ALL-SIS Committee Annual Reports

2006–2007

ARCHIVES AWARDS BYLAWS
CALI COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT CONTINUING EDUCATION
CONTINUING STATUS / TENURE FACULTY SERVICES LEGAL RESEARCH
MEMBERSHIP MIDDLE MANAGERS' BREAKFAST NALLM / MENTORING
NEWSLETTER NOMINATIONS PROGRAMS
PUBLIC RELATIONS RELATIONS WITH ONLINE VENDORS SOURCEBOOK FOR TEACHING LEGAL RESEARCH
STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS TASK FORCE on JOB TITLES WEBSITE
Previous Committee Reports | ALL-SIS Reports to AALL

Archives Committee

The ALL-SIS Archives in the Digital Age — by James Kelly

Law librarians appreciate the value of archived materials. Frequently they are called upon to find the law or other documents from the past, whether for historic reasons or to provide information about an ongoing issue.

In the digital age, law librarians and archivists struggle to maintain archives of important materials. This is particularly of documents that are born digital, such as email and web pages. Such materials present unique challenges that will only be overcome with consideration and care.

Over the past two years, the ALL-SIS Archives Committee has struggled to keep up-to-date material for the section in the archives housed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Too often, we are so busy doing the work associated with the documents and materials that we lose sight of the importance of preserving them for our successors. It is important that all members of the section become familiar with the material which should be submitted to the archives for preservation.

As adopted in the 2004–2005 academic year, the current Archives Policy Statement is as follows:

The Archives of the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries (ALL-SIS) includes material which illuminates much of the Section's history. These non-current records, papers and publications are preserved because they contain information of administrative, legal, fiscal or research value. In order to perpetuate and augment our archival holdings, a policy must be established for collection of records from SIS officers and members. To this end, the following policies and guidelines are suggested:

  1. All documentary materials, regardless of format or characteristics, which are received, created, or maintained by ALL-SIS officers, whether elected or appointed, in conducting business for the SIS are considered SIS records.
  2. All material of enduring value, when no longer in current use by the officer to which it pertains, shall be transferred to the SIS archival collection. The SIS officers shall be the judge of which records are in sufficient current use to be retained, and will judge what, if any, restrictions should be placed on access to these records once the records are retired to the Archives.
  3. The kinds of records which should be preserved in the Archives include, though this list should not be taken as all-inclusive:
    1. SIS meeting minutes, all documents produced by the SIS and its members in the course of conducting its/their business, including but not limited to committee and task force reports and the like;
    2. all publications of the SIS;
    3. policy statements or statistical reports of any office;
    4. correspondence relating to policy making;
    5. letters of noted persons received in pursuit of SIS business;
    6. member and officer biographies and related documents;
    7. photographs and other memorabilia.
  4. Because it is sometimes difficult for individuals to judge the value of records in their custody, no SIS records that appear to meet these requirements should be disposed of or destroyed.
  5. Records in electronic format shall be transferred to print or microfilmed for preservation purposes.
  6. Proper archival practice requires that records should be kept in the order in which those records were originated. To this end, groups of records should be retired periodically to the Archives, and individuals in the SIS should make an effort not to send individual items to the Archives in a piecemeal fashion if those individual items were actually part of a larger collection of materials.
  7. The person in charge of the Archives will take suitable measures to preserve, arrange and describe the records of the SIS and shall provide information about them, copies of them, and/or the documents themselves as required for the business of the SIS or for research purposes. Preservation of records can include placing records in acid-free file folders and boxes, and taking any other necessary steps to prevent deterioration of the records over time.

The following individuals served on the Archives Committee during the past two years:

2005-2006:

Kathryn Hensiak Amato
Wendell Johnting
James Kelly
Mark Podvia, Chair
Ann Ribstein

2006-2007:

Leanne Hillery (lhillery@regent.edu)
James Kelly, Chair (jpkelly@law.uiuc.edu)

The committee urges your comments and contributions. If you have any questions or have something you feel should be contributed to the archives in accordance with the above policy, please contact a member of the committee via email.

Awards Committee

The ALL-SIS Awards Committee selected the following award and grant winners. Winners will be recognized at the ALL-SIS reception at Loyola on Sunday, July 15, 2007, during the AALL meeting in New Orleans.

