VOLUME 26
ISSUE 3
Summer 2007

Inside this issue:

• AALL Management and Leadership Institute
  • An Overview
  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Librarians:  What I Learned at the AALL Management and Leadership Institute
• AALL Needs You! Legislative Advocacy Training
• ALL-SIS Announces Winners of Awards and Grants
• The ALL-SIS Archives in the Digital Age
• ALL-SIS Bylaws - Proposed Changes
• ALL-SIS Committee Reports 2007 - 2007
• Collection Development
• Continuing Status/Tenure
• Membership
• Middle Managers’ Breakfast
• New Academic Law Librarian’s Meeting (NALLM)/Mentoring
• Newsletter
• Nominations
• Public Relations
• Relations with Online Vendors
• Statistics
• Task Force on Job Titles
• Website
• ALL-SIS Contributes Four Programs to AALL’s Continuing Professional Education Resources Collection
• ALL-SIS NEEDS YOU!!
  • Committee Volunteer Form
• ALL-SIS Programs in New Orleans
• ALL-SIS Sourcebook for Teaching Legal Research
• ALL-SIS Strategic Plan, 2007 - 2010
• ALL-SIS to Host 2 VIPs during the 2007 AALL Annual Meeting
• Back to the Future of Legal Research
• Changes to ABA Annual Questionnaire Proposed
• Developments in Legal Education:
  The Movement for Open Access to Legal Scholarship
• Gone Fishing . . .
• Member News
• New Member Spotlight
• Preventing Violence in Our Libraries:  A Plan of Action

Message from the Chair

Suzanne Thorpe
Associate Director for Faculty, Research, and Instructional Services
University of Minnesota Law Library
229 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis MN 55455
(612) 625-0187
s-thor@umn.edu

Greetings ALL-SIS Members,

As I write this, my lilacs and lilies of the valley are in full bloom and another class of law graduates has just been launched. The academic year sure flew by quickly! So did my year as ALL-SIS Chair. For me, it was a very busy, yet rewarding time. Working with ALL-SIS Executive Board members Michael Slinger, Michelle Wu, Linda Ryan, and Carol Bredemeyer was a pleasure and I benefited greatly from their unfailing support and sound guidance. I also enjoyed interacting with so many dedicated and energetic law librarians who volunteered their ideas and time to help advance academic law librarianship. I am very impressed with the work that they have accomplished during the past months. Please allow me to highlight just a few notable ALL-SIS events and activities.

Our election of new officers took place in April. Congratulations to our incoming officers:  Filippa Anzalone, Vice-Chair/Chair Elect, and Marianne Alcorn, Executive Board Member-at-Large. Thanks to everyone who voted. Despite the ease of casting an electronic ballot, “voter turnout” has declined the past couple of ALL-SIS elections (basically since we began to use the online system). If you have any thoughts on why this is the case or on ways to increase the number of members who vote, please share them with the Executive Board.

Congratulations also go to the recipients of this year’s ALL-SIS awards and grants. Lee Peoples, Associate Director of the Oklahoma City University Law Library, is the recipient of the ALL-SIS Outstanding Service Award. The winner of the ALL-SIS Outstanding Article Award is Bonnie Shucha, Head of Reference at the University of Wisconsin Law Library for her article, The State of the Law Library Blogosphere. 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. I would like to thank the Awards Committee (John Edwards (Chair), Marianne Nelson, Marlene Alderman) for their excellent work soliciting nominations and selecting recipients.

In late April, I had the privilege of participating in the AALL Summit, “Authentic Legal Information in the Digital Age.” The program was organized to start a dialog with government information providers about the need for certified authentic online legal information as well as standards and best practices that will result in authenticated information. The Summit planners brought together an outstanding mix of participants:  state and federal legal information producers, digital security experts, and archivists, who shared their insights with AALL members about the current challenges involved in providing reliable electronic legal information. By every possible measure, this day and a half meeting was a huge success. Additional information about the Summit is available on AALLNET.

I mentioned earlier this year that the Continuing Education Task Force (Lee Peoples (Chair), Merle Slyhoff, and Mary Wells), was working on a program entitled, “Challenging Conversations,” to coach us in how to communicate effectively in difficult situations. This program was released a few weeks ago for online viewing through AALLNET (AALLNET login required). I previewed the video and it’s superbly acted and produced! I urge you to attend the official screening at the ALL-SIS reception in New Orleans.

