ALL-SIS Committee Annual Reports

2005–2006

ALL-SIS CENTENNIAL COMMITTEE BYLAWS CALI
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT CONALL / MENTORING CONTINUING STATUS / TENURE
EDUCATION FACULTY SERVICES LEGAL RESEARCH
LEGAL RESEARCH SOURCEBOOK MEMBERSHIP NEWSLETTER
PROGRAMS PUBLIC RELATIONS STATISTICS
WEBSITE Previous Committee and ALL-SIS Reports

ALL-SIS Centennial Committee

Charge: This committee was established in 2004 by Carole Hinchcliff, ALL-SIS chair at that time, to plan and carry out activities for the AALL Centennial Celebration in 2006. The committee continued its charge during the 2005–2006 year at the behest of Michael Slinger, ALL-SIS chair.

Committee members worked to find ways to celebrate the critical role of academic librarians in the development and organization of AALL during its first century. Our goal was to celebrate the centennial by recognizing outstanding contributions of academic librarians throughout the past 100 years. We began by reviewing their accomplishments. During the first year Margaret Christiansen and Christopher Knott wrote Milestones in Academic Law Libraries: Law School Libraries ‘Among the First’ Great Feats in Last 100 Years, which was published in the July 2005 issue of AALL Spectrum. We also began compiling a list of “firsts” for academic libraries. As a prelude to making additional plans we reviewed activities of other professional organizations celebrating noteworthy anniversaries to adapt for our own celebration.

During the current year we have been busy with a number of centennial activities:

Continued and refined “firsts” in academic law libraries list

The “firsts” list includes serious “first” achievements by institutions as well as individual law librarians. It also includes a few humorous “firsts.” During the past year members have continued to contribute additional information about “firsts.” Mila Rush has coordinated the list this year. Committee members have also done extensive searching of all back issues of Law Library Journal in an effort to find information about academic “firsts” from the early years of the AALL which extend beyond the memories of current members. While the “firsts” list was a centennial activity, it is a record of achievement which should be archived and maintained for the organization as a record of innovation, development and achievement of academic law libraries and librarians. See http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/centennial/firsts.asp.

Published article based on submissions to the “firsts” list

A number of the “firsts” submitted were from institutions headed by Betty W. Taylor and Roy Merksy. The committee published an article about these two enterprising librarians and their innovations. See Octogenarian Innovators Behind (or in Front of) Academic “Firsts” List, 25 ALL-SIS Newsletter 14–18 (Summer 2006).

Published profiles of early “first” librarians

Published profiles of extraordinary librarians based on information from the early days of AALL. See Profiles in History: First Academic Law Librarians from Days Past, 25 ALL-SIS Newsletter 18, 22–24 (Summer 2006).

Cumulated record and citations of Annual Reports of the Chair of the Section for ALL-SIS

Annual Reports of the Chair of the Section have detailed section activities since the ALL-SIS was established in 1979. These reports have been published every year in the Law Library Journal as part of the large, regular feature, American Association of Law Libraries: Reports of Chapters, Special Interest Sections, Committees, Special Committees and Task Forces, and Representatives. However, there was no record of the individual reports and their pinpoint citations which would make them easily accessible. During the past year, the committee prepared a record of all annual reports submitted for the section with citations to Law Library Journal. There are links to the text of the reports from the year 2000. The citations make it easy to retrieve earlier annual reports through Heinonline. See http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/centennial/annrpts.asp.

Prepared and Completed ALL-SIS Centennial Celebration of Accomplishments Survey

Committee members prepared a survey to get information about a range of issues, both serious and light. We asked about the most influential academic writings and innovations as well as the most influential librarians and “unsung hero(ine)s” of the profession. Members also identified the best program they have attended and their most embarrassing moments in the profession. They were also asked to speculate about changes in the profession over the next twenty-five years.

Annual meeting activities and awards

Information obtained in the survey will be used as the basis for activities and awards at the annual meeting.

Many thanks to Diane Murley for her great help in adding committee information to the ALL-SIS website.

Submitted by ALL-SIS Centennial Committee:

Rosalie Sanderson, chair
Margaret Christiansen
Rick Donnelly
Christopher Knott
Mila Rush
Rita Parham
Kumar Percy

Bylaws Committee

The 2005–2006 Bylaws Committee consisted of Hollie White, Arizona State University Ross-Blakley Law Library; Jennifer Wagner, Hofstra University Law School Library; and Thomas Hanley, chair, University of Dayton, Zimmerman Law Library.

