Department of Justice

The following report is based on a series visit to the Department of Justice February 13-15th. During this visit several conversations took place between the researcher, librarians, and library clients within different sections of the Department of Justice and in several DOJ libraries. An initial draft of this report was then provided to the Department for feedback. This revised report briefly outlines the observations in each of these conversations. It attempts to highlight opportunities and provide an outsider’s reaction to these conversations given a very narrow window of engagement. The emphasis in all of this is on the ability/role of DOJ librarians to facilitate these conversations.

What emerged from the visit was the beginning of a planning process based on participatory librarianship and conversations. While the principles of participatory librarianship have been used to present an overall vision of library systems (Lankes et. al 2007), and to develop library software (Lankes, 2008) and services a clear method for planning and evaluating library services holistically has yet to be developed. While this case does not directly present such a methodology, it does point to one. From the case, one approach would be:

1. Identify major participatory communities within the service community
2. Identify and describe the major conversations within and across these communities
3. Identify the services and resources provided by the library to these conversations (later this needs to be refined into means of facilitation)
4. Look for gaps (where the library could, but is not providing facilitation), dead ends (where the library is providing a service not linked to conversations within a community), and opportunities (where the library could provide service to a community’s conversation, but is not).

In the case example below, three participatory conversations were identified. Within a key community (legal staff) a high-level conversation was identified (the “life of the law”). A basic mapping was done (Figure 1). Also certain opportunities to provide better facilitation was identified (for example the “In Search Of” process for lawyers, and the extranet for the librarians themselves).

This initial approach was used as part of a strategic retreat process at a small academic library with some success. While clearly great specificity and data is needed to firm up this planning process, this case study serves as a first step.

Several caveats are important to note. Three days and a handful of focus groups are far from adequate to capture the richness of any organization. The best that can be hoped for are initial observations and to capture broad themes and ideas. While much of this report is written in an authoritative tone, i.e., making assertions and generalizations, that is simply a device to prompt further discussion. The idea is to prompt and provoke. This often leads to richer conversation than a more cautious and nuanced tone. So while there aren’t many “the research thinks” or “it might be” or “one would guess” like phrases within, they are implied.

The initial result of this visit was a chart of the “A Participatory View of the Department of Justice Libraries.” This chart seeks to capture the different conversations occurring from the library perspective. It is far from complete, but attempts to capture broad areas of understanding.

There appears to be four major participatory communities. These communities represent groups of people talking about similar things in similar fashions. They share processes and concerns. Certainly within the communities there are a lot of different voices with different roles (lawyers, managers, paralegals). Also, there are certainly communities not addressed in the visit (policy makers, IT, etc). Why bother talking about communities? Why not simply use the standard breakdown of library and patrons? Because, in a participatory approach, the library’s role is to facilitate conversations of communities – thus they must understand the dynamics of the communities themselves whether those interactions are with the library or not. Also, in any attempt to increase the quality of participation (conversations) within the communities, and thus improve the knowledge of these communities, one must respect the norms, cultures, and structures of these communities. Simply put, why would a lawyer want to participate in library systems when they are part of a different community all together? If libraries want to build effective conversations they must do so in as close alignment to communities as possible (including building systems within the communities rather than within the library).

For example within the legal staff, there is not much discussion or concern with how case files are managed. It seems that just about every lawyer keeps a set of files in a series of folders on their desktops. There is no standardized way of storing these data. Clearly how these files are stored is of great interest to librarians. From a library perspective, capturing this data, organizing it, and providing it back to customers is of high priority, but to the legal staff it is not. Thus, if a librarian were to attempt to capture this data to build new services they would find great resistance on the part of legal staff. Why? Because to the legal staff once all of this data is used to file a formal courts document (like a brief), the world of documents around that formal document becomes nearly irrelevant. If it is not in the brief, it is not important. If the library deems it important to capture and organize this information it does so by having a conversation internally to it’s own community. If it wants to get lawyers on board, it will have to make a strong case based on the norms and in the language of the legal staff.

In the site visit five communities became apparent:

1. Legal Staff: Lawyers and support staff are well versed in the formal conversations of the law. From formal filings to informal searching on databases, there is a high level understanding of a general process: understand the legislative intent of a given law; build a brief that captures both the facts and the theory of the case; and understand the life of the law including precedents, decisions, and related legislative action. The conversations of the legal staff are in many cases formal, and regulated. Not every case will include "Legislative Intent" formally. There are also many informal conversations happening between litigators.
2. DOJ Librarians: The librarians in the Department of Justice form a community that regularly exchange information, techniques and resources. However, while there is a clear desire to provide outstanding service, much of how this service should be delivered remains an open question. With little to no data on actual service utilization, service priorities and decisions are often based on individual success, anecdotes and personal philosophies. This makes it difficult to truly gauge the effectiveness of services.
3. Database Vendors: Hein, Westlaw, LexisNexis constitute the core databases for the legal profession and are clearly needed across the enterprise. However each section has its own key resources. There is great competition between these vendors with little information sharing.
4. Other Sources of Legal Information: This disparate group consists of other law libraries, legal research centers, other law firms and a wide variety of other players. There are some formal means of communications such as AALL, but there are also structural issues in creating formal connections (privacy of case matters, competitive advantage, proprietary information, and billing structures).
5. General Audiences: This is not a formal community by any means. Rather it is the open information environment that the Department of Justice exits within. It is constantly changing and has little coherence.

Within these communities there are opportunities for the library to improve service, and better facilitate knowledge building. Which, if any, of these opportunities the libraries pursue is a matter of internal priorities and resources, though a few recommendations are made.

It should also be noted that it is in the intersection of these communities, conversations across communities, that most of the opportunities for improved library service lay. Therefore in the discussion of the communities, special note shall be made of these cross-community collaborations.