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Legal Research

: The BIALL Blog

The death of the looseleaf?

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Ruth Bird BIALL Council Member and Bodleian Law Librarian has written an interesting blog post for SLAW asking whether we're about to see the death of the looseleaf?

In her blog post Ruth looks at this history of looseleafs and of course the advantages for publishers of publishing and selling looseleafs to Law Libraries. Ruth goes on to discuss some of the disadvantages and nightmares experience by Law Librarians who were expected to purchase and update looseleafs which covered almost identical subject areas.

"In the 1990?s at law firms it was often deemed essential by partners that they have at least one or two of the leading looseleaf services in their office . Some would favour one publisher, others another, and all would expect the services to be updated on the day of receipt of the updated part. Librarians despaired. The time it takes to update a service varies on the experience of the updater and the complexity of the update and the number of volumes of the service. The frequency of updates was an issue ? some arrived 4 times a year, others monthly, the nightmarish tax and company law as frequently as fortnightly!!!"

Lots of Ruth's article will ring true with many Law Librarians and anybody who has ever been asked to order a missing page or file some looseleaf pages! There is some good news though...

"...the happiest development for me was the discussion I had with one leading publisher the other day as we looked at the totally new approach being taken to looseleafs online. At long last the publishers have stopped trying to convert static paper to static electronic flat content. They now see the information as an organic, interlinking resource that allows a serendipity of approach, hyperlinking and content are divorced from the format. And we now have to wonder how long the publishers will continue to produce the paper updates"

Will Law Librarians the world over be crying into their looseleaf updates with this news, unlikely..."enjoy" those looseleafs whilst you still can!

Full post as published by The BIALL Blog on October 04, 2010 (boomark / email).