The committee was charged with the following tasks:

The committee performed its duties remotely, corresponding by email. Committee members exchanged documents and drafts electronically among themselves and with SIS officers.

Hollie White took on the writing of an article for the newsletter. It is titled “Bylaws and Beyond: Reflections on the Ties that Bind” and appears in the Summer 2006 issue. The topic is a reflection on bylaws in general and how they reflect the purpose of ALL-SIS. It appears under the link for the Bylaws Committee Report.

Jennifer Wagner undertook the review of the SIS Bylaws to insure compliance with AALL's Bylaws and offered numerous suggestions to make the SIS bylaws congruent with those of AALL. Most of the suggested changes were linguistic rather than substantive. Most of the added language was designed to more fully reflect ongoing practice under the bylaws.

Thomas Hanley reviewed the SIS Bylaws. He compiled a suggested revised set of the bylaws (with suggested deletions, additions, and changes and the justifications for same) and submitted them to the SIS's Executive Board. Refinements to the proposed revisions were suggested by the Board and the AALL Bylaws Committee Chair and were incorporated into the final proposed revised bylaws. The final proposed draft was published in the ALL-SIS Newsletter, Volume 25, Issue 3, Summer 2006 to be considered at the ALL-SIS Business Meeting and Breakfast which is scheduled to begin on Sunday, July 9, at 7:00 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Thomas L. Hanley, Chair, 2005–2006 Bylaws Committee

CALI Committee

The CALI Authoring project began during summer 2000. As of June 2006, CALI has forty-four legal research lessons. This year the Authoring Advisory Panel included the following members: Sara Kelley, Chair, Nancy Johnson, Kris Niedringhaus, Pat Fox, Kit Kreilick, and Brian Huddleston. We function as the Legal Research Advisory Panel for CALI and work with CALI's Director of Curriculum Development/General Counsel, Deb Quentel.

The CALI Legal Research & Writing Topic Grid is on the CALI website at: http://www2.cali.org/index.php?fuseaction=lessons.grids. Once an author completes a lesson proposal, the authoring group reviews it. Additionally, we review new lessons and provide feedback to the authors.

During 2005–2006 CALI authors completed several lessons on topic- (e.g., trademark and copyright, immigration law, etc.) and state-specific legal research lessons. There are also new lessons on international law research.

We look forward to recruiting new authors to the legal research authoring project during the coming year. Current authors will staffing the CALI booth in the Exhibit Hall at AALL to answer questions and provide encouragement. We also encourage feedback from librarians who use the lessons.

Respectfully submitted,

Sara Kelley

Collection Development Committee

Co-Chairs: Connie Lenz
Doug Lind

Members: Nancy J. Adams
Beth DiFelice
Melanie Dunshee
Sandra Klein
Jan Ryan Novak
Karen A. Nuckolls
Helen Wohl

During the past year, the Collection Development Committee created a password protected “Academic Law Libraries' Collection Development Policies” page on the ALL-SIS web site. The page includes links to over fifty academic law libraries' collection development policies. Nancy Adams, Beth DiFelice, Connie Lenz, and Jan Novak contributed to this project. This group also solicited updates to the Committee's “Directory of Collection Development Contacts.” The Committee gratefully acknowledges Diane Murley's contributions to these projects as ALL-SIS Web Administrator.

The Committee followed up on last year's preliminary survey of organizational structures for collection development in academic law libraries. Connie Lenz and Helen Wohl conducted an in-depth survey with twenty libraries selected from the preliminary survey and are writing an article based on their findings.

At the 2005 Annual Meeting, the Committee organized a roundtable discussion on coping with budget cuts. Doug Lind moderated the discussion. Melanie Dunshee submitted an article to the Fall 2005 ALL-SIS Newsletter about the roundtable discussion.

The Committee began work on two additional projects. Doug Lind and Helen Wohl are conducting an analysis of collection analysis tools. Melanie Dunshee, Sandra Klein, and Karen Nuckolls are reviewing selection tools. Next year's Committee will continue work on these projects.

