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12th ALIA National Library Technicians Conference
Techs transformed : Changing roles for library technicians in small law librariesRos Emms, Legal Services Commission of South Australia; Carolyn Prey, Federal Court of Australia, South Australia Registry; Heather Filmer, Minter Ellison Lawyers, AdelaideAbstractIn this paper, three South Australian library technicians look at the changes that have occurred over recent years which have impacted on the role of library staff in general, and on technicians in particular. In a case study they look at three different law libraries in Adelaide to illustrate what the changes are, how they have affected the role and tasks of library personnel, and how the organisation, management, clients and staff have handled the altered services in these small special libraries. The libraries represented in the study service clients of a statutory authority, a Commonwealth court and a private law library. IntroductionOur inspiration to present a paper at this conference was to highlight the various types of law libraries where library technicians hold valued, important and interesting positions. We look at three different law libraries in Adelaide and illustrate what changes have taken place and how they have affected our role and tasks, and how the organisations, management, and clients have handled the altered services in these small special libraries. Although we each work in a law library, using the same basic resources, our respective organisations have specific needs that dictate the focus of the services we provide. We will explain how technology, budgets, staffing levels and time management impact on each library and how they have created new opportunities in our changing and challenging roles. As you are well aware, the advent of technology has been the largest factor in changing the services libraries now offer. Not only do we have automated circulation systems and on-line catalogues, but also e-books and e-journals, as well as all the other electronic wizardry that has been developed in a relatively short time. We would like to share with you the impact this has had on each of us, and how training and on going education have become important requirements for each of us to perform our jobs. The libraries represented in the study service clients of a legal aid authority, a law court, and a private law practice. Heather FilmerMinter Ellison is a leading Australian law firm with an international practice and reputation. The Minter Ellison Legal Group has more than 280 partners working with over 1190 lawyers, with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, the Gold Coast, Auckland, Wellington, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bangkok, London and San Francisco. In Indonesia, we have an 'associated firm' relationship with a leading local law firm. Operating through an integrated structure of legal, industry and client knowledge groups, Minter Ellison provides a comprehensive range of legal services to business and government. Since 1995 the firm has more than doubled in size, has over 2700 people working in eight countries, and has a good working relationship between offices. There is a close relationship between the libraries (known as Know-How Operations), which means we are often in contact with them on a daily basis. Minter Ellison Adelaide is one of the largest and oldest law firms in Adelaide. It has a strong practice in most areas of law including corporate, commercial, environmental, industrial, health, resources, insurance, media, property, and banking. The Minter Ellison Adelaide library has a comprehensive collection of law materials organised by the Moys Classification Scheme. There has been a large growth in electronic materials over the last five years. These materials have been assessed and networked to the practitioners' desk in both CD-Rom and on-line services via an Intranet. It is a private library therefore has closed access. In 1998 we started to focus on an electronic reference service, which included assessing our loose-leaf services, legislation, and many reference sources. During that year, we liaised with practitioners to trial on-line products, with the aim of phasing out the corresponding hardcopies. They were given full support and training during that time. In the last two years there has been a major shift towards on-line resources. We are constantly helping practitioners to find their information on-line and to educate them from hardcopy to on-line sources. This has been very successful in some areas but not so easy in others. In some cases the technology has not been up to standard and the hardcopy is more reliable, in other cases it is just easier to have a hardcopy to underline, highlight, write notes on or stick post-it notes on. It has been hard to convince those practitioners with personal hardcopies of legislation for example, that electronic legislation is a better alternative but we keep trying. We currently have 20 or so electronic journals but again have noted resistance by a number of practitioners, especially those who have been receiving a hardcopy for a number of years. As yet we have very few E-books, excluding loose-leaf reporters on-line. We produce an on-line current awareness service called InforMin, which is a service with contributions from all States and distributed and produced weekly by our Sydney office. As the sole library technician in our team I am valued for my meticulous attention to detail. Apart from the standard duties of a library technician, I am personally responsible for the distributing and updating of hardcopies of SA legislation, SA Awards, and the local current awareness service. These materials have been made available on-line but have only partially been accepted and there is still an enormous amount of time spent on updating hardcopies. SA Awards went on-line last year. The SA Development Plan is also available on-line. Technology is changing all the time and practitioners are looking for technical support over the phone. Our objective is to have the resources that they need, so