If you have peeked at the list of academic “firsts” compiled by the ALL-SIS Centennial Committee, you may have noticed that an impressive number of “firsts” were achieved by two octogenarians, Roy Mersky and Betty Taylor. Actually, Roy Mersky, Harry Reasoner Regents Chair in Law at the University of Texas, celebrated his eightieth birthday last fall, but Betty Taylor, TeSelle Professor of Law Emeritus and now Archivist at the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida, won’t celebrate her eightieth birthday until this June.
Both have compiled an impressive number of “firsts” during their careers. In addition, they have lead their institutions to a staggering list of innovations in services and products. This brief article makes no attempt to identify all of their many honors and innovations, but will simply highlight a few. Prof. Taylor was the first woman law librarian to hold an endowed professorship. She was the first chair of the Southeastern Library Network and the first Distinguished Alumna of Florida State University’s School of Library Science (1981). She was president of the University of Florida’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, president of the Online Computer Library Center Users Council, and chair of the Joint Committee of the American Association of Law Libraries, the Association of Law Schools and the American Bar Association for LAWNET. She is a member of Beta Phi Mu, the honorary library science fraternity, a member of Phi Delta Delta, a legal society for women, and Florida Blue Key, the legendary Florida leadership honor society.
Under her leadership the Legal Information Center at the University of Florida was the first academic law library to subscribe to Westlaw (1976), the first to subscribe to both Westlaw and Lexis (1977), and the first to subscribe to the West CDs (1982). The Legal Information Center was the first law library to initiate a pilot program with Dialog Information Services to integrate non-legal information resources with legal research instruction. Her experimentation with computers began early. In 1967 she used punch cards and a computer to compile an index to the Florida Bar Journal. An article about the project garnered an invitation for Prof. Taylor to make a presentation at the first International Computers and Law Conference in Geneva in 1967. In 1972 the University of Florida was the first major law library to contribute retrospective holdings to OCLC through SOLINET, a regional library group. Later, in 1982, the Law Library was among the first institutions to participate in a test of IBM desktop computer use in law schools. Active in AALL for decades, she was program chair for the 1981 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., and served on the executive board from 1981 - 1984. She also co-chaired the local advisory committee for the 2002 Annual Meeting in Orlando.
Prof. Mersky, the first law librarian member of the American Law Institute, has been the director of the Tarlton Law Library since 1965. He became the first law librarian to hold a named professorship in 1984 when he was named Elton M. Hyder, Jr. and Martha Rowan Hyder Centennial Professor of Law. In 1971, he served as the Interim Director of the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. Under his leadership the Jamail Center for Legal Research has become one of the most important legal research institutes in the United States. He is known for his strong commitment to improving library resources, services, and facilities. Among its many firsts the Tarlton Law Library was the first academic law library to issue an independent annual report, to provide twenty-four hour staffed service, and the first to publish a regular serial newsletter with selected new acquisitions, Notes from the Tarlton Library. Tarlton was also the first library to scan tables of contents from law journals and email them to patrons. Tarlton assembled some unique collections as well, such as its “litigated literature” of banned books and its collection of law-related videos and novels in its Law in Popular Culture Collection. Tarlton was also the first library to install a permanent LEXIS terminal.
Prof. Mersky worked tirelessly in professional organizational interests as well. He worked to initiate law library divisions in the American Library Association, the Special Libraries Association, and in ASIS (American Society for Information Science). Tarlton was the first law library to host AALL Institutes for foreign law and for acquisitions. Prof. Mersky was the first law librarian awarded a federal grant for continuing law library education which provided all expenses for all participating library staff plus a per diem. He has also been translated and published in German, Spanish, and Portuguese on law library issues.
While there are many impressive achievements among librarians, these octogenarian innovators stand out. Why is it that they were so often first with one service or product? Are there any secrets to their successful innovation? Why were there so many firsts at their libraries? Did they seek out innovators and “hire” them or did they “create” them? What do they consider the most important of their own innovations? Finally, what do they see for the future in their “crystal balls?”