CONALL/Mentoring Committee

Charges:

1. Set up CONALL event for 2006 — This year's CONALL is scheduled for Tuesday, July 11, 2006 between 5:00 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. at Washington University School of Law before the ALL-SIS Reception and Awards Ceremony and is generously sponsored by LexisNexis. Buses for CONALL leave the Renaissance Grand Hotel, St. Charles Street at 4:00 pm. The objective of CONALL is to give newer academic law librarians a chance to meet each other, attend the ALL-SIS reception as a group, and learn about issues of interest to newer academic law librarians. Towards this end, the Committee plans for CONALL to be a fun and light-hearted affair starting with an icebreaker, a short skit and, if time, a tour of the Washington University School of Law Library. Newer academic law librarians and their mentors are encouraged to attend. Co-Chair Paul Moorman is responsible for the CONALL program this year.

2. Set up mentoring opportunities during 2005–06 — This was done by the individual mentors in working with their mentees during the past year.

3. Work with AALL Mentoring Committee on appropriate activities — Once again, in collaboration with the AALL Mentoring Committee, mentoring program applicants were able to sign up for the program through an AALL website. The AALL Mentoring Committee then forwarded all applications to the appropriate library-type SIS. The academic SIS committee received 34 applications from mentees and 39 volunteers to be mentors. Our mentoring subcommittee (Patricia Kidd, Kathleen Thompson and Barbara West) is currently collaborating and matching all the mentees with appropriate mentors, based on preferences stated, such as job class, region and ethnicity. In addition, our committee recruited several mentors to make better matches for subject-specific or geographic needs, as stated by the mentees. We express our gratitude to all who volunteered to be mentors.

4. Work with Public Relations Committee to promote CONALL event and mentoring opportunities — This year's PR Committee publicized the need for mentors to volunteer through the AALL Mentoring Committee website. They also gave us advice on how to publicize the CONALL event.

5. Name of CONALL program — There has been concern that name for CONALL is confusingly similar to the AALL's pre-conference workshop for newer members of AALL, Conference of Newer Law Librarians (CONELL). This year's committee was asked to determine whether the name is in fact confusing to newer members and to come up with possible alternatives. In order to find out the name is in fact confusing, at this year's CONALL, we intend to ask the attendees if they found the similar names confusing. We recommend that next year's committee be asked continue to consider the results of our discussion with this year's CONALL attendees and propose alternatives that may help to avoid this confusion (if it does in fact exist) while still representing the purpose of the program and respecting its history.

6. Submit one column to the Newsletter — The committee was responsible for submitting four articles to the Newsletter this year. The committee contributed two articles for the New Member Spotlight sections of the newsletter—Paul Moorman wrote an article about Katie Thompson that appeared in spring 2006 newsletter and Patricia Kidd wrote about Lauren Michelle Collins that appeared in the summer 2006 issue. In addition, Julie Jaet, contributed an article about this year's CONALL program and Patricia contributed an article updating the membership of our committee's activities during the year. Both of these articles appeared in the summer 2006 issue.

7. Future Law Librarian Project — Our committee was proud to be a part of President Michael Slinger's outreach to people who are considering law librarianship as a career. Michael solicited the names of people interested in academic law librarianship from ALL-SIS members so that he could follow up with a letter describing academic law librarianship, ALL-SIS, and the various scholarship and mentoring opportunities available to people interested in joining the profession. Michael received the names of over 60 people who were identified as being interested in academic law librarianship and hearing more about the profession. He wrote a letter and asked our committee to introduce and send the letter to the people who were identified. We were glad to help! The response we received to his letter was extremely positive. In fact, some of the people who received his letter have indicated that they will be attending the Annual Meeting in St. Louis and CONALL. We look forward to meeting them and welcoming them to our profession. Thanks for letting help with this important project.

Recommendations for next year:

1. Continue the practice of appointing the previous year's “junior” co-chair as the incoming “senior” co-chair and appoint a newer member as this person's co-chair for continuity in leadership.

2. Continue the practice of having some carry-over committee members. It is essential to have some “institutional memory” in this committee to keep the critical activities of CONALL and the mentor matching going smoothly.

3. Continue the practice of appointing some committee members who are new to the profession. The inclusion of the CONELL award winner is a great way to add to this committee.

4. Encourage the Committee to establish a work-group of at least one experienced and one new member for matching the mentee/mentors. The turnaround time for matching is rather short and comes at a very hectic time of the academic year. It will help to have at least one experienced person on this working group to carry forward the procedures that have developed for this aspect of the program.

