VOLUME 25
ISSUE 2
Spring 2006

Inside this issue:

• ALL-SIS CALI Legal Research Authoring Group
• ALL-SIS Education Committee 2005 - 2006
• ALL-SIS Seeks Nominations for Annual Awards
• An Academic Law Librarian in a Law Firm World: The Myths and the Truths about Working in a Law Firm
• The Call for Papers Has Begun!
• Government Relations Committee Seeks Nominees for PAGI Award
• How Do You Write? A Panel on Legal Scholarship
• Law Students Write About Law Libraries (or, What Students Really Think:  A Survey of Student Blawgs)
• Learning While They Work:  The Use of Student Assistants in Two Academic Law Libraries
• Member News
• New Member Spotlight
• Program Planning Committee Report
• Ranking the Reviews:  How and (Why) to Assess the Relative Quality of Law Reviews
• “Rebuilding the Profession” at AALL Annual Meeting
• Searching for Future Law Librarians
• Teaching Day:  Team Teaching First Year Legal Research
• Using Feeds to Serve Law Library Patrons
• When Job Descriptions Matter Least:  Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina and Loyola’s Semester in Exile

Message from the Chair

Michael J. Slinger,
Associate Dean, Law Library Director & Professor of Law
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University
1801 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44115
(216) 687-3547
michael.slinger@law.csuohio.edu

There is an ancient proverb attributed to the Chinese that is offered as a gesture of good wishes:  “May You Live in Interesting Times.” For all of us, the last year has certainly been interesting, but unfortunately not just in good ways. Our lives and our profession have had to face numerous and sometimes very difficult challenges:  the devastation of natural disasters especially Hurricane Katrina whose affects are still being felt grievously (see the article by Brian Huddleston on how Loyola University New Orleans School of Law dealt with Katrina’s aftermath); the continuing battles over patron privacy and the Patriot Act; a threat to change ABA accreditation language to weaken faculty status for law library directors (fortunately defeated); and the continuing pressure of striving for excellence with increasingly shrinking dollars and sometimes less staff.

During this year as has been the case for many previous years, we fortunately found support from our professional associations and professional colleagues. Almost daily, I find my work life is made easier through helpful advice from individuals and groups who are linked to me by support for our profession. On a regular basis we find the truth in the statement that we are much stronger collectively than we would ever be individually. I am very grateful to be a member of such a wonderful profession, and feel privileged to be a member of AALL and ALL-SIS. I feel confident that we will continue to work together to make our profession strong.

Although I am writing this on a surprisingly balmy day for Cleveland, with undoubtedly much more winter to come, it does bring to mind that seven months from now the AALL Annual Meeting will be held in St. Louis. This promises to be a particularly memorable meeting as it is AALL’s Centennial. Many special things are being planned. ALL-SIS has its own Centennial Committee, chaired by Rosalie Sanderson, pitching in. As usual our excellent Program Committee led by Chair Lee Peoples and Vice Chair April Schwartz has had a great deal of success placing our sponsored programs on the Annual Meeting program. In addition, our SIS is taking advantage of new flexibility in Annual Meeting scheduling to offer two special programs:

1. What Public Services Should Know About Technical Services; and
2. Harnessing Digital Video Technology.

I hope you can make plans to join us in St. Louis this July.

I also want you to look forward to some new things we are trying. Shortly we will begin posting some questions on the ALL-SIS Listserv at regular intervals that we hope you will find to be provocative, interesting and that will stimulate lively discussion. You can also look forward to receiving a Members Survey in the coming months. This is your opportunity to tell us what works for you and/or what you would like to see us do differently. Finally, we are reaching out to new members with new membership kits that we hope will inform and excite our newest colleagues.

By the way, if you are working with an academic law librarian who is not a member of ALL-SIS, I would encourage you to ask them to join with us. The more members we have the stronger our voice and the greater the number of projects we can work on and accomplish. Being a member of ALL-SIS is a real statement of support for academic law librarians as a profession. Thank you for being a member.

Finally, I want to thank the many members of our ALL-SIS committees and the great people I work with on the ALL-SIS Board. We are a voluntary organization, but we accomplish some great things because our members give of their time to help us all.

Best wishes for a great 2006! I look forward to seeing you down the road!

Michael Slinger
All-SIS Chair