Leanne Cummings, National Library Manager at the Deacons Law Firm in Brisbane, Australia, has been selected as this year's winner of the FCIL Schaffer Grant for Foreign Librarians. Ms. Cummings' responsibilities include directing the research services of a major international law firm with more than 900 lawyers across Australia and Asia. Prior to her employment at Deacons she was the Library Manager for Queensland Police Service.

In 2005-06, Ms. Cummings served as the President of the Queensland division of the Australian Law Librarians' Association (ALLA). She has presented numerous conference papers, published several articles, and lectured on various issues involving the practice and pedagogy of law librarianship.

At AALL, Ms. Cummings will give a presentation on the trends that are occurring in the Australian legal industry and their impact on Australian law libraries.

This grant was made possible through the generosity of Ellen Schaffer, other FCIL librarians, and friends of the law librarian community. It has brought a librarian from outside the United States to the AALL Annual Meeting since 2001.

The selection committee (Teresa Miguel, Christopher O'Byrne, and Tom Kimbrough) considered a very strong pool of 13 applicants from 11 countries this year.

Leanne Cummings' presentation at the annual meeting will be on Tuesday, July 15th at 2:45 p.m. Please join us!