5. Continue the efforts of this year's committee to investigate possible changes to the name of the CONALL program.

Respectfully submitted,

Paul Moorman
Patricia Kidd
Co-Chairs, 2005–2006

Continuing Status/Tenure Committee

The members of the Continuing Status/Tenure (CST) Committee intend to complete the survey/summary of the employment status of non-director academic law librarians prior to the AALL meeting in Saint Louis. Since the AALL meeting in San Antonio the committee members have added information on more than 25 law libraries and contacted many more. The ALL-SIS web page with the survey/summary information at www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/cst/ is updated periodically by Brian Huddleston. We currently have information for 168 law schools and will continue to add information until all of the ABA accredited law schools are included. According to the ABA web page at www.abanet.org/legaled/approvedlawschools/approved.html, as of February 2006 there were 192 law schools approved by the ABA to grant J.D. degrees. Eight of these law schools are provisionally approved. The three broad categories used by this committee are tenure track, continuing status, and employment at will. The CST committee is also collecting tenure track documents. Brian intends to add information on the status of directors to the web site.

In addition, Brian Huddleston has been coordinating the development of Tenure, Faculty Status, and Law Librarians - A Bibliography which was last updated on February 14, 2006 at www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/cst/bibliography.html. Elizabeth Adelman's Library and Information Science Abstracts search contributed numerous articles to the bibliography. Anyone who would like to annotate an article listed in the bibliography should contact Brian Huddleston at bhuddle@loyno.edu.

Committee Members

Education Committee

After a halting start last year – waiting for the well-considered outcomes of the Education Summit and a refinement of the Board's charge – the ALL-SIS Education Committee's work began in earnest mid-year. The Committee contributed questions to the March 2006 member survey, posted educational programs on the AALL Calendar of Events, and posted its first discussion question.

In a continual assessment of how the Committee might meet its charge, the following issues were raised:

Following on the heels of the survey, the Committee's discussion question drew a limited response but raised two important issues that reach beyond professional development into the future of the profession itself: librarian status in academic institutions; and “alternative” careers for law librarians. Other academic law librarians said they want to learn about web authoring and web reporting tools, leadership, institutional repositories, and collection management criteria. “What I need to know…” is what one brave soul admitted wanting to know. Is this another call for a continuing education checklist for law librarians? How can we use the Competencies of Law Librarianship (www.aallnet.org/prodev/competencies.asp) to direct professional development planning?

The Committee also recently received the member survey results related to professional education. Representing 259 complete responses, they offer an enlightening view of what these members think about professional education for academic law librarians.

Notwithstanding the expense and time costs, respondents ranked in-person programs highest in “providing the best opportunities.” Ranked #3 or higher: Annual Meeting (67%); regional (54%); local (58%). Ranked #7, 8 and 9: DVDs (47%); CDs (46%); tapes (55%). 66% want to learn about educational programs via the ALL-SIS listserv. 42% ranked a blog last for this purpose. For SIS time slots at the Annual Meeting, panels and roundtable discussions were listed most frequently as the preferred format.

When asked for one or two topics of interest to learn about through ALL-SIS, the answers spanned the entire spectrum of library issues: services and outreach; teaching; trends; technology; specific skills and knowledge; status, tenure and changing roles; statistics; research and publishing; collection management; advocacy; careers; diversity; budgeting and management; preservation; designing surveys; database design; and AALL involvement.

The comments, while not attributable to all, suggest that ALL-SIS members want more of everything! As we anticipate the opportunities for education and fellowship at the Annual Meeting, each of us should look for ways to contribute to the development of educational opportunities that promote the profession and the individuals within it.

Thanks to the ALL-SIS Executive Board for its supportive oversight this year, to Committee members for their involvement, and to ALL-SIS members for contributing to the conversation.

Faculty Services Committee

In the past year, the Faculty Services Roundtable Committee continued its mission of sharing what works (and doesn't) in faculty services. The committee sponsored three virtual roundtables through its listserv. The first discussion, led by Susan Broms of the University of Pittsburgh Barco Law Library, was on the use and management of research assistants (RA) in our support of faculty research projects. It seemed that librarians are most successful in hiring good candidates when they encourage particular students to apply or hire students that they have taught or previously worked with. In the second discussion Jane Thompson, of the University of Colorado Law Library, focused the group's conversation about new faculty orientation. In this discussion, we learned that while it's important to start a faculty member out right, we should also focus on offering training and information about our services throughout a faculty member's career. Most recently, Liz Goldberg, of the Indiana University School of Law Library, led our third discussion about service to faculty outside of the law school. One particularly helpful suggestion is to communicate with these faculty members on an ongoing basis about the services we can provide in consulting on assignment design, research guides and tours. This way, we can help the class as a whole rather than individual students at the reference desk.