we take on board any recommendations or complaints. We have implemented a commercial legislation monitoring service, Lawlex, that I am responsible for maintaining and marketing. Our ultimate aim is to make practitioners use the electronic so that we can scale back hard copy distribution. The library currently has 5 staff, including our know-how manager, reference and training librarian, library technician, precedent co-coordinator and know-how clerk. Many of these positions are part time so in total we have 3.6 staff. While the substantive staffing of the library has not changed, the role and function of the library has broadened to take on responsibility for the Intranet and Precedent management and we are Know-How Support rather than just library. I began working for the firm in 1976 as a library officer. Since graduating as a library technician in 2000 my position has been upgraded to library technician and my hours have increased from 15 to 22.5 per week. Library staffing levels have remained constant while there has been an increase in the number of practitioners that has in turn increased the demands on the library. We are a busy library and often work under tight time restraints. We undertake around 400 queries a month that vary in complexity and time required. My job description still refers to being responsible, in a team environment, for providing an information service to library clients. Tasks include: Accessioning and processing serials and legislation; overseeing and undertaking loose-leaf filing; maintenance of Loans and Serials database; maintaining the Awards collection; maintaining legislation - library and practitioner collections; being responsible for contributions to the weekly alerting service InforMin; maintaining hard copy current awareness and circulating; providing helpdesk support and one-on-one coaching as required; maintaining collections i.e. shelf checks, serials management and overdue items; maintaining satellite collections in Practice Groups; providing induction to the Library and Intranet for secretaries and support staff; identifying and reporting quality problems and system deficiencies and actively; and participating in the continuous improvement process. The library staff now has a greater responsibility for tasks allocated and there is less time for meticulous record keeping. If something is missing, but not required by a practitioner, it is left as missing as we no longer try to maintain a collection that is perfect. Service is our highest priority. We have adopted the just in time rather than the just in case philosophy and for the main part this is appropriate in a small special library. I am involved in ongoing education to keep my skills up-to-date and attend most training sessions provided by the publishers of on-line legal reference services. My Know-How Manager also gives training sessions as necessary for ongoing changes or upgrades. The SA Law Librarians Group ALLG (SA Division) has professional development sessions, which are valuable and keep the networking alive. I enjoy the profession and the variety of challenges it provides. Carol PreyThe Federal Court of Australia provides a means of resolving genuine disputes between citizens, or between a citizen and the state. It's jurisdiction covers over 150 Acts of the commonwealth. These include bankruptcy, copyright, gene technology, migration, native title, ozone protection, telecommunications, trademarks and workplace relations, just to name a few. The court is an appeals court for single judges of the court, the supreme court of Norfolk Island and the federal magistrates court. The court has a registry in each state and territory. There is a staffed library in each state except the Northern Territory, which has only a small core collection of materials. The South Australian library staff manages the Northern Territory library - purchasing, processing and maintaining the collection and providing a reference service. In Adelaide our library has a staff of two, the manager, library and information services and a library technician. Because of security concerns, we are not open to the public. Our patrons are the 46 Judges of the federal court and their associates and staff, the court registrars and registry staff. We have a close relationship with other law libraries in SA and have a healthy ILL system and network of information. The library collection reflects the court's jurisdiction with texts and loose-leaf services on each of the major areas of the law, including a large collection of UK and US material. There is a well-maintained collection of commonwealth legislation, e.g. hansard, bills, explanatory memorandum, rules and statutes. The library also holds copies of high court, federal court and South Australian supreme court judgments. Although the roles of the library manager and library technician are significantly different, we do share many tasks and support each other when we are busy, on leave or if certain workloads have built up. The need to be familiar with each others work is important to the efficient running of the library and to client satisfaction. The changes in my job since I began working at the court four and a half years ago are mainly due to the changes in computer technology. The library had a manual circulation system, serials were accessioned using a Visual Index and acquisitions were recorded in ledgers. I worked 3 days per week; it was a serene and peaceful place to spend three days. Then came technology! It wasn't a slow transition, but fast and overwhelming, creating a sharp learning curve, which was both exciting and exhausting. My hours were soon increased to full time. The library had a basic on-line catalogue, a collection of CD ROMs and a few on-line products. Our tools were mainly hard copy indexes, catalogues and case citators, products that were valuable but limited in their information and time consuming to use. This changed dramatically when publishers began to produce services electronically and not in hard copy format. The trend was to bind services together and streamline products, making them more economical to produce and