Yesterday saw a lot of outrage from the law librarian community, thanks to a new (albeit short-lived) promotion from Thomson West that read in part:

Are you on a first name basis with the librarian? If so, chances are, you're spending too much time at the library.

(Click here to view the full ad)

Let me say up-front that I don't think this was a smart marketing strategy for West. Law librarians certainly play a role in throwing a sizeable chunk of change West's way, even if we aren't their biggest audience. Yet, while the ad isn't as disparaging on its face as some have complained (e.g., it doesn't really say anything negative about librarians), singling out a customer constituency in this way would be ill-advised for any company.

With that out of the way, let's look at this from a legal researcher's perspective. I tend to agree with the premise in West's ad that self-service research from one's own office is preferable to any situation that requires help from a librarian. Why do patrons talk to librarians? Because they can't find what they're looking for. As Terry Martin -- a law librarian -- said at a 1996 AALL "Town Meeting:"

Inevitably, there will be instances when people have got to ask a librarian for assistance. Now, I always think that this is a systems failure to some degree. We trained them improperly; we haven't designed a good catalog; and we haven't arranged materials well so that they can't help themselves.

Reprinted in Towards a Renaissance in Law Librarianship (Richard A. Danner, ed. 1997).

In a perfect (though certainly non-existent) world, if everyone involved in creating the system (law librarians, legal publishers, research database vendors) does his or her job right, a legal researcher would never need to ask a librarian for help.

That hardly means law librarians become irrelevant, but to remain a vital part of the system, we need to put as much effort in continuously re-designing and re-implementing that system as we do in helping lost researchers, because reducing those systems failures will save researchers time and frustration. Expressing outrage towards West for suggesting that self-service research is a good thing seems to indicate more concern on our part for the collective law librarian ego than for our patrons' needs.

You want to be angry at West for that ad? Be indignant at the suggestion that their online systems are comprehensive enough or designed intuitively enough to eliminate the need for librarian (or West's own customer support) assistance. Be outraged that they charge so much for their services that, no matter how well designed, our library budgets are the only thing that makes it possible for researchers to use them.

But never forget that if West, Lexis or some other legal database vendor ever fixed these problems, the need for our expertise, at least in its current form, would be reduced dramatically.

If West rethought its pricing structures and realized it could make a lot more money selling, to name one example, a Black's Law Dictionary iPhone app for $10 than it does for $50, a lot more patrons would buy their own research tools instead of relying on our deep pockets.

And if West put the energy and UI expertise responsible for its Black's Law Dictionary Digital software to work redesigning the Westlaw interface from the ground up (rather than simply dumping voluminous full text resources into its system with little regard for how they're used), there'd be a lot fewer questions at the reference desk about how to find something on Westlaw.

Are either of these things likely to happen anytime soon? History suggests they won't. But as I said yesterday on Twitter, I don't like relying on someone else's incompetence in order to stay relevant.

Truth is, West's questionable promotional piece advertised a world that, I believe, most researchers find appealing. Not because librarians are bad or unhelpful, but because research becomes far more efficient when someone finds what they're looking for without needing to ask for help at all. As Martin said, some system failure is inevitable. But that doesn't mean it can't be reduced. If an ad suggesting that such a reduction is positive scares librarians so much, my only question is, "Why?"