If you'd like to review these virtual roundtables or don't want to miss the next virtual meeting of this helpful group, visit the archives of the listserv or sign-up at http://share.aallnet.org/read/?forum=all-fsr.

The committee has been busy with other activities as well. Marianne Alcorn, of Arizona State University's Ross-Blakely Law Library, Leslie Pardo, of Cleveland Marshall College of Law Library, and James Wirrell, of McGeorge School of Law's Schaber Law Library, are planning for the creation of an online clearinghouse for faculty services resources. Continuing with this work would be a worthwhile project for the committee next year. Susan Broms and Michele Kristakis, both of Barco Law Library, are writing a summary of the survey the committee completed last year.

The Faculty Services Committee will hold a Roundtable during the AALL annual meeting on Monday, July 10, at 10:15 a.m. Please join us in our continuing collaboration to improve library service to faculty.

Legal Research Committee

The ALL-SIS Legal Research Committee has had a productive year. The two major projects we have undertaken are a revamping and expansion of the Committee Web page and the planning and execution of the Legal Research Instruction Roundtable at the annual meeting in St. Louis.

A sub-group of the Committee, coordinated by Louise Tsang, undertook the task of evaluating and improving the Committee Web page. This sub-group consisted of Mary Rumsey, Bill Mills, Colleen Williams, and Virginia Lougheed.

The Committee's Web page now has an inviting new look, and its content has been updated and expanded. The sub-group took a highly selective approach to adding new materials and tried to limit the additions to links that would be truly useful to our members. The page includes a link to “Results of Surveys Taken by the LR Committee,” including a report of the 2005 Advanced Legal Research Instruction Roundtable in San Antonio, as well as results of previous surveys. Also new on our page are a set of links to “Recommended Legal Research Resources” including (but not limited to!) our own Legal Research Instruction Sourcebook; the FCIL-SIS' Foreign and International Legal Research Syllabi and Class Materials Page; the Akron Online Resource Portal, which provides subject access to pathfinders and research guides from over 130 law schools and other institutions; and the Tarlton Law Library's “Contents Pages from Law Reviews,” a searchable database of tables of contents from more than 750 law reviews and other scholarly publications related to law.

Also new to the site are links to selected Blogs (and lists of blogs) of interest to law librarians, and a list of “Law Library Display Ideas” provided by Sybil Marshall. We have included a suggestion box inviting members to convey to us any ideas for how the Committee's Web page could be improved to be of greater use to our members. Please check out the “new and improved” LR Committee Web page at http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/legalresearchcommittee/index.asp.

The Committee's second project for 2005–2006 was to plan and carry out the Legal Research Instruction Roundtable for the St. Louis meeting. Led by Judith Ford Anspach, the sub-group which undertook the planning for the Roundtable consisted of Laura Cadra, Joe Gerken, Gail Partin, and Lisa Spar. We anticipate that other members of the LR Committee will assist with conducting the Roundtable in the capacity of greeters, discussion leaders, and note takers. Plans for this year's Roundtable include hosting some topic-specialized tables to focus on issues such as Advanced/Subject Specialized Research Instruction; Instructional Technology in Legal Research Courses; Introductory Legal Research Courses; and Teaching Foreign/LLM Students, as well as general “Serendipity” tables where participants may discuss topics as desired rather than focusing on predetermined topics. We also plan to compile the high points of the discussion for posting on the Committee's Web page for review by both attendees and non-attendees, and are exploring some options to keep the dialog going throughout beyond the annual session. Options include a blog (possibly to be hosted by University of Maryland School of Law) or a separate listserv for topics related to research instruction. I plan to encourage next year's committee to undertake one of these projects.

As chair, I'd like to publicly offer my thanks to the Committee members who so enthusiastically and generously shared their ideas and their time to work on these projects. Special thanks are due to Louise Tsang and Judy Anspach for their excellent work in spearheading the work of each of the two “branches” of this committee.

ALL-SIS Legal Research Committee
Susan Herrick, Chair

Legal Research Sourcebook Committee

The focus of the Sourcebook Committee over the past year has been on promoting the use of the Sourcebook and seeking new contributions to the database. To achieve these goals, the committee has engaged in several publicity activities. These included:

As a result of these efforts, the Sourcebook has undergone a substantial expansion. There were 113 documents added to the database between July 2005 and May 2006. As of the end of May 2006, there are a total of 220 documents available through the Sourcebook.