Lee Peoples, Associate Director of the Oklahoma City University Law Library, is the recipient of the ALL-SIS Outstanding Service Award. Lee is currently the chair of the ALL-SIS Continuing Education Task Force and a member of the Program Committee.

The winner of the ALL-SIS Outstanding Article Award is Bonnie Shucha of the University of Wisconsin Law Library where she is Head of Reference. Her article, The State of the Law Library Blogosphere, is available at http://www.llrx.com/features/blogosphere.htm.

Serials and Technology Librarian Yu-Hui Chuang of Rutgers University Law Library in Newark will receive a grant to attend the CONELL meeting at AALL. The ALL-SIS will cover the costs of registration and one night's lodging. This grant is in the final year of a three-year pilot program and is being recommended for continuance.

The Frederick Charles Hicks Award for Outstanding Contributions to Academic Law Librarianship was not made this year.

In the fall Maryellen O'Brien was selected to receive a special ALL-SIS grant to attend the symposium on Legal Information and the Development of American Law: Further Thinking about the Thoughts of Bob Berring. The symposium was October 21, 2006, at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California. Her report of the conference is in the ALL-SIS Newsletter for Spring 2007 at http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/newsletter/26_2/Berring.htm.

Committee members for 2006–07 were John Edwards (chair), Marlene Alderman, and Mary Ann Nelson.

Additional information on ALL-SIS awards and grants, including past recipients, can be found at the ALL-SIS home page at http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/committees/awards/.

Bylaws Committee

Last year the Bylaws Committee had gone through the entire set of bylaws to bring them in line with AALL's Bylaws. Therefore, this year the committee was given the task of evaluating and possibly changing specific issues.

One issue, raised by Sally Wise, had to do with the language in Article V dealing with Officers reimbursement. She questioned whether it was clear enough that reimbursement does not include travel to and from the annual meeting. To deal with this issue the following underlined language was added to:

Article V: Officers and Committees:
...These officers shall serve without compensation, but shall be reimbursed for any expenditures incurred in the discharge of their duties excluding any travel expenses for attendance at meetings of the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section. Attendance at meetings of the Section includes, but is not limited to, the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries as noted in Article IV.

Sally Wise also raised another issue that involved a few sections of Article VI: Nomination and Election of Officers. The issue had to do with the timing of the notification of candidates and the filing of petitions. The way it stood, petitions would need to be circulated and signed before the slate was announced. The deadline was mostly due to the special election issue of the ALL-SIS newsletter. We were able to make changes in three sections of Article VI to work on the timing issues:

ARTICLE VI, SEC. 3: NOMINATION BY PETITION
...Such petitions, accompanied by written acceptance of the nominees, must be filed with the Chair by March 7.

ARTICLE IV, SEC. 4: CANDIDATE BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENTS
...The Secretary/Treasurer shall notify the candidates proposed by the Nominating Committee that they must deliver their candidate biographical statements to the Secretary/Treasurer to arrive no later than March 1, to be included in the annual special edition of the Section newsletter and to be included in the Section's election information available to members. The Secretary/Treasurer shall notify the candidates nominated by petition that they must deliver their candidate biographical statements to the Secretary/Treasurer to arrive no later than March 14, to be included in the Section's election information available to members.

One other issue later came up. The chairman of the Nominations committee, Richard Humphry, noticed that it wasn't clear in the Nominations section of the bylaws that the Secretary Treasurer is a two year position. To fix that we added the following underlined language to:

Article VI: Sec. 1 Nominating Committee
Article VI: NOMINATION AND ELECTION OF OFFICERS
Section 1. Nominating Committee.
The Nominating Committee shall submit the names of candidates for the office of Vice-Chair/Chair-elect, Secretary/Treasurer, and the elected member, together with their written acceptances, to the Chair by January 30. Since the Secretary Treasurer is only elected biennially (see Section 1. Officers above), on alternating years only candidates for the offices of Vice-Chair/Chair-elect and the elected member will be submitted. ...

The committee presented the changes to Michelle Wu, Board Liaison and she in turn passed them on to AALL Bylaws Committee for approval. They were approved and were sent to the all-sis webmaster to be added to the all-sis webpage.

