American Association Of Law Libraries Research Articles

Casebooks, Bias, and Information Literacy—Do Law Librarians Have a Duty?

The third principle of the American Association of Law Libraries’ Principles and Standards for Legal Research Competencies states: “A successful researcher critically evaluates information.” This evaluation includes evaluating legal information of material under criteria of “authority, credibility, currency, authenticity, relevance, and bias.” Does this standard include information contained in legal casebooks? This article’s goal is to show examples of case treatment in casebooks in Constitutional Law, Property, and Civil Procedure that demonstrate authors’ biases in their selection and editing of cases. Under the AALL standards and the ACRL Standards and Framework for Information literacy, librarians should teach students how to think critically about all the legal information presented to them—including casebooks.

Competence models for special libraries’ professionals: Foreign experience

New technologies and communication models question the value of libraries and librarians in the digital epoch. The libraries of all types and departmental subordination are challenged. National and foreign studies are to enable to comprehend the new role of the libraries and librarians. The author examines conceptualizing the role of special libraries and their professionals. She analyzes studies, reports and publications made by several professional associations of special libraries that have been intensively investigating into solutions for the libraries to preserve their value for the future. Thus, the Special Libraries Association (USA) and American Association of Law Libraries have accomplished their rebranding. The foreign librarians argue that professional competences make efficient instrument that would enable the librarians to develop their career and to demonstrate the value of the libraries. The author examines the competence models for special libraries professionals as suggested by the mentioned professional associations. Management competences, leadership and communication skills are particularly important for small libraries’ librarians.

GUIDE TO CUBAN LAW AND LEGAL RESEARCH

Recent developments in U.S-Cuba relations have resulted in a proliferating global interest in Cuba, including its legal regime. This comprehensive Guide aims to fill a noticeable void in the availability of information in English on this enigmatic jurisdiction's legal order, and on how to conduct research related to it. Covered topics include “The Constitution,” “Legislation and Codes,” “The Judiciary,” “Cuba in the International Arena,” and “The Legal Profession.” A detailed section on “Cuban Legal Materials in U.S. and Canadian Libraries” is also featured. Although the Guide emphasizes sources in English and English-language translation, materials in Spanish are likewise included as English-language equivalents are often unavailable. The Guide's 12 authors are members of the Latin American Law Interest Group of the American Association of Law Libraries’ Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Special Interest Section (FCIL-SIS).

The Legal History and Rare Books Special Interest Section: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of Excellence

In 2014 the Legal History and Rare Books Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries celebrated its 25th Anniversary. This article details the history of the section.

Mexican Law and Legal Research: A Guide Prepared in Conjunction with the Program 'Mexican Law and Legal Research: Overcoming the Challenges'

This guide, which is a compilation of articles by members of the American Association of Law Libraries’ Latin American Law Interest Group, covers all aspects of Mexican legal research. Its purpose is to provide a contextualized overview of how to conduct research on Mexican law — referencing applicable Spanish language resources and highlighting any available sources in English. Organized into three main sections by general resource type, the Guide covers “Primary Sources,” “Secondary Sources,” and “Online Resources,” and then the more specific sources that fall within those categories. Thus, the section on “Primary Sources,” includes constitutions, official gazettes, compilations of legislation, administrative regulations, international agreements, and judicial decisions. “Secondary Sources” covers dictionaries and encyclopedias, treatises, textbooks, and monographs, and online law reviews. The final category of “Online Resources” includes both commercial and free collections of Mexican legal resources available on the Web.

