The ALL Program Committee received an exciting selection of program proposals. Along with the Program Committee Chair, Sara Sampson, the members of the committee, April Schwartz, Darla Jackson, Kathleen McLeod, Kira Zaporski, and Paddy Satzer, carefully reviewed each of the proposals. The ALL Program Committee forwarded its recommendations to the AALL Annual Meeting Program Committee for Review. Ten programs, including one workshop, and three alternate programs, for a total of thirteen ALL-SIS sponsored programs were accepted for the 2008 AALL Annual Meeting. A schedule of programs arranged by date and time can be found here.
A-1: The Library’s Role in Educating Lawyers: Considering the Carnegie Report
Audience: All librarians interested in legal education
Competency addressed: Teaching
An author of the Carnegie Report will provide an overview of the observations and recommendations as well as the learning theories behind these recommendations. Library directors and legal educators will then discuss the roles that libraries can play in curriculum reform, and the services, programs and courses librarians can offer to make graduates more “practice ready.”
A-6: From Books to Facebook: Can We Energize Privacy as Library 2.0 Services Evolve?
Audience: public services, administrative, and IT librarians in academic, firm and government law libraries
Competency addressed: Reference, Research and Patron Services
Some warn that to stay relevant libraries must embrace participatory networks like Facebook or Del.icio.us as tools for effective learning, building Library 2.0 services - even at the expense of privacy. Others assert library privacy and anonymous reading are protected by librarians’ professional ethics and the law and are essential to our democracy. How might libraries limit or prevent the collection and secondary uses of personally identifying information used in Library 2.0 services?
C-3: Explore the Real World in Real Time: Making Legal News on Jurist (with CS-SIS)
Audience: Law librarians
Competency addressed: Information Technology
Explore how the real time legal research and ready reference techniques are applied every day to legal news production on JURIST. JURIST Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Professor Bernard Hibbitts and a member of JURIST’s law student staff will discuss the challenges of covering national and international legal developments as they happen. They will demonstrate how law librarians interested in working with Internet-based resources can provide quality real time research content online via blogware, RSS, and other delivery systems.
E-2: A Century in the Making: Researching Legal Ethics Today
Audience: Reference and research librarians
Competency addressed: Reference, Research and Patron Services
In recognition of the 100th Anniversary of the ABA’s adoption of the Canons of Professional Ethics, the presenters will analyze and contrast the essential print and electronic resources for researching issues in legal ethics and the law governing lawyers in today’s research environment.
E-4: 30 Critical Technology Tools: Free and Inexpensive Software to Help your Daily Life
Audience: Library staff who use computers frequently for reference, research or web maintenance
Competency addressed: Information Technology
This will be a fast-paced program to show thirty software programs or web-based services useful for managing and interacting with information on computers. Here are names of services likely to be covered in this session: Firebug, Web Developer Toolbar, Conduit.com, Meebo, Kuler, Zotero, AddThis.com, and the list goes on.
F-4: Energize Your Catalog! Get Electronic Titles Out of Their Silos and Into Your OPAC
Audience: All librarians interested in improving patron access by adding records for electronic titles to their online catalogs
Competency addressed: Collection Care and Management
Law libraries invest in an ever-growing number of electronic databases. Do our users have equal access to the content in these databases if we do not catalog the titles within them? Find out how some law libraries are integrating titles from bundled electronic databases into their catalogs. Panelists will discuss different options such as purchasing MARC records and title coverage lists, modifying OCLC and vendor-supplied records, and employing federated searching and open URL resolvers.
G-1: Beyond Volume Count: Exploring the Evolving Tools for Evaluating Library Quality
Audience: Library administrators and public services librarians in academic, law firm, and government
Competency addressed: Library Management
The ABA and the AALS have evaluated a law library’s quality primarily by measuring its physical collection. As more information becomes available electronically, physical measurement, like volume count, becomes just one of many ways to judge libraries’ contribution to parent organizations. This session will consider different ways that libraries can use patron feedback to assess quality of a law library and to develop new services.
H-6: Exploring Initiative and Referendum Law: Origins of the “Oregon System,” Political Realities, and Research Tips
Audience: All librarians, particularly public services librarians in academic, public and private libraries
Competency addressed: Reference, Research and Patron Services
What do physician-assisted suicide, daylight savings time, same-sex marriage, and eminent domain have in common? Laws on all these subjects were passed via the initiative or referendum process. This program will explore these unique political tools from a variety of perspectives, ranging from a description of the origins of the movement - a.k.a. the “Oregon System” - in the late 19th century, to a discussion about electronic publication and preservation of I&R related documents in the 21st century.
I-6: Exploring Online Instructional Tools: A Showcase
Audience: All law librarians who provide instruction
Competency addressed: Teaching
In addition to traditional instructional methods, 21st Century learners demand “just in time” learning opportunities as a part of their legal education. Why should we hesitate to meet the demand when there are tools that are old and familiar or new and free or inexpensive that can be used to deliver instruction online? In this series of demonstrations, participants will learn how CALI Author, LibGuides, traditional audio, Microsoft products, and even still photographs, have been used to develop enhancements to legal instruction.
W-5: Amazing Technical Services: The Director’s Cut (with TS-SIS)
Audience: Law library directors and administrators
Competency addressed: Library Management
Law library directors constantly face the challenges of providing excellent services with limited resources, underscored by an unprecedented spectrum of electronic resources and tools. This workshop will update library administrators on 21st century technical services tools and solutions for a wide array of management issues including assessment, acquisitions, and information access functions.
ALTERNATIVE PROGRAMS
Supporting New Faculty - Help them to Energize, Evolve and Explore their Teaching and Scholarship Responsibilities
Audience: Academic Librarians who work with faculty
Competency addressed: Reference, Research and Patron Services
This program is intended to show how and why to offer special services tailored to new faculty. New faculty includes those new to the profession as well as those who are new to your institution, and opportunities to support them in their research occur at every point from the recruitment process and throughout their first years of teaching. The program will demonstrate that formal programs and services for new faculty not only help them to be successful in teaching and scholarship, but also benefit the library by making these faculty members library supporters throughout their careers.
Evolving Research Instruction: Exploring Law Student Information Literacy to Energize Instructional Programming
Audience: Academic and firm law librarians involved in the education and training of law students and attorneys
Competency addressed: Teaching
Information Literacy (IL) has been commonly defined as the ability to find, navigate, and evaluate information and information sources. Although numerous articles have been written about IL (and related research or bibliographic instruction) in the literature of library science, only a handful of scholars have applied this concept to law students and to instructional programming in law libraries. The general consensus among these scholars is that Law Student Information Literacy (LSIL) is quite low, and that law librarians can utilize the concept of IL to engage law students with the intellectual and practical contexts of legal research.
Evolving from Snoozing to Using: Increasing Student-Centered Learning Using Educational Technology
Audience: Teaching Librarians interested in using technology
Competency addressed: Teaching
Law librarians will demonstrate how they used educational technology both inside and outside the classroom to increase student engagement and create an environment of student-centered learning in their introductory, intermediate, and advanced legal research classes. They will discuss their strategies for moving to an environment where students are actively engaged in constructing knowledge and solving research problems in class.
For additional program and presenter information visit www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/annualmeeting/2008/programs.htm.