The members of the 2005–2006 Legal Research Sourcebook Committee are Scott Childs, Anne L. Cottongim, Katherine Hall, Paul Howard, Sara Kelley, Steven Robert Miller, Lynn Murray and Etheldra Scoggin.

Respectfully submitted,

Kathy Hall and Paul Howard, Co-Chairs

Membership Committee

The ALL-SIS Membership Committee is pleased to report on the successful completion of two projects included in our charge – the “Welcome Kit” and the Biennial Membership Survey of 2006. The “Welcome Kit” was mailed to thirty-five of our newer ALL-SIS colleagues in February 2006. This “Welcome Kit” included:

The Biennial-Membership Survey of 2006 was conducted this past spring. This survey was designed by the Committee to obtain feedback from the ALL-SIS membership regarding their interests and needs to shape the work of the SIS in the future. The ALL-SIS community in this survey conveyed their interest to explore educational programs in traditional library services as well as emerging issues. Some of the major conclusions from the results of this survey are summarized below:

In conclusion, the feedback from the survey provides a snapshot of the issues that are of primary concern to members and highlights further topics for ALL-SIS to explore in the future.

Newsletter Committee

The 2005–2006 Newsletter Committee consisted of Leah Sandwell-Weiss, Chair; Donald L. Ford, University of Colorado Law Library; Sue Kelleher, Barry University School of Law Library; Colleen C. Williams, Georgia State University College of Law Library; and Board Liaison, Carole Hinchcliff. Our issues this year were published on August 31, 2005, February 2, 2006, and May 30, 2006, meeting our schedule.

Highlights of this year's issues include articles on:

The other highlight of the year actually did not involve the committee in anything but an advisory role: the finding and digitizing of all the old issues of this newsletter. This was primarily the work of Diane Murley, the ALL-SIS website committee co-chair and webmaster. The archives are up at www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/newsletter/Archives/archive.html. Thanks, Diane, for all your work on this project.

As editor/chair, I would like to thank all the committee members for their hard work and their articles. Sue collected the Member News for all three issues, Colleen wrote Developing a Law Faculty Publications Database: The Georgia State University Law Library Experience, for the Summer 2006 issue, and Don provided a lot of editing/proofreading assistance. I'd also like to thank Sara Kelley for continuing her Developments in Legal Education column even though she was no longer on the committee and all the ALL-SIS members who submitted articles for publication, especially Brian Huddleston, Frank Y. Liu, Joel Fishman, Diane Murley, Ron Wheeler, Stephanie Davidson, Helane Davis, Susan Herrick, Rosalie Sanderson, Rob Hudson, and the folks on the Membership and CONALL/Mentoring committees for sending information and pictures for our New Member Spotlight column. Finally, I'd also like to thank Michael Slinger and Carole Hinchcliff for their support and advice.

Program Committee

Program Planning Committee members Lee Peoples (Chair), April Schwartz (Vice-Chair), Paddy Satzer, Eric Young, Kira Zaporski, Ajaye Bloomstone (Sub-Committee Chair) and Ruth Levor worked diligently under tight deadlines to compile and rank programs for the 2006 AALL Annual Meeting. In October we received excellent news from the Annual Meeting Program Planning Committee (AMPC). They accepted 10 out of the 25 programs sponsored or co-sponsored by ALL-SIS for the 2006 meeting. Those programs are:

A-1 Exploring Uncharted Territory : The Culture and Context of the University

D-5 Up and Down the Career Ladder: Finding the Right Rung for You

E-2 Teaching Online Legal Research to Law Students: What Do Students Really Need to Know When They Arrive at a Law Firm? (co-sponsored by RIPS)

E-3 Invasion of the Podcast People—Podcasting for the Law Library (sponsored by SC-SIS and co-sponsored by ALL-SIS)

F-6 Pioneering Global Health Law: Pandemics, Trends, and Research Strategies (sponsored by FCIL-SIS and co-sponsored by ALL-SIS)

G-6 Forging Connections with Library Friends Groups (sponsored by SIS-LHRB and co-sponsored by ALL-SIS)

H-5 Managing Beyond the Library: Successful Management of IT Departments for Law Librarians. (co-sponsored by CS-SIS)

J-5 Counting Electronic Resources—Should We Count and If So, What?

