In honor of National Library Week, we will be serving complimentary bagels, muffins and juice from 9:00 - 10:00 a.m. on Friday, April 16, 2010. Please join us in celebrating the wealth of information and knowledge available at our Library. Upon request, we can provide a tour of our facility.

• the private bar
• county officials and their officers and employees
• municipal corporations and their officers and employees
• townships and their officers and employees,
• county courts and their judges and employees, and
• and members of the public

This Agreement preserves your rights and privileges as members of the Law Library and ensures that the Law Library as a whole will have sufficient financing, personnel, books, databases, and other resources to support the practice of law and administration of justice in Cuyahoga County.

This monumental Agreement was preceded by a time of great uncertainty following the Ohio General Assembly's December 2008 enactment of HB 420. That bill created CLLRBs in each Ohio county and vested them with prospective authority beginning in 2010 to collect and spend all public funds which this Association used to receive from local speeding tickets and liquor fines. Like its counterparts throughout the state, Cuyahoga's CLLRB is also charged with coordinating and pre-approving this county's legal resource purchases, while the private Law Library Association continues to manage all private memberships.

Because Cuyahoga County's CLLRB was not appointed until December of 2009, it had a lot of work to do in a very short period of time. Cuyahoga County's CLLRB is chaired by Steve Wood, who is the retired Director of the Cleveland-Heights/University Heights Library. Steve and the other members of the CLLRB quickly assessed the situation through meetings with this Association's board and immediately developed a positive working relationship that resulted in a seamless transition for both entities. As a result, it is "business as usual"� at the law library.

The best way to describe WestlawNext is to compare it with Google, where users type simple searches in a single search box on the toolbar and hit the "Enter"� key to return a list of results. Compared to Westlaw.com, WestlawNext's initial screen is very clean and stream-lined, encouraging users to choose a proper jurisdiction and craft a natural language query in a one-line search box at the top. Using a complex algorithm, WestlawNext then searches a core set of 12 databases or groups that include: cases; statutes and court rules; secondary sources; briefs, pleadings, motions and memoranda; jury verdicts and settlements; trial court orders; expert witness testimony; administrative documents; and news.

The results screen is split into three (3) vertical frames that organize information into logical categories. The left column displays the number of hits in each of the twelve (12) databases or groups mentioned above. The middle column displays the first few hits in summary format with search terms in highlighting. Finally, the right-hand column operates like ResultsPlus in recommending related resources users may want to explore. Users who either receive too many hits or want to refine their searches can narrow their results (without incurring additional search costs) by jurisdiction, date, or typical Westlaw.com fields such as court or judge. Users can also still browse results by document or search terms or change the order in which documents are displayed by date or relevance.

As it was explained to us, charges are incurred the first time users conduct a search, view a result, run a Keycite, print, or otherwise export their search results. Users can save results in folders for a full year without incurring additional viewing charges, and they will eventually be able to share the full contents of these folders with others.

Although West's attempt to offer a more Google-like search interface would be a good idea in a free environment like the Internet, natural language queries generally return a lot more results than more targeted searches librarians prefer to conduct and recommend for our patrons. Absent judicious filtering, review of a larger pool of results can translate into expensive searching that lawyers may not be able to pass on to clients. Even though we are fortunate to be able to offer our patrons free access to Westlaw.com under an unlimited monthly plan we purchase on their behalf, users who have to pay for their searches may not like natural language searching in a fee-based environment.

Time will certainly tell whether lawyers will migrate to the new search method on WestlawNext, but West has already realized that it needs to offer more advanced search techniques up front. The initial search box on WestlawNext allows users to employ proximity operators, Boolean search logic using the typical connectors, "and,"� "or"� and "not,"� and other customary search features such as root expanders and wildcards. West also recently added an advanced search link to its home page that leads to a template for more targeted online searching.

After five (5) years in development, WestlawNext is a work-in-progress whose designers are making fluid changes on a regular basis. Although we will not be able to offer this product to our patrons for a while, we understand that West plans to create a patron-access plan that will allow us to offer a robust library of databases and delivery options that fit within our budget.

For additional information on WestlawNext, visit the following link: West.Thomson.com/WestlawNext

to Judge Rosemary Grdina Gold, who is the newest Judge on the Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Bench. Judge Gold's background includes a domestic relations practice at Buckley King, after which she hung out her own shingle in family law for the last 8 years.

The Law Library will be closed the following days in 2010:

• Memorial Day, Monday, May 31st
• Independence Day, Monday, July 5th
• Labor Day, Monday, September 6th
• Columbus Day, Monday, October 11th
• Veterans Day, Thursday, November 11th
• Thanksgiving, Thursday and Friday, November 25th and 26th
• Christmas Eve, Friday, December 24th
• New Year's Eve, Friday, December 31st