purchase. The catalogue and manual accessioning procedures were replaced two years ago with an integrated library management system (Unicorn), which is fast and user friendly. The search facilities are exceptional and the cataloguing module makes managing information simpler and faster. We upload records from Kinetica using Z3950 straight into our catalogue. Our focus has moved away from CD's to more on-line systems, which has created a need for more training and ongoing education to keep up with new products and enhancements. The need to be fully conversant with all on-line products is two fold, I need to be able to use the systems as well as teach other staff members how to use them. Besides knowing how to use on-line databases, there is the need to know what is the best source to use, what search engine is going to give the best information or what product has the latest current information. Knowing what product to use can make finding international legislation and judgments or the latest journal article easier and more time effective. We have a dedicated law librarians group in South Australia, which is committed to ongoing legal education for its members. With these courses, publisher demonstrations and workshops, there is no excuse for not being well informed. The library contributes to the Court's Intranet and National Current Awareness Bulletin, keeping the rest of the country informed of what is happening in South Australia, what books and journals we purchase and what training or events are taking place. Many judges are computer literate and well informed of what is available on the intranet and internet; this has reduced the number of basic reference enquiries coming into the library. It has, however, created the role of trouble-shooter for the library staff when users have difficulties with the systems. The court's emphasis is on creating current collections of material in line with the work of the court. To this end the library manager is constantly purchasing the latest or most current texts published. Our budget is generous and core materials of legislation, law reports, Hansard, journals and texts on key areas of Commonwealth jurisdiction are always maintained. There is a need to purchase published material from other countries, especially in areas of native title, human rights and refugees, all areas of global importance and which impact on the work of the court. Time management is a must for any library technician and I take care to plan and prioritise my workload. It is easy to spend too much time searching for an article or judgment and then finding the daily tasks of accessioning, processing, loose-leaf filing, inter-library loans etc that make up my day are pushed to the side. The library manager has taken the time to explain the workings of the library budget to me and encourages me to do a certain amount of cataloguing and book purchasing. I am encouraged to communicate with publishers and their representatives. With these added responsibilities I have become confident in managing the library for short periods and find the extra challenges stimulating. We share the reference desk duties and are responsible for answering any queries put to us individually; it is all very interesting work. Next year we are moving into a new law courts building which will mean even more exciting times and challenges. Ros EmmsThe Legal Services Commission is the legal aid body in South Australia. It is a statutory authority, not a government department. Both state and federal governments provide the funding. This means that we have two funding bodies, which equals two 'masters'. Staff of the commission not only provide legal representation in criminal and family court cases, but also services such as free legal advice, migration and refugee support, community education, and mediation in family law matters. These services cover the whole range of legal topics from neighbourhood disputes, to family law and criminal law matters. Due to changes in the guidelines, we have ceased to provide aid in civil matters such as medical negligence and motor vehicle accident compensation. The commission also supports and provides services to South Australian community legal centres. The library service must therefore be able to provide up-to-date, accurate and timely information covering a wide range of subjects. A librarian and a library technician staff the library. It is a closed access library, providing a service to around 120 commission staff and lawyers, legal practitioners from outside the Commission who are assigned legal aid cases, other law libraries, and, to a very limited degree, the public, law students and prisoners. When I started work with the commission in 1995, there were virtually no restrictions on materials purchased, or what, within reason, they cost. Purchase of electronic systems at that time was limited by the fact that most legal material was still only available (in a workable format) in hardcopy and by the capabilities of the commission's IT hardware and equipment, which was minimal due to networking restraints. The technician's tasks were mainly related to the acquisition and accessioning of monographs and serials; assisting with reference and research enquires; document delivery; the provision of a photocopying service; maintenance of the automated catalogue and the legal judgments index database; and the production, collating and despatching of current awareness material. The majority of these tasks were carried out manually, very rarely using the electronic resources then available. Major changes to the technician's role in the Commission's library since 1995 have been influenced by three main developments. These are task allocation that affects staffing levels, technology, and the library's budget. My studies, training, and the experience gained at another law library, gave the librarian the confidence to change my role and tasks at an early stage. For the most part, the librarian and I share all the day-to-day tasks involved in providing the library service, including cataloguing, reference and research, database maintenance and staff training. The