Cornell Law Library Annual Report 1988/89 We have completed a very intense year, surviving quite well, with only one major glitch in the service we were able to provide to the law school community - the unavoidable inaccessibility of half of the collection during the fall term. From June 1988 until the end of January 1989 'our books and our Public Services staff were in temporary locations, with half of the books in storage. The one group for whom storage was a major problem was the editorial staff of the Cornell International Law Journal. Our colleagues in other law libraries were most generous in lending materials to us and in one case we paid the expenses of one researcher to extend a business trip to Chicago by one day in order to use collections of the law schools there. Everyone was greatly relieved when the final book move m January put all of the collection on the shelves in a logical order. The entire Law Library staff is now reading the shelves to be sure that every book is in, its proper place, with reasonable growth space. The problems we have found make it very clear that this is a necessary exercise. The impact of the construction was felt most heavily by our Public Services staff who spent the fall term in very cramped space in the new stacks while trying to provide service in a remote Reading Room as well as on the ground level of the new addition while understaffed due to an unfilled reference position. This split, plus the uncertainty of when each piece of their remodeled space would be available, made it a difficult fall and winter. Our two full-time reference librarians are new both to law iibrarianship and to Cornell this year. Gail Fruchtman arrived in August just in time for the start of the fall term. She proved very adaptable to the chaotic conditions she found. Jackie Cantwell did not arrive until January 1989, so we were short of reference staff for tie fall term. This meant extra hours for the existing staff, ho rs which Gail was, fortunately, very willing to fill. Our diff ,.;ulty in filling these positions made it very clear that our salary scale was not competitive. We are fortunate to have found such quality people in spite of the salaries we were able to offer to them. Because of the building project, we did not introduce the Online Public Access Catalog ,OPAC) at the Law Library until February. Its availability has made it much easier for our many interdisciplinary researchers to locate materials throughout the campus. We hope next year to expand access to the OPAC with reference stations on each sta k level and with dial-in access for anyone with a connection to ;he Cornell mainframe.
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