Staying relevant: how to adapt the library services to other firm operations in this time of financial crisis by Branco Bulovic, Hicksons

• Highlights the importance of having knowledge of the firms' operations and understanding the legal business, in general, for the provision of library services and for the organisation of adequate and economically feasible library systems in small and mid-tier law firms.
• Libraries should be aware of the overall firm's goals and perspectives and the way library services fit within these.
• Money is motivating factor - Libraries are closing or being outsourced.
• The library is part of a firm's overheads.
• Librarians need to reduce this perception of being an overhead.
• Role of library is:

evaluation and selection

training and access - via catalogue, ILL, accession, portal building etc

• Need to find savings
• Reduce time spent on research by only checking one source - communicating the source checked, then offering to check more sources if required.
• Librarians need to know how a matter is being billed and should limit or spend time on a research task according to how recoverable the time is.
• Law librarians need to be perceived as being capable of managing the resources we are given.
• Need communication with other departments in the firm.
• Marketing makes money for the firm and the knowledge department needs to be supporting the making of money for the firm, therefore should treat marketing as a priority client and respond to requests by marketing promptly.
• Use resources in more efficient way
• Concentrate on projects that have a need and have staff to contribute to the maintenance of the product.
• Avoid false savings  - don’t' cheat on getting resources (by academic password).
• Re lack of resources to maintain KH products - Use Summer Clerks to populate KHDB.