Target Audience: Librarians serving rural areas
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to identify at least five specific instances wherein services to the legal community of a predominantly rural audience are significantly different from those provided to more populous regions.
2. Participants will be able to analyze data documenting these differences and use them to improve library services for their own communities.
Law schools and legal institutions in rural settings have a unique perspective on access to legal resources and instruction of legal professionals. Some vendors no longer support institution-specific representatives for smaller schools. Primary legal resources in low-population states are limited, and secondary sources may be nonexistent. New attorneys going into rural law offices will have neither the resources of large firms nor the benefits of additional training by firm librarians. Given these realities, three central questions need to be addressed: 1) What differences are legal institutions with significant rural populations noticing, and can these differences be documented? 2) What is being done to accommodate for them? 3) Where is it possible to affect change? Many law librarians in rural states are finding ways to benefit from this environment and making resources available to a grateful audience of legal professionals. This program will illuminate the weaknesses of supply and raise awareness among librarians and vendors who service rural areas with a goal toward improvement.