Approximately ten people attended the Legal Research Committee meeting on Monday July 12, 2004, in Boston at the annual AALL conference. Co-Chair Wendy Scott introduced her new co-chair Jennifer Murray and thanked Beth DiFelice for her prior service as co-chair. Beth and Wendy worked together to develop this year’s Advanced Legal Research Instructors Workshop/Roundtable and Beth will be submitting an article about it for the next AALL Spectrum.
Jennifer Murray announced that the committee had decided to rename the Advanced Legal Research Sourcebook to the Legal Research Sourcebook in order to include a broader selection of materials. The new URL for the Sourcebook is www.aallnet.org/members/legalresearchsourcebook.html (AALL login required).
Jennifer is currently compiling a portion of the Legal Research Sourcebook but is still in need of any legal research course materials that members would like to provide. She is also thinking of how to best package the sourcebook for search capability. The current thought is to create an access database within the current AALL webpage in order to restrict access to AALL members. She needs volunteers with Access experience to assist in the process of transferring the course materials that the committee has collected to a database. The committee was thrilled to have a member of RIPS in attendance who expressed the desire to work with ALL to ensure that the Sourcebook and the Legal Research Teach In materials that they compile annually are better coordinated and open to each group. Several meeting attendees had been to TRIALL before the conference and were also excited to explore whether their materials could somehow be included or referenced in the Sourcebook. The committee’s major goal for the year is to increase contributions to the sourcebook so please consider contributing whatever course materials you have.
If you have any questions or concerns about the Sourcebook or the process of submitting materials please feel free to contact Wendy or Jennifer. They are very interested in hearing if there are any specific reasons people have not contributed material in the past.
As I noted above, Wendy was instrumental in developing the Legal Research Committee’s Advanced Legal Research Instructors Workshop/Roundtable in Boston. The workshop was very successful in giving participants an opportunity to discuss their teaching experiences. The attendance was overwhelming particularly given its 7:00 am starting time. Wendy requested assistance in coordinating next year’s event in San Antonio, working with the ALL-SIS PR committee to promote the workshop, and, with publicizing other committee activities by preparing articles and reports.
Wendy will also be working with a group of committee members to prepare substantive articles on issues of legal research for the ALL-SIS newsletter.
Everyone at the meeting appeared to be very interested in working with the committee to meet its goals for the upcoming year. I hope that any of you who were not able to attend the conference or the meeting but are interested in assisting Jennifer or Wendy will let them know as soon as possible at the email addresses listed above.