Prof. Mersky doesn’t specifically look for innovators in potential hires. But, he “always hires intelligent people.” When he sees intelligent people, he hires them, then establishes an environment which encourages innovation. Just what kind of environment is this? Bob Berring gives us a clue in his sketch of Roy Mersky in “Reflections on Mentors,” published in Law Librarianship: Historical Perspectives, edited by Laura N. Gasaway and Michael G. Chiorazzi. According to Berring, Mersky looked for people with ambition and energy from all sorts of backgrounds and he purposefully hired “aggressive newcomers.” Mersky then “let people run with their ideas,” providing them with resources they needed to support their initiatives. In this environment, Mersky produced a large number of talented librarians who left the “mother library” at Texas and moved to direct libraries all over the country. Mersky taught librarians that the only limit was in their expectations. He taught “aggressive, entrepreneurial management” and could be a “difficult taskmaster,” according to Berring, but brought great energy and drive to the profession.
Like Prof. Mersky, Prof. Taylor did not consciously seek out “innovators” when hiring librarians. Not everyone in a library must be an innovator, according to Taylor. She believes that there is a role for detail-oriented people who can execute the visions of innovators and attend to everyday routines. Prof. Taylor suggests that a “sense of inquisitiveness” separates the innovators from others. She gets her first clue about whether a new librarian will be an innovator from that librarian’s response to her simple question: “How are things going?” The future innovator often questions why the library is doing something and suggests ideas for improvement. Prof. Taylor thinks that innovators have a “reception” to new ideas and a “spark” to analyze and develop ideas. She credits innovators with challenging producers and publishers to do more and create better search tools.
Prof. Mersky considers his most significant first being honored with a named professorship and an endowed chair. In addition to the personal honor, Prof. Mersky believes that this honor was an institutional recognition of the intellectual contributions of academic law librarians to legal education. He is also proud of being the first to use the term “lawyer librarian” when referring to librarians who have both law and library degrees. This term describes their contribution to the library and the law school perhaps more appropriately than the term librarian alone.
Prof. Taylor considers her most important “first” heading the first library to subscribe to both WESTLAW and LEXIS. She remembers times when librarians seriously questioned whether subscribing to both services was necessary or fiscally prudent. She believes that it has been extremely important to support both services as instruction tools for law students.
Both Prof. Mersky and Prof. Taylor suggest that librarians’ contributions to legal education should begin at home in their own law schools. Prof. Mersky insists that service to your own community of users, faculty and students, is the most important contribution librarians can make. Prof. Taylor stresses the importance of staying in touch with what is going on in your own law schools and in keeping up with what faculty are publishing and researching and which classes and areas of the law are becoming popular and ensuring that the library has the resources to support these endeavors.
What does the future hold? Student avowals that “if it’s not online, I’m not interested,” lead Prof. Taylor to fear collapse in libraries driven by these shortsighted opinions. On the other hand, Prof. Mersky considers it “unthinkable” that books and print collections could become obsolete. He believes that special print collections of unique and rare materials distinguish many libraries today. In addition to unique print collections, there is the issue of usability. Scholars may use electronic research to find articles or books, according to Mersky, but they will always prefer reading them in print. Also, permanence and stability of records are a major concern. “There’s real danger that materials published solely on the web and cited in legal authority may simply be unavailable in the future.”
Mersky and Taylor agree that faculty, students, and lawyers will have an abundance of information and the ability to access it in the future. The real role for librarians, according to Prof. Mersky, will be to act as gatekeepers, to evaluate the quality of the information and help researchers to find, target, and use what is useful. That is a big role in today’s information environment.
Both Prof. Mersky (2005) and Prof. Taylor (1997) have been awarded AALL’s Marian Gould Gallagher Distinguished Service Award in recognition of outstanding, extended, and sustained service to law librarianship. They have compiled extensive publication records and made many contributions to the profession. Perhaps their many innovations will inspire us to look for, identify, and apply creative solutions to the operations of our libraries and the research and information needs of our students and faculty.
Material in this article was obtained through emails and phone conversations with Prof. Taylor and Prof. Mersky in addition to material in the following articles: Allegra Jordan Young, Roy Mersky and the Future of Libraries: Or, How the Jamail Center for Legal Research Became One of the Best of its Kind in the World, 4 UT Law 26 (Winter 2006), available at www.utexas.edu/law/depts/alumni/utlaw/utlaw_current.pdf and Kristin Harmel, Trailblazer Takes A Breather: Betty Taylor Leaves 50-Year Legacy, Sets Precedent for Women (and Men), 40 UF Law 52 (Fall 2003), available at www.law.ufl.edu/news/pdf/magazine_fall03.pdf.