Wall Street Journal to Close Its Research Library
The Wall Street Journal has announced that it will close its news research library on March 23. Leslie A. Norman, who heads the library, said in a February 5 posting on the NewsLib online discussion group that she and News Assistant Ed Ramos had received their termination notices that day.
Norman wrote, “When I asked who will do research for the reporters, I was told, ‘No one.’ The reporters will probably be using a Lexis product called Due Diligence Dashboard.” She added that “it cannot replace the knowledge about how to research using all the tricks we’ve learned over the years. We figure that the reporters will probably spend 10 times our compensation trying to do their own research.”
The library closure is part of a 14-person newsroom job reduction announced by the Journal, Editor and Publisher reported February 11. In an e-mail to the publication, Journal Spokesman Robert Christie stated, “Yes, we are closing the library. It is regrettable. Our reporters do have access to multiple databases including Factiva and this migration to digital databases . . . has been happening for many years.”
In a NewsLib posting the next day that thanked colleagues for their words of support, Norman noted that many Journal reporters “have called wondering what they are supposed to do after the library closes. They told me how important my research was to their stories. I didn’t know I meant so much to them.”
Norman, an assistant librarian who has been running the library since her predecessor left in 2007, has been at the Journal since 2005, with four years’ prior experience at the Bloomberg library, according to E&P.
Posted on February 13, 2009. Discuss.