Jennifer Wagner
5/21/2007

CALI Committee

Annual Report Prepared by Pat Fox
May 23, 2007

The members of the 2006–2007 CALI Committee were: Patricia Fox, Widener University School of Law; Kristina L. Niedringhaus, Phoenix School of Law; Ronald E. Wheeler, Georgia State University College of Law Library; Rachael Smith, The Ohio State University; Beth Adelman, University at Buffalo Law School; and Lee Peoples, Oklahoma City University. Except for Patricia Fox and Kristina Niedringhaus the remainder of the committee members were appointed this year and will (hopefully) remain on the committee for at least another year. Patricia Fox will be leaving the committee. Kristina Niedringhaus has agreed to serve as chair of the committee for 2007–2008.

The committee met 3 times this year, via conference call, and will meet as a group at the AALL Annual Meeting. In addition to reviewing applications for lessons to be included on the CALI website, the committee discussed areas of focus for future lessons and ways to promote the use of CALI and other interactive means of learning legal research. It was the consensus of the committee that we should focus on state primary lessons as well as lessons in international law. The committee has reviewed and accepted 7 lessons since July 1, 2006. The lessons are authored by academic law librarians. The seven lessons and their authors are:

A Wiki was established, available to committee members through the CALI website, as a means to help the committee keep track of lessons and as a way to identify lessons and potential authors that the committee would like to see added.

The committee discussed ways to promote the use of CALI to AALL members for legal research. To this end the committee is working with CALI to promote the legal research lessons at AALL through materials that will be available at the CALI booth. CALI will fund the cost of a mailing to AALL attendees a postcard to encourage them to stop by to meet with lesson authors. Copies of the article written by Beth Adelman which appeared in Perspectives Magazine, describing the use of CALI lessons at Georgia State University will be available.

Collection Development Committee

Courtney Selby, Collection Development Committee Member

As part of its work for AALL, the Collection Development Committee of the ALL-SIS maintains a contact list for all collection development librarians in academic law libraries. In early spring 2007, committee members Edward Hart and Courtney Selby took on the task of updating this list to assure that it contained the most current contact information for those libraries. The project was completed in March and all updated information has been added to the Collection Development Contacts list, which can be accessed by AALL members at the committee's website (www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/committees/colldev/). If you have additional updated information to add to the list, please contact Courtney Selby at courtney-selby@utulsa.edu.

Continuing Education Task Force

ALL-SIS Contributes Four Programs to AALL's Continuing Professional Education Resources Collection

By Lee Peoples, ALL-SIS Continuing Education Task Force Chair

Do you feel prepared to deal with personality conflicts at your library? Are you ready to advocate for your library's interest the next time an administrator wants library space and funds. Sharpen your skills by watching the streaming video program Challenging Conversations, produced by the ALL-SIS Continuing Education Task Force with generous support from an AALL/BNA Continuing Education Grant and Southwestern University School of Law. The program is available now from the collection of continuing professional education resources on AALLNET.

In Challenging Conversations, Bill Lindberg, a long serving West employee who is currently a professional coach and consultant, and his colleague Pamela McLean leading a cast of academic librarian "actors" including Brian L. Baker of San Joaquin College of Law, J. Denny Haythorn of Whittier Law School Library, and Victoria Williamson of University of La Verne Law Library. The program features two brief vignettes exploring challenging conversations in the context of problems confronting academic law librarians every day. Each scene is followed by comments from Mr. Lindberg and his colleague. Mr. Lindberg also compiled a reading list to supplement the strategies and techniques covered in the program.

The first vignette is titled Having a Challenging Conversation with Someone You Supervise (That's My Web Site!). It illustrates a challenging conversation involving an electronic services and public services librarian (equivalent in terms of the hierarchical structure of the library) and their supervisor the associate director. The two librarians share responsibility for the law library's Web site and have previously agreed on who is responsible for what portions of the Web site. The electronic services librarian created and is responsible for the faculty publications database and is the only librarian authorized to make changes to the database.

The electronic services librarian is out of town when one of the law school's professors is to be interviewed on a major network news special about her area of expertise. The dean is anxious to promote this appearance and orders the public services librarian to immediately change the law school and law library's homepages to play up the professor's appearance on the national news show. The public services librarian reluctantly goes into the "code" version of the database to copy citations to recent publications by the professor.

When the electronic services librarian returns from vacation he learns what the public services librarian has done and is outraged. The public services librarian thinks the electronic services librarian is overreacting and doesn't see what the big deal is. The new associate director schedules a meeting with both librarians to work out the problem.

