Kumar Percy Jayasuriya is currently Associate Director of Patron Services at the Georgetown University Law Library and an adjunct member of the Georgetown Law faculty.
Prior to joining Georgetown, he was the Head of Faculty and Research Services at the University of Texas, Tarlton Law Library. For the last twelve years he has taught legal research courses at Boston University, Texas, and Georgetown. He has published works regarding maritime law, affirmative action, abortion, Supreme Court history, and legal information policy. Recently he published, with Frances M. Brillantine, an article on the future of law library services titled Student Services in the 21st Century: Evolution and Innovation published in Discovering Student Needs, Teaching Information Literacy, and Designing Library 2.0-Based Services.
During his career he has served in professional law library organizations including ALL-SIS, AALL, local AALL chapters, and the AALS Section on Law Libraries. In those organizations he has focused on new initiatives and innovations. He worked on the ALL-SIS CONALL Committee which created the mentoring event now called ALL-NEW. While serving as a member and then chair of the AALL Research Committee he helped craft the present system to fund library research projects. Currently he represents ALL-SIS in the Joint Committee on Articulating Law Student Information Literacy Standards. In this committee he hopes to create a new system for evaluating the legal research skills of law students.
As law schools rethink legal education and academic law libraries evolve in an electronic world, ALL-SIS must continue to lead. First, ALL-SIS can harness emerging technologies to foster communication. For example, the section could use social networking platforms to distribute recordings of the ALL-SIS Alternative Programs presented during AALL annual meetings. By sharing information and ideas we can help our institutions prosper and our members succeed.
Next, ALL-SIS can design innovative ways to attract and mentor new librarians. Supporting the careers of emerging academic law librarians will bring fresh perspectives to the academic law library community.
Finally, the section can sponsor research and scholarship in our discipline. Through new grants or writing competitions ALL-SIS could help our members conduct and publish studies related to issues unique to academic law libraries.
It would be an honor to serve as Chair of the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section’s Executive Board and help our members better educate students, promote scholarship, and excel in our initiatives.
