Barbara - I was pleased to see your questions about number of copies of
various sets. We use a Seattle-test. How many copies are needed is
decided by this test: will the copies get enough use to keep them from
mildewing? Seriously, at the present time, I am reviewing the entire
collection development policy of the law library with a committee of my
librarians. Multiple copies are all suspects. For a student body of 533,
we have three subscriptions to the national reporter system, more than we
need to the official Washington reports, and many second copies of the
major legal treatises. Though we got a little new money this year, the
net with inflation is a cut of 5%. So we are looking hard at past
practice and making some hard decisions. I second Barbara's request. If
any of you have formulas or some objective standard of measure, I'd like
to know what it is. The impact of CALR here is very important. If you
have a copy of court reports primarily for the law review, cite-checking
articles using CALR may impact the use of the hardcopy. Whatever the
standards used to be, they have to be different today.
Penny A. Hazelton
Law Librarian and Professor of Law Telephone: (206) 543-4089
Gallagher Law Library FAX: (206) 685-2165
University of Washington Internet: pennyh@u.washington.edu
1100 NE Campus Pkwy, JB-20
Seattle, WA 98105
On Wed, 11 Mar 1992, Barbara Bintliff wrote:
> Roger,
> I agree with Penny's comments that this information should
> be taken directly from the annual ABA questionnaire. Why should
> the ABA be devising a second survey?
> I also agree with Steven Perkins comments about devising a
> suitable framework for interpreting this information. He raises a
> question which has been in the back of my mind (you know, the "attic")
> for some time: how do we determine how many copies of a title to
> acquire? I know that a lot of this depends on how heavily a work is
> used or cited by a faculty member or members--at Colorado we use
> Clark on Domestic Relations a whole lot, because Clark is here and
> all our faculty use the work heavily. But, in general, does anyone
> have even any general guidelines on how many copies of a specific
> title they will acquire? We have found that five copies of most
> hornbooks (with the above notable exception) is sufficient for a student
> body of 475. We subscribe to two copies of the national reporter system,
> and three copies of the Pacific Reporter 2d because Colorado is in that
> reporter. Other than that, we use a very Boulder-ish test: how many
> copies would feel right?
> Roger, I don't think that this is a question that is really
> within the scope of your committee's charge, but it certainly is crucial
> to a student's ability to make an informed choice as to which law school
> to attend. I would appreciate comments from you or other readers of the
> law-lib list on this.
> And, yes, we really did get two feet of snow Sunday night and
> it will be 65 degrees today (Wednesday). 'Tis a strange climate in
> the foothills of the Rockies!
>
> Barbara Bintliff
> Law Library
> University of Colorado at Boulder
> Boulder, Colorado 80309
> (303) 492-1233
> bintliff_b@cubldr.colorado.edu
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