Westlaw is lightening fast in making U.S. law reviews available online (Lexis is probably much the same, though I didn't test it). Generally, Westlaw copy is faster than library hardcopy availability. I checked the U.S. law reviews that were added to Westlaw on a random day, October 21, 2004, and looked at the check-in records for those issues at three law libraries (Berkeley, Texas, Georgetown). Out of the nine law review issues added to Westlaw on 10/21/04 one issue (109 Penn. St. L. Rev. #1) was available in libraries beforehand, being Berkeley and Texas on the 13th and Georgtown on the 18th; two issues (46 Ariz. L. Rev. #3 and 19 Tul. Euro. Civ. L.F.) were available in libraries on the same day as Westlaw availability, and for the remaining six issues Westlaw beat the fastest of the library copies by an average of 8 days. As an aside, the check-in dates showed a fairly consistent pattern in making the issues available, with Texas being the fastest and Georgetown the slowest, often up to a week later. Perhaps libraries should be checking their comparative check-in dates to see if they have systematic problems with mail delivery or processing.
Posted by doyle at November 13, 2004 6:59 PM