As a member of the 1999 Annual Meeting Program Selection Committee, I have been given the unique opportunity to step back and view the overall or "big" picture of law librarianship. Reviewing program proposals submitted by AALL members nationwide and working closely with a national committee of law librarians from diverse backgrounds, has allowed me to "experience" the broad range of issues and concerns facing law librarians–academic, private, court, government, and/or corporate. Though each type of law librarian has a number of type specific concerns to address, most of the important, "big" issues affect all law librarians no matter what type of library they work in.
Technology, the legal publishing industry, professional status, and funding are examples of issues that concern and affect us all. As a law librarian, it’s very easy to be consumed and overwhelmed by the day-to-day issues of running a law library-- performing online research, ordering missing looseleaf pages, deciphering invoices, etc.–and lose sight of the major issues involving our profession. Fear not. Your continued involvement with LLAM and AALL will help keep you abreast of the major issues affecting law librarianship and most importantly, give you information on how to anticipate, prepare, and respond to those issues.
To address the issue of technology, LLAM has created a new standing committee. The Technology Committee, ably headed by Melissa Harter, will keep our website updated, keep members informed about "hot" technology topics, and coordinate the MSBA\LLAM web site project. If you are interested in serving on this committee, please contact Melissa. In addition, Steve Anderson, Program Chair, is planning a Legal Technology Fair for one of LLAM’s spring programs. Stay tuned.
No matter what position you hold in a law library, the present state of the legal publishing industry is bound to affect your work. Endless mergers have complicated the librarian’s tasks of locating, ordering, purchasing, and using legal publications.
A recent discussion on the LLAM listserv identified the need for LLAM to have some sort of unified voice, similar to AALL’s CRIV, to respond to potential changes and/or changes in the legal publishing industry that affect our members. At the present time, rather than creating a special committee, the LLAM Board has decided that, where warranted, the Board will send a letter on behalf of LLAM to a particular vendor expressing LLAM’s interest and/or concern about a particular product/service/situation. If you have any CRIV like concerns, please post them to the LLAM listserv or if you don’t have email access call a board member or officer and have him/her post your concern. Listserv discussion will assist the Board in determining how to respond to your concern in a fair and constructive manner.
However, there are two sides to every story. Though legal publishing vendors may complicate our library lives from time to time, they also greatly enrich our lives. Through vendor support, LLAM is able to offer a greater range of benefits to its members. In response to the increased generosity of vendors, the LLAM Board has created a Vendor Support Statement to reflect LLAM’s appreciation for such donations and clarify LLAM’s position on accepting donations. The Vendor Support Statement is located on page 7 of this issue.
The 1999 AALL Annual Meeting "At the Crossroads: Legal Information Management, Technology, and Policy", will provide opportunities for LLAM members to improve their own particular professional status and the status of the profession as a whole. The Chapter VIP program provides two free registrations for LLAM to use to send two local VIPs (non law librarians who are in positions of influence, e.g. law school deans, judges, rainmaker partners, state legislators, etc.) to the conference. LLAM will only need to pay for transportation costs if necessary. This is a great opportunity for LLAM to gain recognition for its membership’s talents, needs, and concerns.
Please send me VIP nominations via email (bsandison@rocketmail.com) or phone me at 410-887-6042. The Paraprofessional Forum, another program offered at the 1999 meeting, will give LLAM an opportunity to perform membership out reach to paraprofessionals in the Baltimore-Washington area. LLAM will be sponsoring a snack break at this daylong program. LLAM will also be holding a drawing for a registration grant for a paraprofessional from a LLAM member library to attend the July 19th event. To enter the drawing, please submit paraprofessional’s names to me by April 15th.
As you can see from the above discussion, LLAM and AALL are working to help you navigate the wiles of law library land. So next time you feel stranded and alone in your library, remember the big picture. Look to your professional associations for ideas, inspiration and empathy.
According to the new rule, all reported opinions and orders of the Courts entered after January 1, 1999 will be effected. According to the Reporter’s Notes, "the rule presents a new universal citation system which allows for the citation of appellate cases disseminated on the Internet or CD-ROM… The proposed system is medium-neutral, in that it is suited to both print and electronic publication. It is also vendor-neutral, in that the citation number and internal paragraph references are assigned by the court, rather than a proprietary entity."
The following examples have been adapted from the Committee Note. The cite for the first decision of the Court of Appeals for 1999 might look like this:
The pinpoint citation to a quotation taken from paragraph 12 in that decision would be:
Parallel citation format would be as follows:
If a decision is revised after being released to the public, the modified decision or errata is assigned a new sequential number, and the case would be cited as:
To assist with the expenses of carrying
out its professional mission, the Law Library Association of Maryland (LLAM)
accepts and appreciates donations from vendors with the understanding that
the acceptance of such support neither serves as an endorsement by LLAM
of said vendors’ products or services nor creates an obligation for LLAM
members to purchase or use said vendors’ products or services.
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