The second vignette is titled Having a Challenging Conversation with Your Superior (When is the Library Getting Rid of All Those Books?). The scene is set as the law school dean, library director, and Center director meet early in the planning process for the arrival of the new Terrorism and Religion Center at the law school. The only option for accommodating the new Center is to "repurpose" a significant amount of library space to the Center's exclusive use. The library has been criticized by the ABA for its lack of study rooms and seating spaces and has begun space programming for new study rooms. An architect has been hired and has already presented a program description for the construction of multiple new study rooms within the library.

The Task Force is also proud to announce its contribution of three additional programs to the page of continuing professional education resources available on AALLNET. The programs feature nationally known speakers and focus on topics relevant to all academic law librarians. The audio programs and links to PowerPoint slides and handouts are available on AALLNET. The programs include:

1) Games We Don't Want to Play: Negotiating Electronic Resources Contracts

Kara Phillips (Moderator), Seattle University Law Library
Barbara Holt, Perkins Coie LLP
Tracy Thompson, New England Law Library Consortium
(Originally presented at the 2006 WESTPAC Meeting)

2) Tag You're It: UNLV's Experience with RFID

Tom Boone, Wiener-Rogers Law Library, UNLV School of Law
Jennifer Fabbi, UNLV Curriculum Materials Library
Bobbie Studwell, Wiener-Rogers Law Library, UNLV School of Law
(Originally presented at the 2006 WESTPAC Meeting)

3) Legal Information Preservation Alliance and Implications for the Mid American Association of Law Libraries

Kent McKeever, LIPA Executive Committee and Director of the Arthur W. Diamond Law Library at Columbia University
(Originally presented at the 2006 MAALL Meeting)

Continuing Status/Tenure Committee

The committee is responsible for developing and maintaining information on the ALL-SIS website, which includes an ongoing survey of tenure and employment status for non-director law librarians and a bibliography of writings on tenure and employment status for librarians. See http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/committees/cst/index.asp. The committee was unable to update either of these documents on the web during this academic year, but we are working on revisions to both the survey and the bibliography that can be posted by early fall.

During the 2006-07 year committee members Beth Adelman and Elizabeth Outler developed a working outline of a "white paper" that can be used in law schools to demonstrate why tenure or continuing status is of value for the librarian and for the institution. Beth and Elizabeth will continue their research and writing during the coming year.

The committee's charge for 2007-08 will expand to include economic status as well as employment status, so the committee's meeting agenda in New Orleans will include some time for discussion about how to incorporate this topic into our survey, bibliography and white paper projects. We welcome your input!

Margaret K. Maes
University of St. Thomas
Schoenecker Law Library
Minneapolis

Faculty Services Committee

Co-Chairs:
Marianne Alcorn
Head, Reference and Faculty Services
Arizona State University
Ross-Blakley Law Library
Margaret Schilt
Faculty Services Librarian
University of Chicago D'Angelo Law Library
Membership:
Colleen Williams, Georgia State University College of Law Library
Mary K. Marzolla, Widener University School of Law
Barbara L. Kallusky, Hamline Law Library
Lynn Murray, Southern Methodist University, Underwood Law Library
Adeen Postar, American University Washington College of Law, Pence Law Library
Wendy Scott, Syracuse University College of Law, H. Douglas Barclay Law Library
James Wirrell, University of Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, Gordon D. Schaber Law Library
Leslie Pardo, Head of Access Services, Arizona State University, Ross-Blakley Law Library

Activities

The year began with the Faculty Services Roundtable at the 2006 AALL Annual Meeting. Coordinated by the 2005–2006 Co-Chairs, Sara Sampson and Michele Kristakis, the roundtable featured short presentations on current awareness, research assistance and research assistant programs, and new faculty orientation, followed by brainstorming sessions on those topics by the attendees. A full report of the Roundtable is on the Committee website and an article on the Roundtable was submitted to the ALL-SIS Newsletter.

The Committee identified the following goals for the year:

The Committee sponsored the following program proposal, which was accepted by the Program Committee:

Program B7: Blogs, Working Papers, Electronic Publishing: Will Changes in Legal Scholarship Affect the Future Development of Library Collections?

The program will have two speakers: a law professor on the future of legal scholarship and a law library director on the implications of these developments on law library collection development.

