>July disk will still only have what is now in hard copy). Of course, he
>explained how researching will be faster and easier w/a cd.
I just talked with our environmental law professor today to get his
opinion on how important the regs are to his work. His first comment
was that we had all 50 state statutes and so could live without that
in hard copy. But then I explained that it was the regs we would be
losing. His next comment was that if we had to go CD, we had to, but
it would really slow him down. He pointed out that it takes him about
the same amount of time to walk down to the books and the CD ROM stations,
but that it only took him a few seconds to look up what he wanted in print.
But it took at least 5 minutes while he selected the right CD, loaded the
right software, decided which search engine and typed in a search. He
is right. Unless you are in it all the time, the CD isn't a lot faster
for many of our patrons. I also fail to see how they are going to
keep up a CD in a more timely fashion than a frequently supplemented
looseleaf. How often are we going to have to change CD's? If BNA
asked any customers about this (and we haven't even got this notice yet),
I'm willing to bet they asked leading questions. I join the set of
hopping mad librarians about this one and add our faculty to the set
of upset users. We are not sure yet what we are going to do.
Mary Brandt Jensen University of South Dakota
Director of the Law Library School of Law
Professor of Law 414 E. Clark St.
MJENSEN@CHARLIE.USD.EDU Vermillion, SD 57069-2390
(605) 677 6363 Fax (605) 677 6357
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