J-6 And You Thought Gadgets Were Only For the Kitchen: Part III: The Return!

W-1 Oh What a Tangled Web: Advanced Web Searching and Teaching (off site workshop)

The Committee, working with the ALL-SIS Board, will be offering the following two programs along side regularly scheduled AMPC programs:

The high quality and high number of programs submitted for ALL-SIS sponsorship and the hard work of Committee members contributed to the acceptance of so many programs.

Public Relations Committee

Phill Johnson, Chair

  1. The primary activity of the committee throughout the year has been to organize materials to be displayed on the section's table in the vendor hall at the annual meeting in St. Louis. Displays on the table will include brochures regarding the section, handouts featuring Academic Section programs and instructions regarding transportation to the reception. The committee has also been working to promote both the programs and the reception that the Academic Special Interest Section will be hosting in St. Louis.
  2. An announcement regarding the reception in St. Louis was placed in the section's newsletter. Announcements regarding programs and the reception will be posted to the ALL-SIS listserv during the first week of July.
  3. The Academic Section will be represented at the CONELL Marketplace. Members of the committee will be available to answer questions and give brochures to new law librarians.

Statistics Committee

Kim Clarke and Jonathan Franklin, co-chairs

Members of the 2005–06 Committee are Nancy Brooks Miller, Linda Ryan, Chris Simoni, Kory Staheli and Carole Hinchcliff (Executive Board Liaison).

The Statistics Committee is charged with working with the Committee on Law Libraries of the ABA Section on Legal Education to propose changes to statistical questions and definitions in the ABA Annual Questionnaire. This year, the Committee continued to discuss whether questions relating to electronic resources should be incorporated in the Questionnaire.

A tri-committee taskforce composed of Chris, Jonathan and Kim, Carol Nicholson Avery and Paula Tejeda, chair and member of the TS-SIS's Serials Committee respectively, and Rita Reusch, chair of the Committee on Law Libraries, was formed to analyze the title and serial questions in the Annual Questionnaire and make recommendations to the Committee on Law Libraries. The Statistics and Serials Committees each reviewed some of the questions and definitions in the current questionnaire and reported back to the taskforce. After a few adjustments, the taskforce submitted their recommendations to the Committee on Law Libraries in early December 2005. The Committee on Law Libraries considered the joint recommendations at their January 2006 meeting but determined that the complexity of the subject matter required more time for discussion. At its meeting in May 2006, the Committee drafted preliminary recommendations for the Questionnaire Committee. The preliminary recommendations will be circulated to the profession for comment.

Website Committee

This year's ALL-SIS website committee included David Carl Genzen, Cleveland State University; Donna Gulnac, UCLA; Kit Kreilick (Co-Chair); Diane Murley, Southern Illinois University (Co-Chair); Steven R. Probst, Valparaiso University; and Leah Sandwell-Weiss, University of Arizona. Our charge was to:

Over the past several months, the ALL-SIS website (http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/) has undergone a gradual change in its appearance, as more and more pages have had their background image of shelves of books replaced by a white background on a field of blue. The old banner remains temporarily, pending the results of our design-a-new-banner contest. The winning entry will be announced at the ALL-SIS reception July 11.

We added a “What's New?” section on the home page, from which I link to recent additions to the website, current activities of committees or the section as a whole, announcements of deadlines, and other new and time-sensitive information.

Several ALL-SIS committees have added content to the website, providing information about committee activities and links to committee projects. Each committee now has a basic page, with links to the committee's charge, roster, and most recent annual report. Other page content varies according to each committee's charge. Visitors can find links to committee pages from the home page.

The other change to the website has been less obvious. I have added links to previous versions of pages, where available, for historical and archival purposes. The links to historical pages may appear at the bottom of the current page, as they do on the committee reports page, or on a separate index page, such as the meetings and programs page.

As a special project, working with the centennial committee and the newsletter, all available issues of the ALL-SIS Newsletter and its predecessor, the ALL Newsletter, were scanned into PDF. Anyone can link to the newsletter archives from the ALL-SIS Newsletter home page. We are still missing a few issues, and we would like to add an index. We have asked anyone who can provide any of the missing issues or would like to help with the indexing to contact Diane Murley or Leah Sandwell-Weiss.

ALL-SIS Website Committee
Diane Murley

Previous Committee and ALL-SIS Reports

 

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