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 Yale Law School
lillian goldman law library
in memory of Sol Goldman
 annual report 2009–2010
 
design
 Yale Printing and Publishing Services
photography
Robert Lisak, William K. Sacco, Harold Shapiro, Femi Cadmus, Shana Jackson
front cover 
 View o Wall Street rom the library administrative oces
 
I’m delighted to present the Lillian Goldman LawLibrary’s most recent annual report, covering the2009-2010 fscal year. This was a year marked byimmense budgetary challenges ollowing theatermath o the 2008 fnancial collapse, causing usto rethink our collections and services, and rebuildthe library in a manner best suited to serve theneeds o our users in the early twenty-frst century.We’ve emerged rom this process with a strongersense o our mission and are frmly positioned asone o the world’s great law libraries.We began the fscal year eeling the ull brunt o the recession, having cut our collections budget byapproximately 15 percent, with similar cuts to non-collection lines o our budget. We managed thesecuts by ollowing the key elements o our strategicplan, imagining where we want the library to be infve years and eliminating those elements we projectwill have the least value to our users. For example,we accelerated our shit rom print to online serialsand dropped much o the activity associated withthe ormer. At the end o the year we fnd our libraryand its most important asset, its sta, unctioningat a highly productive and satisying level. Moraleis good, collections and access to inormationresources is excellent, and usage is at all-time highs.Near the start o the year, we launched a newstrategic planning process to help map our courseor the next three to fve years. As a part o thisprocess, we interviewed aculty, surveyed studentsand held ocus group discussions to get a better ideao how well we were doing in the eyes o our users.The eedback we received was uniormly positiveand very helpul. The one comment I liked best wasrom a student who said, “The Yale law library madeit worth paying…tuition.”In any case, we imagine the best law library in theworld to be the one we are building at Yale, andwe are ortunate to be part o a law school thatvalues the contributions a great library makes toteaching and scholarship. This is a library withgloriously beautiul space, which entices studentsand visitors to enter and stay or long periodso study and research. It’s also a library that iscommitted to providing the richest possible arrayo legal inormation resources in ormats mostuseul to our students and aculty. Thus, even in theace o budget cuts, we continued to emphasizethe purchase o print monographs, which last yearreached an all-time high o nearly 9,000 new titles,while also enhancing our access to online legalinormation resources. As a result, our use o bothprint and online resources continued to increaselast year, and our circulation transactions or printmaterials exceeded 100,000 or the frst time ever.Most importantly, the library we imagine as theworld’s best is one with amazing librarians andsta—just like the ones we have now—who workcollectively to provide our users with the supportthey need to make the very best possible use o ourresources.To this end, the Yale Law School librarians arenow more seriously engaged in the instructionalprocess than ever, oering a wide array o credit andnon-credit courses in legal research. They also areengaged with most o the Law School’s many clinicalprograms, providing research support to studentswhen they most need it. And they are workingto leverage technology in a way that providesinormation resources and guides in manner thatbest serves the needs o our users.Lastly, we imagine a library that builds on itssubstantial legacy o strengths. Among other things,this means continuing to invest in our rich, uniquecollection o rare historical law books and makingthese collections more visible through the innovativeuse o both traditional and newer technologies, suchas combining special exhibits with library blogs andsocial networks. Building upon strengths also meanscontinuing to invest in our rich collection o oreignand international legal materials. Our goal here isto assure the best possible access to a mix o printand online resources, so that we remain one o theworld’s great venues or oreign and comparativelegal research.Reecting back, the past year was a time o accelerated change that helped place the Yale LawLibrary in a solidly strong position or building alibrary ully capable o supporting the needs o afrst rate law school and university. We imagine thelibrary will have an even better year moving orward.S. Blair KaumanLaw Librarian and Proessor o Law
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