Legal Academics and Law Librarians: Working Together

Rosemary AuchmutyUniversity of Reading

Perceiving the need

• Law librarians at HEA events• Students and research skills• Skills planning at my own institution• The librarian’s role: from service to

collaborator• Lessons already learned from a forthcoming

HEA workshop• “The invisible librarian”

What is the problem?

“..although students studying law today have more experience of online services and searching, and a greater use of technology in their everyday lives, they are in many ways less equipped and less capable of handling complex legal research tasks…. While the digital natives can certainly conquer their new landscape, they will need help equipping them to do so” (Daniel Bates, “Are ‘Digital Natives’ Equipped to Conquer the Legal Landscape?” August 2013)

Graduate deficit

“[I]n the LETR findings it was widely recognised that legal research skills were not sufficiently acquired by the end of the academic stage of training …the transition from academic to vocational courses, followed by the reality of real-world problems, highlighted gaps in legal research competency” (Ruth Bird’s address at forthcoming HEA workshop).

“To quote the general counsel at KIA Motors America, Casey Flaherty: ‘It is a myth that young people are digital natives – they know how to consume content but not how to create it’” (ibid).

What skills are we talking about?

• Law as a particular discipline – finding and using its distinctive sources

• Ordinary research skills – finding and using materials in electronic and paper form

• Critical skills – thinking about the law, not just describing it or searching for the “right” answer; going beyond the textbook

• Critical skills – being discerning about sources• Using sources ethically (plagiarism …)

How academics have used librarians

• To tell us what’s out there and what’s available, and to update us;

• To show our students (and us) how to find and use it;

• To respond to our teaching plans;• To conduct delegated “skills” or “library”

sessions for students;• To help our students do the work we set.

BUT

• Skills taught in isolation (e.g. on Legal Skills modules or in a ‘Library session’) are less well learnt than skills taught in context, and sometimes entirely forgotten once mastered, even if assessed.

• Skills are best learnt in the context of substantive subjects, and repeatedly practised;

• What’s taught by librarians may not seem as serious or important to students as what’s taught by lecturers;

• Librarians can’t always second-guess what we are looking for.

For example

“Legal research skills training at the University of Salford suffered from lack of student attendance and the failure by students to transference skills learned to research in other modules. Despite having 6 timetabled hours to develop skills with first year students, poor attendance of 15% per session meant that a radical overhaul of legal research skills training was needed” (Nicola Sales).

THUS

• It makes sense for teachers of substantive modules to work with librarians in the design, delivery and assessment of their module.

• Because you can be sure the students will be turning to them for advice on how to do it.

• We should stop seeing librarians as technicians and service people and start seeing them as collaborators with, not just library-related knowledge and skills, but actual experience of what students need and how they learn.

It’s not easy

“The academic/library partnership at Salford is strong, with the Law Librarian working as part of the academic teaching team and library skills being formally assessed. It has however, taken 5 years of working in partnership to adapt and change our research teaching methods before information skills teaching became successful. … With staff changes with key skills personal in the school however, the library has had to respond quickly to rebuild collaborative relationships” (Nicola Sales).

And such collaborations remain rare

“I think you’re right that librarians are often frustrated that they don’t play a more active role and would be keen to attend something like this [the HEA Workshop] so that they collect new ideas and also share experiences. I know that it is rare that librarians get to play any part in the assessment or planning process generally. Some librarians are just rolled out to give database demos and not much else” (Emily Allbon, City).