Last June, I started observing and taking statistics on patron questions at
\nour courthouse library. \u00a0My goal was to get an idea of how the library is
\nused by the courthouse, legal and lay communities. \u00a0The questions that
\nrequired more substantive responses\u2014some significant interaction such as
\neducating a patron on the types of legal information resources available\u2014
\ngave me the opportunity to get a glimmer of the legal information needs of
\nour patrons.<\/p>\n
The largest portion of such questions, 40%, were general in nature, e.g. not
\nrelated to any specific area of law. \u00a0Examples of such questions include how
\nto generally research a legal issue or use an electronic database. \u00a0
\nSignificant question subject areas included family law (10%), real property
\n(6%), guardianship of minors (6%) and government law (6%). \u00a0Interestingly,
\nthe largest specific category was legal procedure (13%). \u00a0Typically, the
\nquestions asked in this area were requests for forms or for materials
\nexplaining how to perform a certain procedure, e.g. filing a mechanics lien;
\nobtaining an emergency court date, statutes of limitations and how to bring
\nan appeal.<\/p>\n
These numbers are not the result of a scientific survey. \u00a0They also do not
\ndistinguish between whether or not a questioner was an attorney or pro se. \u00a0
\n(If I had to guess I would say the break down would be 40% attorney and 60%
\npro se). \u00a0I do think they raise an important point that many people using
\nthe courthouse, and especially pro se’s\u00a0are in need of instruction in the use of legal resources as well as the courthouse procedures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last June, I started observing and taking statistics on patron questions at our courthouse library. \u00a0My goal was to get an idea of how the library is used by the courthouse, legal and lay communities. \u00a0The questions that required more substantive responses\u2014some significant interaction such as educating a patron on the types of legal information […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":498,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[898],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studies-reports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}