The Bergen County Jail in Hackensack, New Jersey, has become the first correctional facility in the country to provide laptop computers to its inmates. Why? Legal research, of course:

Before, inmates who wanted to use the Westlaw research service had to file into the jail's law library, where 12 computers are crammed into the same space as guards and stacks of legal texts.

Now, they can request a laptop delivery to their cells, meal-style. They can then access Westlaw via an internal system.

"There's virtually nothing else installed on these laptops," said Lenny Hennig, the jail's network administrator.

Expectedly, there are many critics of this move, but as the sheriff and others have pointed out, a large percentage of inmates in county jails have not yet been found guilty of anything. These inmates are still awaiting trial and access to comprehensive legal research materials may be vital to trial preparation.

The PCs officials are distributing to inmates are extremely small, about the size of of a hardback novel, and are not connected to the Internet in any way. (To see a photo of these mini PCs, check out this news story.)

This is certainly an innovative idea, and I'll be curious to see how things develop.

[NorthJersey.com] Bergen Jail first to provide online legal aid in cells

As a former Electronic Services Librarian, and as someone whose job title still places a heavy emphasis on electronic services, I may be playing with fire here, but I think the time has come for academic law libraries to eliminate their Electronic Services Librarian (ESL) positions.

Traditionally speaking, an ESL is a library's in-house specialist for Computer Assisted Legal Research (CALR). This means they are the go-to person at the law school for all questions dealing with Lexis, Westlaw, Hein Online, LegalTrac, etc., etc. In addition, an ESL usually does a lot of the collection development work involving electronic resources. This means researching potential electronic acquisitions and ironing out licensing agreements for these resources. (In some cases, the ESL may also be the webmaster for the law library, but this varies from library to library.)

Obviously, CALR and electronic acquisitions aren't going anywhere. So why do I say the ESL position should be eliminated?

Because this shouldn't be a specialized position anymore.

In this day and age, all reference librarians should be well-versed in CALR. Most legal research is now performed using electronic resources, thus every reference librarian at a law school must know the ins and outs of these systems just to do the bare minimum required by their job descriptions. Those who aren't are courting obsolescence. So the idea that only one librarian in an institution should master these tools is outdated. This is now every reference librarian's job.

As for electronic collection development, is there any good reason that this duty shouldn't fall on the shoulders of the librarian(s) already performing traditional collection development duties? Not only does this provide for a consistent application of an institution's collection development policies, regardless of medium, but forces collection development librarians to stay up-to-date on all legal resources, not just those published in paper. Why should the medium matter? Content is king.

The ESL model reflects a time when electronic services were a novelty. But those services are now a vital part of our institutions, and being an ESL should now be a core competency for every law librarian.