The Committee presented two listserv discussions, one in December and one in May. The December listserv discussion addressed the topic of boundaries in faculty services, whether there are any and how they are communicated and managed. Response was enthusiastic; the topic really seemed to hit a nerve among librarians engaged in services for faculty. A link to the archive of the discussion appears on the Committee website and an article on the discussion was submitted to the ALL-SIS newsletter. The May discussion was about copyright issues as they relate to law faculty and how librarians are or are not involved in decisions about course packets or course webpages and posting of materials. This is an area where libraries differ greatly in their approaches; while there were fewer posts, responses ranged from one librarian who is a copyright coordinator for her law school to another librarian who reported that copyright issues rarely, if ever, arose. A compilation of the posts appears on the Committee website.

Additional materials have been posted on the Committee website, including the links to listserv discussions, the report on the Roundtable, the Faculty Services Survey results (the survey was administered in the spring of 2005), and Wendy Scott's wonderful compilation of law school and law school library faculty services websites. We had hoped to post a collection of materials created for use in faculty services programs, contributed by our members and other faculty services librarians, but did not make a great deal of progress toward that goal; hopefully, next year's Committee may undertake that as a goal.

The Committee will present a roundtable at the 2007 Annual Meeting, on Monday, July 16, 2007 at 11:45.

Legal Research Committee

Judith Anspath and Laura Cadra, Co-Chairs

The first task of the 2006–07 ALL-SIS Legal Research Committee was posting a summary of the St. Louis Legal Research Instruction Roundtable discussions on the Committee web page. Notes were solicited from each of the St. Louis Legal Research Roundtable note-takers and were compiled by topic into a single document which, with the help of ALL-SIS webmaster Diane Murley, was posted on the Legal Research Committee web page.

At the St. Louis Annual Meeting, the Committee discussed sponsoring a listserv to continue the Roundtable discussions throughout the year. In the tradition of great minds thinking alike, however, Laurence Abraham of Fordham Law Library announced at the Conference that he was forming a Caucus which would carry facilitate legal research discussions via a listserv. Deferring to Mr. Abraham's Caucus, the Committee decided against pursuing its own listserv discussion forum.

The work of the Committee focused on planning and staging the Legal Research Instruction Roundtable for the New Orleans Annual Meeting. Many of this year's Committee members participated as moderators or note-takers at the Roundtable held in St. Louis and so were able to offer suggestions as keep the Roundtable interesting and relevant this year. The number of tables for the New Orleans meeting was increased from eight to ten to accommodate the increasing popularity of the Roundtable. Committee members were solicited to serve again at the individual tables. Incoming 2007–08 Committee members will also be encouraged to participate in this year's Roundtable to help them prepare for the Roundtable next year.

For 2007–08 the Legal Research Committee and the Legal Research Sourcebook Committee were combined into the Legal Research and Sourcebook Committee. The chairs from both Committees worked together to prepare a Committee Handbook for the use of next year's Committee.

The Legal Research Committee Co-Chairs would like to offer their thanks to the Committee Members who submitted ideas for the Committee and participated in the Roundtable.

Committee Members:

Judith Anspath and Laura Cadra — Co-Chairs

Maureen Anderson
Ed Beltz
Jill Fukunaga
Sarah Gotschall
Deborah Hackerson
Lesliediana Jones
Lisa Spar
Barbara Traub
Lynn Wishhart
Jessica Wimer

Membership Committee

The Membership Committee works with AALL to identify new members of ALL-SIS and provide our new colleagues with welcome kits. This year our committee welcomes 138 new members to ALL-SIS. The first round of new member kits was mailed out in January. Those who joined ALL-SIS in 2007 will be receiving their kits soon. The Membership Committee also spotlights selected members in the ALL-SIS Newsletter. Thanks to Membership Committee members Sally Wambold, Mila Rush, and Laurie Urquiaga for interviewing new members and preparing member spotlights.

Middle Managers' Breakfast Committee

The work of the committee has been to plan and facilitate the middle managers breakfast scheduled for Monday, July 16, 7:00 – 8:45 a.m. After this year's buffet breakfast, Donna Scheeder, Director, Law Library Services at the Law Library of Congress, will speak about maximizing our influence as middle managers to get things done through network building strategies that also build trust. We hope all you middle managers will register and attend the breakfast for informal networking as well as a presentation on an interesting and relevant topic!

The Middle Managers Committee is composed of Frances Brillantine, Head of Access Services at Catholic University of America, and Scott Childs, Assistant Director for Public Services at UNC Chapel Hill. This year's breakfast is generously supported by LexisNexis.

