Access Services

Julian Aiken, Associate Director for Faculty and Access Services handing book to student.

The pandemic forced our team to reevaluate and change a number of workflows, and we took this opportunity to explore and develop new technologies to support our work. Circulation of materials during the pandemic was challenging, due to both access and safety issues. There were long periods when library staff, students, and faculty could not enter the law school building, and even after access was restored, we needed to find ways to circulate material while keeping physical contact to a minimum. To make our books available, we partnered with Yale University Library for home mailing and book pick-ups. Additionally, we relied far more heavily than usual on e-books and scanning materials for distribution. There was a precipitous dip in materials circulated at the height of the pandemic and then a gradual uptick in 2021 and 2022 as we emerged from the pandemic.

law materials circulated

2019–2020: 28,115

2020–2021: 6,802

2021–2022: 16,262 The library launched a new Open Reserves room, employing RFID and self-check technology to allow students to check out course reserves and other popular materials without staff contact, a form of contactless delivery. We also had the good fortune to host two excellent library Fellows, Rashida Crawford and Bamise Onabanjo who worked on the digital repository and faculty research support respectively. During the pandemic, because of COVID restrictions, all of their work had to be done remotely, but it was wonderful to see them growing into professional roles within the library, and our team learned as much from them as they did from us.

eYLS Scholarship Repository Migrates to an Open-Source Platform

The law library maintained an open access repository of faculty scholarship, on the bePress platform for over a decade. When BePress was acquired by Elsevier in 2017, we (like many other libraries) started to explore options to move to an open-source platform. In fall 2021 we moved to an open-source platform which now enables us to retain control over our data and contain rising costs. The migration of data utilizing DSpace repository software was completed in December 2021.