The semi-annual phone call with Bloomberg BNA took place on November 23, 2015. As this was my first call as CRIV Liaison to Bloomberg BNA (BBNA), I wanted a status report on several topics mentioned in Margie Maes’ Vendor Liaison reports: Vendor supplied records, usage statistics, and the 2014 re-organization. In response to my question concerning vendor supplied records, Michael Bernier reiterated that BBNA remains committed to providing free MARC records to the library community and has been responsive to librarian comments regarding their records. At this time, available records include 859 for BBNA products (http://www.bna.com/marc-catalog-records-m17179934026/) and 556 records for Bloomberg Law materials (http://www.bna.com/marc-records-bloomberg-m17179934017/).
BBNA provides, for law school users only, quarterly usage reports by law school packages on the Bloomberg BNA platform including statistics for page views, number of hits, and e-mail summaries sent. If a law school customer does not currently receive these statistics, they should contact their academic BBNA representative. The Bloomberg Law Help Desk can activate client matter billing on Bloomberg Law that allows law firms to track usage by client matter. Lastly, Michael Bernier confirmed that the 2014 reorganization is complete and no new reorganizations are on the horizon. The only upcoming change is that more engagement representatives are being added to the law firm and government markets so that more law firm and government clients may receive training on BBNA resources.
Michael Bernier provided updates on BBNA’s current products and the company’s focus for the immediate future. They are launching vertical slices of Bloomberg Law. This will mean that subscribers will be able to purchase specific libraries of content in areas such as privacy and data security or banking and corporate transactions. Academic customers will still receive access to all content, but other library types will be able to purchase specific content to satisfy the needs of their practice groups.
Other areas of development for BBNA will be a focus on analytics and more specifically law firm representation analytics including which firms represented which company for certain types of lawsuits. In 2016, more analytical tools are expected.
As there are no outstanding member advocacy issues with BBNA, this concluded the agenda for this call. Our next call will be scheduled for late May/early June 2016, however, should a member advocacy request arise, we will speak sooner.
Respectfully submitted by: Diana Jaque
Leave a Reply