New Academic Law Librarian's Meeting (NALLM)/Mentoring Committee

Katie Thompson, Co-Chair

This year has been very exciting and busy for the New Academic Law Librarian's Meeting (NALLM)/Mentoring Committee. Formerly known as the Conference of Newer Academic Law Librarians (CONALL)/Mentoring Committee, the committee was charged by the Board to come up with a new name this year. It was decided that the CONALL acronym was confusingly similar to CONELL, another program geared toward new law librarians. After considering many suggestions, the committee agreed upon NALLM, or the New Academic Law Librarian's Meeting. This change had been in the works for several months prior to it becoming final in November of 2006. One of the challenges that came along with the name change involved updating the AALL Annual Meeting Program and AALL website.

The committee co-chairs, Katie Thompson and Patricia Kidd have been busy planning the New Academic Law Librarian's Meeting (NALLM) event. This program is designed to introduce new academic law librarians to the field and to ALL-SIS. It also provides a great opportunity for newer members to make friends and network with colleagues. The event will take place on Sunday, July 15, 2007 at Loyola University of New Orleans College of Law. Busses will be picking up attendees at the convention center at 4:45pm. Signs will be posted in the convention center on the day of the event to indicate where to board the busses. The NALLM Program will take place from 5:30–6:30pm. Immediately following is the ALL-SIS Awards Ceremony and Reception, also taking place at the Loyola University of New Orleans College of Law. This means CONALL attendees will already be in the right place at the right time to take part in those festivities as well. Finally, we owe a big thanks to BNA for sponsoring this year's CONALL event.

The committee members are eagerly awaiting the mentor/mentee applications so we can begin pairing them for AALL's Mentoring Program. It is a very thoughtful and rewarding experience to combine experienced law librarians with new librarians to help facilitate professional growth for new members. Patricia and I will be rounding up the committee members to help assist with this project.

As the Annual Meeting approaches the NALLM/Mentoring Committee members are looking forward to meeting and welcoming this year's new academic law librarians!

Newsletter Committee

The 2006 – 2007 Newsletter Committee consisted of Leah Sandwell-Weiss, Law Library, Rogers College of Law, The University of Arizona, Chair; Sue Kelleher, Barry University School of Law Library; Susan Zappia, Phoenix International School of Law; Tina Ching, Arizona State University, later at Seattle University School of Law; Jennifer L. Lunt, Thomas N. Cooley Law School Library; Matt Braun, George Washington University, Jacob Burns Law Library; Paul Moorman, University of Southern California, Barnett Information Technology Center and Call Law Library; and Board Liaison, Suzanne Thorpe. Our issues this year were published on August 30, 2006, February 1, 2007, and an Election Issue on March 7, 2007. The last issue will be published in late May/early June 2007, meeting our schedule.

Highlights of this year's issues include articles on:

As mentioned briefly above, this year we also published our first election issue containing biographical statements and photos of the four candidates for Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect and Member-at-Large.

I would like to thank all the committee members for their hard work and their articles. Sue Kelleher collected the Member News for all three issues, Paul Moorman wrote about CONALL, changing CONALL's name to New Academic Law Librarian's Meeting (NAALM), and law library security, Matt Braun on Bob Berring's Plenary session presentation and New Year's resolutions, Tina Ching on teaching computer assisted legal research, Susan Zappia on digital library specialists, and Jennifer Lunt on the Management & Leadership Institute.

I'd also like to thank the many folks who wrote articles for us, especially Barbara Ridley Monroe, Susan Herrick, and Sara Kelley for writing articles in our continuing series, Developments in Legal Education, and the folks on the Membership committee for sending information and pictures for our New Member Spotlight column. Finally, I'd also like to thank Suzanne Thorpe for her support and advice.

Nominations Committee

The 2007 ALL-SIS Nominations Committee, consisting of Michele Finerty (Gordon D. Schaber Law Library, University of Pacific McGeorge School of Law), Phyllis Marion (California Western School of Law Library), Matt Morrison (Cornell University Law Library), and Richard Humphrey (Ruth Lilly Law Library, Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis), Chair, began its work in the fall of 2006. We began by individually soliciting suggested names for the ALL-SIS officer positions from among our respective co-workers, colleagues, and fellow regional law library association members. In light of our disparate geographic locations, we conducted the bulk of our committee communications by e-mail and telephone.

