how law librarians view their roles and what tasks and assignments they typically perform in these key areas. In open ended questions, the survey participants discuss their assignments and offer advice to their peers. In addition, the study gives highly detailed data on the library role in setting up alerts, competitor profiling and other forms of competitive intelligence, market research, selection and operation of marketing software and applications, responses to requests for proposal and other areas in which law librarians are increasingly asserting themselves.
The study also provides detailed quantitative info on the percentage of law librarians who feel that their role in market research and strategic planning has increased, decreased or remained about the same in recent years.
The report helps its end users to answer questions such as: how common is it for law librarians to contribute articles for law firm blogs or for law firm newsletters? How involved are they in client surveys? How often do they attend key events at which clients are honored or pursued? What should law librarians expect in the future? Will their roles increase and if so, in what areas?
Data in the report derives from a survey of 71 law libraries, predominantly from the USA and Canada. The sample includes 30 law firm and 16 university law libraries, and 12 courthouse libraries as well as other participants from government agencies, non-profits and corporations.
Data in the study is broken out by a broad range of institutional and personal variables including institutional parent (i.e, law firm, university, courthouse, etc.), library staff size, and personal characteristics of the survey participant such as age, gender, and educational background, among others.
Just of few of the report’s main findings are that:
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Across the entire sample, 34.72% of respondents feel that librarians have played a greater or much greater role in market research than they did in the past, while 55.56% felt their role had stayed about the same, and 1.39% indicated playing a lesser role.
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33% of librarians in the sample over age 55 write articles for their organization’s newsletters.
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Respondents with both an MLIS or other library oriented degree AND a JD degree spent more than 16% of their staff time on marketing-strategic planning related tasks and assignments.