Toronto Law Librarians and Canadian Legal Publishers Meet

As reported on slaw.ca, the Toronto Association of Law Libraries organized a forum yesterday with representatives from Canadian legal publishers CCH, Irwin Law, Canada Law Book, Carswell, LexisNexis and SOQUIJ:

"To their credit, the publishers participated despite being potentially exposed to a crowd of law librarians who have been concerned over a number of issues, including rising costs, duplicative formats (print, CD-ROM and Internet), and duplicative content."

"It was a good session without too much overt 'marketing' by the publishers. Most of them seemed appropriatively defensive. It is likely fair to say that the 'conclusion' of the meeting was for more ongoing communication and dialogue between publishers and users. The publishers acknowledged, quite obviously, that they were in a service business and if they were not meeting user needs, they would lose business. They also pointed out that their organizations - like those of their customers - were also under costs pressures in the current economy."

On a related topic, see the Library Boy post of December 6, 2008 entitled Canadian Legal Publisher 2009 Price Trends.