- The University of Melbourne Law School employed a new dean in 2008. One of his goals was to improve the Library. He negotiated the U of Mighigan law librarian (Margaret Leary) to visit and consult about Melb uni offering a fully graduate law school.
- Librarians provide several hours of research assistance to faculty who need help
- Faculty services librarian supervise a team of research assistants to undertake faculty research projects.
- All variants of these models have the liaison librarian concept embedded in them.
- AALL's ALL-SIS is a good place for more information.
- U Mich Law library librarians are meant to go to the faculty and help them, not wait for them to come to the library. Budget over 6 million, 38 law staff (over 100 including casual)
- In January 2009, Melbourne Law School launched Australia's first dedicated law school library research service for its faculty and visiting academics.
- Uni Melb new LRS included and equitable use policy so their resources wouldn't be dominated by a few academics.
- They recruited extra staff, they received extra funding - 750k over 3 years - experienced law librarian and 4 law student research assistants.
- They really emphasise packaging the research in a professional style.
- The service aims to provide access to the best available information for the purposes of research and knowledge transfer which frees academic staff time for thinking, writing, creating knowledge and advancing legal scholarship.
- Liaison Librarians deliver material to faculty and proactively ask faculty what they need.
- Research request templates are available online via the library's Intranet.
- Librarians scope out research:
- which databases to use
- keywords etc
- search strategy
- Research clerks do the work.
- The law research service research assistants develop superior research skills and experience in organising and presenting research results.
- Q. Is this devaluing law library content by doing research for faculty?
- A. No. It is making library staff super users, which means to content is valued by faculty.