The Law Firm Librarian Survey has more to do with budgets and compensation, staffing, resources, print-to-electronic trends, and diminishing shelf space than it has to do with technology. However, the section of the survey about online research services and publishers makes an interesting comparison with what the LTMAS survey has to say on the same subject.

In a recent ALM Research Blog post about the survey, we noted that librarians love their jobs, but are rather unhappy with vendors for a variety of reasons, but especially because of the rising costs of online research. Data for average spending and budget trends for these research services are included in the survey, along with librarians’ ratings for price, customer service, and quality of content. The librarians surveyed are from Am Law 200 firms.

The LTMAS Survey, mentioned above, surveyed nearly 1,400 lawyers about the technologies they use for work, including online research services. While not as concerned with the costs as librarians who have to negotiate contracts with the vendors, 91% of the respondents reported that online research tools are important to their success as attorneys, and 70% said they use these tools at least once a week—40% reported using them daily.

The 2007 Law Firm Librarians Survey is available for purchase in spreadsheet format for non-subscribers through the ALM Research Store. It includes the data from the 2006 survey for comparison. Subscribers have access to the spreadsheet, as well as all archived data from the survey.

For more information contact: almresearch@alm.com.