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12 Legal Reference Services Q. 1 (1992-1993)

handle is hein.journals/lgrefsq12 and id is 1 raw text is: EDITORIAL In the last few years budget cuts, rising costs of serials and books, plus the need to buy 'new' technology, have caused a lot of strain in libraries. Recently, at both academic and law firm libraries the question of what is more important, service or collections, has come under discussion. Many of the folks in charge of the purse strings at universities and in law firms have said that librarians' services are a luxury they can no longer afford. If there's a money crunch, they believe that the dollars should go into collections, which can never be replaced, rather than into librarians who help people find things. These chancellors, vice presidents, managing partners, hold to the notion that a good scholar or good lawyer should know how to find things by him or her self. Real lawyers or scholars don't need (heaven forbid) a librarian to hold their hands when it comes time to find information. Real lawyers and scholars just need to have the right materials available to them. Such a quaint notion of information access would be amusing, except that many of the people who hold this notion dear have the power to decide how money will be spent. Any librarian who works in collection development or has to decide which serial subscriptions will be cut each year knows that the problems of diminishing resources are very real. We all feel our libraries are in danger of offering inadequate collections to our patrons because we simply cannot afford to support the depth we would like to see in our collections. Librarians are not blind to the dangers or decreased money for information. But many of us are concerned that Legal Reference Services Quarterly, Vol. 12(1) 1992 @ 1992 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. I