ALLA (WA) News Blog

The Australian Law Librarians' Association (ALLA) has put together a survey focusing on eBooks and legal publishers - what you love about them, and what you don't love about them. Responses are due by COB, Monday 14 June 2021 . Your contributions will be instrumental in shaping ALLA's submissions to vendors. Please note - The survey is long, but you can stop at any time and pick up where you left off.  Your responses will be saved as you progress. To get detailed responses, the survey has been organized by publisher, but you don't need to respond to all questions. They are hoping to collect as many responses as possible and are looking forward to all feedback received.  ALLA members can see more information about the survey on the ALLA website, COVID-19 Vendor Response .

In a Legal Insight post from 2014, ‘The Future of Law: Disappearing Legal Library and Virtual Firms’ an infographic showed that by 2044 45% of respondents surveyed believed that their legal library would virtually disappear. Ignoring the opportunities to analyse the phrase “ virtually disappear”, I’m choosing to assume that this is in reference to physical floor space. Sure, there’s our physical collections will continue to shrink – but even by 2044, I doubt that everything we hold in print will be available electronically. Or at least in a functional way. A more recent Thomson Reuters Whitepaper, Law Libraries’ Digital Revolution , discusses the benefits of moving to eBook collections.  Now, I’m pro eBook in theory. If only they worked the same as a hardcopy.  Consider: Mental topography, or, when we read on dead trees, do we retain more? (See: The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens ). eBooks don’t necessa...