librarian retains the financial, policy and management roles, which form the basis for the difference in our classifications. I welcome the opportunity to maintain and hone skills that would otherwise be lost or curtailed. I think most technicians who work in small special libraries would find their roles are much the same. For the commission library, the introduction of many of the electronic databases and services coincided with another major change. Seven years ago, the library's budget was reduced by almost 50 per cent and annual increases have been minimal since then. Both these events meant a radical change in what material the library was able to retain, in what format and what services could continue to be provided. Due to the budgetary restrictions and the introduction of more and better legal databases, more and more hardcopy material has been cancelled in favour of electronic formats, thus reducing the time spent on acquisition and accessioning. What was once a day's incoming mail now generally totals the mail for a whole week. Very few textbooks are purchased - we rely heavily on loose-leaf services to keep hardcopy information up-to-date - so there is very little cataloguing done. Research material is now mainly electronic. We are fortunate that the largest legal database in Australia - AUSTLII - is free. For most other material and services we pay a fee to the publisher or provider. Hardcopy of law reports are still retained where possible as the judgments are edited and become the 'authorised' version, much the same as accredited journal articles by people such as faculty members, doctors, and researchers. With the introduction of electronic databases and resources, the library is now making these systems available to our in-house users on their desktops. This in turn means that the library staff has become trainers in how to use them. As each new service becomes available, relevant Commission staff is offered training. This is generally carried out by the librarian, but I can be called on to help out where necessary. There has been some debate as to whether the changes to our roles have reduced our workload. For some time this seemed to be the case. We perceived a decline in enquires and less work. However, we found that statistics indicated that we are more or less receiving the same number of requests. With much of the material now available at a keystroke or two, the hours that we used to spend wading through hardcopy resources to answer requests have been reduced. This has given us the opportunity to offer more and varied services to our users. Due to the fact that the Commission is unable to provide staff with an Intranet, an innovative new service has been developed. Over the past few months, as a compliment to and expansion of the electronic services provided by the library, the librarian has developed electronic gateways ('portals') for the various areas of the Commission. The four main gateways are for the criminal law, family law, legal advice, and management and policy areas of the Commission. The information provided by this service is comprehensive, up-to-date, relevant and informative. Many different topics are covered, including Acts that relate to the work of that specific area; current Hansards; recent court judgments from a variety of jurisdictions; scanned contents pages of journals and law reports; links to reference material such as dictionaries, in-house guides and forms, the library catalogue and databases; and many more. It is the role of both the librarian and the library technician to maintain these gateways by keeping them up-to-date and by locating relevant, interesting and important sites on the Internet and from other sources. At present, we manage two gateways each, cross-referencing where necessary. Maintaining this service is a constant process that takes up about 25 per cent of our working day. Another new project is currently underway. For a trial period we are scanning and e-mailing the current awareness service, requested journal articles and case law if it is possible to do so. This task has been assigned to the technician. It is proving to be an interesting and challenging process to get the project underway. The future for the Legal Service Commission in general, and the library in particular, is uncertain. The current Commonwealth funding is guaranteed only until the end of June 2004. There is soon to be a Senate enquiry into legal aid reform that will determine the way legal aid bodies and community legal centres are structured and funded in the years ahead. There is also a State push to rationalise the services and costs of all the government controlled law libraries in South Australia. If this takes place, it will impact on the Commission's library services whatever the outcome, although the resulting saving of time and money would greatly enhance the services that can be offered to the judiciary, the legal profession, the courts system and the public of South Australia. The librarian and I are optimistic that our library will be needed well into the future and look forward to continuing to provide our users with a comprehensive library service that meets their current and ongoing requirements. ConclusionWe have touched on the changes in our own workplaces, some of which are specific to our particular library, but that more often than not relate to law libraries and other special libraries in general. However, we are sure that these changes probably affect all library workers in some way, mainly due to the rapid advances in technology. Interesting times lie ahead for all libraries and their staff. There will be challenges in the future in many forms. New procedures and technologies will undoubtedly be introduced that will create ever-changing roles for library technicians. To remain valued and respected members of the library profession, we must continue to keep pace with the times by accepting change, learning new skills, and grasping opportunities as they arise. We urge you all to be techs transformed! Authors
Heather Filmer
Carolyn Prey
Ros Emms
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