Recently, the ABA proposed to drop volume count from its annual library questionnaire. Rita Reusch, Chair of the ABA Law Libraries Committee, details the questionnaire changes and the rationale behind them in this issue of the newsletter. To get further background on what we can expect, I have invited Allen Easley, Chair of the Questionnaire Committee, to address us at our business meeting on the current status of the changes.

There are lots of perspectives about why we keep statistics, what we should be measuring, and how we should measure it. A major question to answer is:  what do we need to track in order to prove our worth and maintain our existence? With this in mind, I asked our Statistics Committee Co-Chairs, Jonathan Franklin and Kory Staheli, to poll our membership in order to identify the statistics we feel are most useful to track. They conducted a very thorough poll in February and received excellent feedback. Please take a look at the results posted on the ALL-SIS Web site. In the coming months, the Statistics Committee plans to draft a model survey instrument that, in addition to the questionnaire, could be used to measure quantitatively and qualitatively what we do. It will incorporate many ideas gleaned from the poll. The committee will also develop a clearinghouse of information about statistical measures to share on the ALL-SIS Web site.

In early May, Margaret Schilt, Co-Chair of the Faculty Services Committee, moderated an engaging online discussion on the Faculty Services Roundtable listserv. The topic was “Law Faculty, Copyright, and Law Libraries” and the conversation covered copyright issues involved in obtaining and posting class materials and webcasting and podcasting presentations. Our members are very knowledgeable about copyright issues and the information exchanged was extremely informative. If you were unable to participate, I highly recommend viewing the ALL-FSR archive.

I would like to draw your attention to proposals from two other committees, since we will be voting to approve them in July at the Business Meeting. The first is the final draft of the new ALL-SIS Strategic Plan. The Strategic Directions Task Force (Michelle Wu (Chair), Carol Bredemeyer, Richard Jost, Paul Healey, and Mark Folmsbee) worked hard to draft a visionary set of goals and objectives for ALL-SIS. The second consists of changes to our Bylaws, drafted by the Bylaws Committee (Jennifer Wagner (Chair), Deborah Norwood, and Eric Young). The new provisions, recently approved by the AALL Bylaws Committee, clarify procedures for expenditures, nominations, and elections.

Please check out all the great programs that we have lined up for you in New Orleans. You can find information about them in this newsletter and on the special annual meeting page on the ALL-SIS Web site. Don’t forget that there are the two alternate ALL-SIS programs (they are listed separately in the official schedule) and an all day SIS sponsored workshop taking place on Saturday. In addition, there are breakfast programs for middle managers and directors and four separate roundtables:  collection development, legal research, relations with online vendors, and faculty services. These roundtables give you a chance to participate in stimulating discussions with other academic librarians. Even if you are not on a committee during the coming year, you are always welcome to attend committee meetings to learn what is being planned.

I hope you will join us at our business meeting at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. Thanks to our sponsor, Thomson-West, we will be treated to a delicious continental breakfast. In addition to remarks by Allen Easley (see above), Dan Freehling, Deputy Consultant on Legal Education of the ABA Section on Legal Education & Admission to the Bar, will fill us in the findings of the ABA Accreditation Task Force.

I also want to invite you to join in the festivities at the ALL-SIS reception on Sunday evening, starting at 6:30 p.m. This great event, sponsored by BNA, will be hosted by Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. Michael Whipple, his staff at Loyola, and the kind folks at BNA are planning a delightful evening that will include a wonderful cocktail buffet and musical entertainment. BNA will provide buses to shuttle us between the Convention Center and the school. During the reception we will hold our Awards Ceremony. If you are a newer academic law librarian, please mark your calendar to attend the Newer Academic Law Librarians Meeting (NALLM). It takes place at Loyola at 5:30 p.m. (right before the reception). A special bus will take you there. Details for all these events will be available at the ALL-SIS table in the activities area of the exhibit hall and on the ALL-SIS Web site.

Thanks for allowing me to serve as ALL-SIS Chair this year. It’s been great! I look forward to seeing all of you in New Orleans.  

Best wishes,
Suzanne