At the beginning of January 2007, the committee began deliberations regarding the final slate of candidates for the 2007 election. We compared our individual lists and discussed our personal knowledge of potential candidates' experience and commitment with ALL-SIS and their availability, conflicts, and possible willingness to serve. The final list of potential candidate names was then divided among the committee members for individual contact.

Telephone or e-mail contacts were completed by each committee member and, as some names were withdrawn, additional choices were discussed and added to the list.

These additional candidates were contacted and a list was compiled, which included two candidates for each officer position. Those names would be placed on the ballot for the ALL-SIS elections. At the completion of this task, it came to the committee's attention that, as the position of secretary/treasurer is an every-other-year position, the secretary/treasurer candidates would not be needed for the 2007 election. At the suggestion of the committee and approval by the Executive Board, the candidates were contacted and asked if they would be willing to run in 2008. All candidates accepted.

Upon final revision, the 2007 slate of candidates was submitted to Suzanne Thorpe, ALL-SIS Chair, on January 30, 2007, in accordance with the ALL-SIS Bylaws. The Chair forwarded the slate to the ALL-SIS Executive Committee for consideration prior to broadcasting the slate to the general membership. The slate of candidates was presented to the general membership and the election was concluded. The election results were posted to the ALL-SIS listserv on April 27, 2007.

Thanks to the AALL-SIS Executive Board for their oversight, to the Nominations Committee members for their service and commitment, and to the ALL-SIS general membership for their input and suggestions.

Respectfully submitted,

Richard Humphrey, Chair, 2007 ALL-SIS Nominations Committee

Program Committee

Program Planning Committee members April Schwartz (Chair), Ruth Levor, Lee Peoples, Patricia Satzer, Kira Zaporski, Cindie Lee, Simon Canick, and Sara Sampson worked with deadlines that closely followed the 2006 annual meeting to arrive at program recommendations for the 2007 AALL annual meeting. The committee was satisfied to learn that, for the second year in a row, the Annual Meeting Program Planning Committee (AMPC) accepted 10 programs sponsored by ALL-SIS for the 2007 meeting. In addition, working with the ALL-SIS board, two alternate programs were selected that will run along side regularly scheduled AMPC programs. This year, the alternate programs are prominently, though separately, announced in the annual meeting program, which will be a great help in promoting them on an equal footing with the regular AMPC programming.

AMPC Programs

C-4 Rising to the Leadership Challenge Outside Your Library: Being a Leader in the Larger Organization

J-6 Alumni: The Forgotten Patron Group

A-1 Public Services in the 21st Century: Beyond Traditional Reference Service

D-7 Instructional Technology in Teaching Legal Research: Tricks of the Trade in the Real and Virtual Classroom

B-1 They Rose to the Challenge: Public Librarians Take On the U.S.A. Patriot Act Through Doe v. Gonzales

E-5 Rise to the Challenge of Publishing

A-7 Librarians, Vendors or Both? Who Should be Teaching Westlaw and Lexis to First Year Law Students?

B-7 Blogs, Working Papers, Electronic Publishing: Will Changes in Legal Scholarship Affect the Future Development of Library Collections?

I-4 Responding to Legal Process in the Library — a Post-PATRIOT ACT Primer

W-3 How (and What) to Podcast (full day workshop)

Alternate Programs

Rising to the Challenge of Relevance -- in Legal Research Training

Filling the Seats: Marketing Legal Research Instruction with a Certificate of Excellence Program

The ALL-SIS program planning committee is to be commended for its hard work, which resulted in such high quality offerings for 2007.

April Schwartz
Associate Professor and Library Director
Gould Law Library
Touro Law Center
255 Eastview Drive
Central Islip, New York 11722
631-761-7151
fax 631-761-7159

Public Relations Committee

The ALL-SIS Public Relations Committee has publicized ALL-SIS activities throughout the year in AALL Spectrum. In addition, the ALL-SIS Membership brochure has been revised. The Committee also plans to further publicize ALL-SIS during the upcoming AALL Annual Meeting & Conference including the CONELL Marketplace.

