Law libraries between tradition and innovation

Abstract

On November 6, 2008 the J. Michael Goodson Law Library at the Duke University School of Law held a debate about the 21st century law library, i.e. about the development of law libraries in a transformed technological and informational environment. This is an extremely hot topic for Italian law libraries too, not so different from their American counterparts as for collections and services. The paper points out the salient features and criticalities of 21st century Italian law libraries: the ever increasing price of electronic resources, the growing disaffection towards paper, the necessity of a further development of Open access, the role of librarians in the process of digitalization and preservation of library documents, the different use of library spaces in a technological environment, the strategic role of information literacy, the cooperation between librarians and professors. Finally, it describes The Law Student Research Competencies and Information Lteracy Pinciples developed by the AALL (American association of law libraries) in order to improve the library services and promote the quality of research in the Law field.