Two of the biggest perks of being a law student are the passwords you receive to use LexisNexis and Westlaw. These two passwords, for most students (for better or worse), pretty much eliminate student demand for any other law library resource or service for the next three years of their lives.

But public patrons who visit a law school library don't get access to those massive databases. Instead, reference librarians have to make choices about what particular collection of cases or statutes or regs or whatever else to show the patron. Do we take them to the print? Do we sit them down at a computer to use LexisNexis Academic (or, where available, Westlaw Patron Access)? Or do we show them a free web resource that they can access from anywhere (but which usually has a questionable interface, a less than optimal search engine, and extremely limited coverage)?

The other option is the dreaded CD-ROM. Most of us thought (and hoped and prayed) that these products had died in the late 1990s, but they still seem to hang around for some reason. In our library we have one machine that has all our CD-ROMs loaded onto it. Some reference librarians continuously lead patrons to this computer for access to Nevada case law, statutes, et cetera, believing it to be the best one-stop-shopping solution for Nevada research. Others, like me, would just as soon try the patron's case ourselves than to force anyone to use one of these clunky, outdated contraptions. I have to admit, that while I almost always prefer electronic resources over print ones, I find books far easier to use than the interfaces provided by our CD-ROM vendors.

So if CD-ROMs are so horrible, why do we continue to keep them in our collections (and worse still, make our patrons use them)? As far as I can tell, it's mostly because patrons now expect electronic access to legal materials. Most of them have heard of Lexis and Westlaw and expect us to have those systems available for anyone. Unfortunately, that's just not possible.

West is slowly rolling out Patron Access, a scaled-down version of its database, to academic law libraries. Due to various considerations, a lot of libraries are opting not to purchase this product. For now, anyway. As for Lexis, there's LexisNexis Academic, which most major universities (and thus many law schools) already have. But it isn't much better than a CD-ROM. For instance, could someone please explain to me why it is that when I type in a precise citation on LexisNexis Academic, I get multiple results, all but one of which are nowhere close to my citation? (Actually, I know why that happens, and the explanation is inexcusable for a company that provides so many high-end electronic research solutions.) That said, the mere fact that the database is viewable in a web browser makes it infinitely better than the best CD-ROM products, all of which seem to use the dreaded Folio views. (I get a cold shudder just typing that F-word.) Another drawback to LexisNexis Academic, however, is the fact that the legal materials available in its database are hardly comprehensive. Lexis markets another database to universities called State Capitol that contains a lot of state legal resources, most of which aren't available on Academic. Presumably, Lexis wishes to force institutions to subscribe to both instead of offering one comprehensive solution.

So with no universal, workable research solutions for public patrons available from the major online players, that leaves us with print and CD-ROMs. And when patrons already expect electronic access, many of us are reluctant to burst their bubble by showing them a row of books. Thus, we steer them to the CD-ROMs.

You know who those CD-ROMs are designed for? Small law firms and prisons. I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that law school libraries don't really fit into either of those categories. We should be offering a higher level of service. Many of the people who work in small law firms rely on nearby law school libraries to supplement the resources they have available to them in their offices. If we can't offer them something better than what they have in their one room library at work, we've failed at our jobs. Big time.

Forcing patrons to use a resource that was cutting edge in 1995 is an embarrassment to our profession. I actually die a little inside every time I see a patron using a CD-ROM.

So what do we do? Well, when books and microforms are superior to the best available electronic product, we need to suck it up and show the patron those materials. We also need to take a long hard look at why we aren't subscribing to better electronic products. If there is something wrong with the way West is marketing Patron Access, we need to tell our reps what those problems are. And if the problems with that solution or any others are minimal, maybe we should try to find a way to add them to our electronic collections. Just because our faculty and students already have access to superior electronic resources doesn't mean we've served our entire patron base well. At the very least, if our patrons expect something, maybe it's time to ask ourselves why we aren't already providing it to them. If we don't, somebody else eventually will. And then we'll have no patrons left to serve.