Why do the vendors roll out new versions in September??!!

This year, Lexis has chosen to roll out a new version of Lexis Advance on September 8!

Why thank you guys!

Isn't that just the most thoughtful thing?

Librarians and teachers around the world are just loving having a brand new version that they need to scramble and get comfortable with just as their students are arriving.

Why couldn't they have released this back in June?

Well. I am guessing (with my cynic's hat on), that they didn't really want any testing and reviews floating around out there to taint the trumpet blasts and floating glory clouds as they rolled this out to students.

Of course, maybe they just hadn't finished debugging it in June. Maybe I shouldn't be so cynical.

Lexis Shoots Itself in the Foot

I learned yesterday that when students extend their Lexis accounts for the summer this year, they will only get access to Lexis Advance, not to lexis.com. If a student needs access to materials beyond what is available on Lexis Advance, e.g., international law, then we will need to contact our academic representatives to get the student access to lexis.com. If all or most lexis.com content had been migrated over to Lexis Advance, this decision might make sense, at least from the corporate point of view. I can understand Lexis wanting to push students over to the new platform, but I'm not sure this is the best way to do it. Not all content has been migrated, and this is going to create a serious disincentive to use Lexis Advance this summer. For instance, we have a Land Use Law Center here at Pace Law School that hires many student interns to work over the summer; municipal regulations on which they depend are not on Westlaw and they are not yet on Lexis Advance. I already mentioned international materials and municipal regulations, but Lexis Advance is also missing some news sources and secondary legal materials. I can't help but think that this is a wrongheaded decision that will ultimately push students to use WestlawNext. It's also going to create administrative headaches for the reps, who will have to intervene to get lexis.com access for those students who need it. This policy is almost as annoying as the decision to require a new password for Lexis Advance in the first place!