September/October 2008
West eLearning Center: More Power to the Librarian
New administrative features make it easy for the law librarian to coordinate Westlaw training for the firm.
By Sally Chatelaine, West eLearning, and Jay Shuck, West Customer and Product Documentation
It's hardly surprising that law librarians often oversee the legal and reference training of their firms' attorneys and professional staff.
The law librarians' expanding responsibilities over their firms' legal training is "an extension of the information training they provide," writes one commentator.* The new role is consistent with the evolving definition of librarian. Librarians "have become like the hub of the wheel playing an integral role in all decision-making and education practices surrounding them," observes another.†
As the law librarian role evolves, so does the West eLearning Center.
The West eLearning Center (
www.westelearning.com) offers free, self-paced lessons on all aspects of Westlaw, including case evaluation tools, background information and news, public records, KeyCite,
American Law Reports (ALR®), and Litigation History Reports. At the suggestion of librarian customers, the center has recently been enhanced with new administrative features that law firms are currently beta testing. These administrative features enable the firm's law librarian or training director to do the following:
- Search for lesson available on particular topics
- Recommend lessons for the whole organization or for specific individuals
- Import large numbers of names from MyAccount into the West eLearning Center administrative tool (coming soon)
- Notify the individuals you specify of particular lessons available
- Keep track of the individuals to whom you recommended particular lessons
- Monitor the progress of these individuals through the lessons
- Drop or add individuals as needed
The librarian can choose lessons, recommend specific lessons to particular staff, and monitor the lesson progress on an individual basis—all from the same spot.
Law librarians will appreciate the ability to search for relevant lessons, says Doug Monson, director of eLearning and Online Customer Education at West. "The search utility is really important," he adds. "If you want to see what we have on experts, type expert in the Search Subjects text box and click Search. You can also browse other subjects if you prefer."
Once lessons are identified, it's easy to designate which individuals will be notified about specific lessons. The West eLearning Center sends an e-mail message to the designated individuals. When an individual logs in to the West eLearning Center for lessons, the user sees the recommended lessons in a personalized view of the site, and the librarian can track the individual's progress.
The whole idea is to give more control of training to librarians. "The features will enable librarians to manage the learning on an individual level," says Monson.
"We want to help librarians as they share Westlaw knowledge and other product knowledge with their employees so that those employees can do their jobs better," adds Marcus Anderson of West E-Channel Marketing. "We want to build our partnership and reach out."
* Steven A. Meyerowitz, The Law Library Meets Marketing and Technology Head On, 19 NO. 1 MARKETING L. FIRM (2005).
† Janice R. Lachance, What's the Future Hold for Info Pros? Plenty-Many Think Yours Is a "Hot" Job, Info. Outlook, June 1, 2007, at 5.