Relations with Online Vendors Committee

After the successful leadership term under the former Chair Stephanie Davidson, two new Co-Chairs - Monica Sharum and Marjorie Crawford - took over the helm of the committee. The charge to this committee was as follows:

Last year, the committee held a productive roundtable at the Annual Meeting in Saint Louis. Roundtable CALR vendor participants included Thomson-West, Lexis-Nexis, Hein, BNA and Fastcase. At this forum, the ALL-SIS members had an opportunity to ask questions, which pertained to a variety of topics. For example, the roundtable discussed the need for effective communication between vendors and the librarians, password management problems, training for end users, and issues related to the updating of materials.

With the exception of the charge to the committee that relates to planning and conducting the roundatable at the annual meeting, the charge to this committee overlaps with the AALL Relations with Information Vendors Committee. Consequently, the Co-Chairs have recommended to the ALL-SIS Board the abolishment of this committee.

The Co-Chairs would like to convey their thanks to Stephanie Davidson, Janet R. Hirt, Beth Mobley, and Marilyn K. Nicely for their services on the committee this past year. In conclusion, the next roundtable will be held in New Orleans on Monday, July 16, 2007 in the time slot from 5:15 pm until 6:00 pm.

Respectfully Submitted by,
Monica A. Sharum, Co-chair
Marjorie E. Crawford, Co-chair

Sourcebook for Teaching Legal Research Committee

This year the Sourcebook Committee worked both to increase awareness of the Sourcebook and to improve the Sourcebook's user interface. Publicity efforts included the following:

As a result of these publicity efforts, there were 71 documents added to the database between June 2006 and June 2007. As of June 1, 2007, there are a total of 291 documents available through the Sourcebook. Materials currently available include mind maps, exams, exercises, and PowerPoints.

Interface improvements included "wrapping" the site in the new ALL-SIS stylesheet, expanding the keyword search to cover more metadata, allowing users to choose whether to sort search results by date or by title, and the introduction of an optional notes field. Currently the notes field is used to link from descriptions of mind map items to a free, downloadable mind map viewer.

The members of the 2006–2007 Sourcebook for Teaching Legal Research Committee are Gary Hill, Sara Kelley, Isa Lang, Todd Melnick, Michael Roffer, and Etheldra Scoggin. We also like to thank Beth Williams, who, although not officially a member of the committee, attended our meeting in July 2006 and contributed mightily to our publicity efforts throughout the year.

Respectfully submitted,

Sara Kelley, Chair

Strategic Directions Task Force

Completed Tasks:

Suggestions for ALL-SIS for next year:

Task Force on Job Titles

ALL-SIS Chair, Suzanne Thorpe, was asked by the AALL Committee on the Economic Status of Law Librarians to have the SIS draft a set of job descriptions to match the academic law library job titles used in the AALL Salary Survey. The Committee will be presenting a program at the AALL annual meeting in New Orleans called, "Who Really Sets Our Salaries? A Discussion Among Decision Makers and Librarians." As part of the program, the committee will present an appendix to the salary survey that will include job descriptions based on those created by the task force. The task force, made up of Rick Goheen, University of St. Thomas (MN), Ted Potter, University of Iowa, and Julie Stauffer, University of Chicago, created draft job descriptions that were posted on the ALL-SIS website in February, with a request for comments by members of the SIS. Several SIS members responded with suggestions or questions. The descriptions were edited with comments from the members in mind, and the final drafts were sent to the Committee on March 1. The final drafts are posted at www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/committees/jobtitles/.

Website Committee

The 2006–2007 ALL-SIS website committee included Leah Sandwell-Weiss, University of Arizona; Sara Kelley, Georgetown University; and Diane Murley, Southern Illinois University (Chair). Following last year's website redesign, this year the website has grown with the addition of new committee and task force content.

Several ALL-SIS committees and task forces have been adding content to their parts of the ALL-SIS website, including the Collection Development Committee, the Legal Research Committee, the Programs Committee, the Sourcebook for Teaching Legal Research Committee, the Statistics Committee, the Faculty Services Committee, the Awards Committee, the Continuing Status/Tenure Committee, the Strategic Directions Task Force, and the Task Force on Job Titles. You can find links to all committee and task force pages at http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/committees/index.asp.

We have continued to add to and update the directory of Academic Law Library Home Pages (http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/links/libraries.asp). We have also set up web pages for ALL-SIS Information & Events for the 2007 Annual Meeting in New Orleans (http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/annualmeeting/2007/index.htm). As we get closer to the annual meeting, we will continue to add information to those pages.

Previous Committee Reports

ALL-SIS Annual Reports to AALL

 

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