New Member Spotlight

Hugh J. Treacy is Associate Director of Whittier Law School Library in Costa Mesa, California. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in History from Virginia Tech, an M.S.L.S. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a J.D. from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Prior to joining Whittier Law School Library in 2002, he has held various reference librarian positions for academic libraries, including SIU Law Library; and most recently, he served for 11 years as the Public Services Librarian at the Orange County Public Law Library in Santa Ana. Since 1992, he has been a member of AALL, the State, Court and County Law Libraries SIS, and the Southern California Association of Law Libraries where he served as Secretary (2000 - 2002) and as member of its Newsletter Committee since 2002.

During his law school career Hugh received the SIU Law School Client Services Award (1990-1991) for his work at the Law School’s Legal Clinic. He considered his work at the clinic as the most rewarding of his life and credits the late Professor and Clinic Director, Howard B. Eisenberg. He states:  “A remarkable professor and attorney…. he instilled in his Legal Clinic students a recognition that underserved clients deserve the best representation possible despite their modest means, circumstances in life, or nature of their legal matter.”

In his current position at Whittier Law Library, Hugh is primarily responsible for Library operations in the absence of the Director, and selection and purchase of all monographs and new serials for its collection, a collaborative effort he shares with other Library staff. According to him, having Hein Online, JSTOR, and the Making of Modern Law digital collection and a NELLCO membership are a few ways to get the most for their acquisition dollars. With nine years of prior academic library experience and a law degree, academic law librarianship became a natural path for him to follow. He considers his many law librarian colleagues and friends to be invaluable sources for advice and inspiration. Frank Houdek of SIU Law Library and J. Denny Haythorn of Whittier Law School Library are two academic law library directors that he admires greatly and aspires to follow in their footsteps.

A self-proclaimed “newsaholic,” Hugh prefers to watch and critique TV news programming and enjoys learning as much as possible about U.S. political and social history. He spends much of his leisure time on a family history research project, a legacy for his family and future relatives. Since he started this project 2 years ago, he has placed 4,800 names in his family tree and has tracked down a number of previously unknown living relatives. He also enjoys travel, photography, art and architecture, and finds lighthouses intriguing. His home and office are decorated with all kinds of lighthouse collectibles. He sings tenor in his church choir and enjoys classical, jazz and Celtic music.

Katie Thompson is a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Science, but she is certainly no stranger to libraries. As an undergraduate and library school student, Katie worked at the University of Pittsburgh’s Barco Library and prior to that she worked for five years at Edgewood Public Library in Pittsburgh.

Katie has just started her first job after graduating with her MLIS and moved to the City of Angels to work at UCLA’s Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library as its Evening Access Services/Reference Librarian. She is already active in ALL-SIS as a member of the CONALL/Mentoring Committee and has been honored with an AALL Annual Meeting Grant to attend the San Antonio annual meeting, where she was able to attend CONELL and CONALL. In addition to ALL-SIS, Katie is a member of the Research Instruction and Patron Services SIS, the Western Pennsylvania Law Library Association and a new member of the Southern California Association of Law Libraries.

When asked why she joined ALL-SIS, Katie said she chose law librarianship because of her positive experiences working at the Barco Law Library and joined ALL-SIS because of the networking and professional development opportunities. In addition, she joined ALL-SIS because she believed she was “joining a community” of fellow academic law librarians. We can all wholeheartedly agree with her - ALL-SIS is more than just professional organization - it’s a community. ALL-SIS is proud to welcome Katie to the community of academic law librarianship and we’re lucky to have her.

Tanya Cao is Catalog Librarian of Diane and Harry Rinker Law Library of Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California. While relatively new in the law library field, Tanya has been a professional librarian for more than a decade. Prior to joining Chapman University Law School Library, she worked for library vendors Baker & Taylor and Follet, where she catalogued all kinds of audio-visual materials for public, academic and school libraries. She found that her intellectually stimulating work at Baker & Taylor and Follet has unbelievably helped her at her new job at the law library. It provided her with “free education” in Western, specifically American culture, history and politics.

A bicultural and multilingual transplant, Tanya was born and grew up in Beijing, China. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian Language from the prestigious Beijing Foreign Language Institute, now called the Beijing Foreign Studies University. Before moving to the United States, she worked for several years at Zhong Shan Library, one of the largest provincial-level libraries in China. She received her M.L.S. degree from Simmons College’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Boston. She landed her first professional librarian position at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where she earned her second Master’s degree in business.

Tanya is what one might consider an “accidental” law librarian. She found an opportunity to work at Chapman University Law School Library after she got laid off in 2003. She knew that she wanted to go back to the academic environment and believed that she was destined to be at Chapman. While the transition from general subjects to legal topics has not been easy for Tanya, she nevertheless enjoyed the new challenge and learning opportunity. She recently completed the Lexis/Nexis Certificate of Mastery advanced core training program. She attended her first AALL Conference in 2004, learned from many dedicated law librarians about law librarianship and is proud to be a member of this profession.