Order Matters: Typology of Dual-Degreed Law Librarians

To a great extent, law librarianship has regarded the dual-degreed librarian as too familiar and uncomplicated to merit extended attention. The present discussion challenges this assumed simplicity. The goal of professional education is to work on deeper personal levels to create a particular identity and to inculcate specific values necessary to the successful practice of the vocation. Such fundamental effects are neither easily erased nor superseded by a later professional indoctrination. Understood in this way, professional education produces an outcome that defies the commutative property. Order matters. Librarians who go to law school (i.e., “libyers”) should be discernible from lawyers who attend library school (“lawbrarians”), with consequences for the practice of law librarianship. Using data describing members of the American Association of Law Libraries, this study tests the hypothesis that, given the fundamental levels at which professional enculturation operates, when an individual undergoes professional formation more than once the values of the first training regime will typically have the more profound impact on the general personality.

The Path to 2020: A Vision for Change. Personal Reflections on the PLL (Private Law Libraries) Summit Held at the 105th Annual Meeting and Conference of the American Association of Law Libraries

AbstractKathryn Hayes reflects on the PLL (Private Law Libraries) Summit at the 2012 AALL Annual Meeting and Conference in Boston, which focussed on what law libraries and information services will look like in 2020 and what we should be doing now to advance that vision.

Authentication of Online State Primary Legal Resources as a Social Justice Issue: The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act and How It Can Benefit Pro Se Litigants

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) has advocated for years for the adoption of standards to authenticate online state primary legal material. AALL's advocacy led to the enactment of the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA), which, for the first time, provides a framework for and guidance about how state governments can ensure that their official electronic legal information is authenticated, preserved, and permanently accessible to the public. This article provides a brief history of the development of UELMA as context for the argument that the adoption of standards related to the authentication of electronic state legal resources can be considered a social justice issue, particularly for pro se litigants. This article argues that states should adopt UELMA to ensure that these vulnerable users of legal information have access to authentic and trustworthy electronic versions of the laws that govern them.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About CRIV but Were Afraid to Ask

AbstractThe Committee on Relations with Information Vendors (CRIV) is one of thirty-seven committees organized under the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). The purpose of CRIV is to facilitate communications between information vendors and the members of the Association by monitoring complaints and providing constructive suggestions to vendors of legal information. The Committee also serves to educate AALL member librarians on helpful ways to communicate with information vendors. This article by Rob Myers provides a brief history of CRIV, outlines the Committee's organisation and structure, discusses its activities in pursuit of its charge, and outlines its goals for the immediate future.

Some reflections on the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) “Summit” 2010: Mapping Our Future

AbstractDavid Wills describes his experiences at the AALL summit with particular emphasis on the sessions on legal education, digital ephemera preservation, disaster planning and the rights of indigenous people.

The Durham Statement on Open Access One Year Later: Preservation and Access to Legal Scholarship

The Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship calls for US law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in “stable, open, digital formats.” The Statement asks for two things: 1) open access publication of law school-published journals; and 2) an end to print publication of law journals. This paper was written as background for a July 2010 American Association of Law Libraries conference program on the preservation implications of the call to end print publication.

Leadership Development Programs for Law Librarians

ABSTRACT In 2003, the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) identified leadership development as one of three primary goals for the organization during this decade. Motivated by a desire to provide leadership training opportunities and expand mentoring programs, a special committee on leadership development created a Leadership Academy for AALL members. The two-day program challenges participants to increase self-awareness of leadership skills and opportunities, and provides them with strategies to emerge as leaders in their organizations and the profession. Academy participation initiates a year-long program of formal mentoring and includes activities held during the AALL annual meeting.

The Need for Faculty Status and Uniform Tenure Requirements for Law Librarians

This article examines tenure requirements currently in use in academic law libraries in the United States. It is one of two articles examining the effect of tenure opportunities on rank-and-file academic law librarians, their law libraries, and the profession of law librarianship. Its intended audience is library directors and other leaders within the profession of academic law librarianship. article reports data gathered in an August 2009 survey of law libraries that currently provide tenure or continuous appointment opportunities for academic law librarians. To provide context, this article revisits faculty status and how it can naturally lead to law librarians having opportunities to attain tenured status. article also considers the ideal of tenured status - what benefits are gained by the tenure system and what is meant by the concept of academic freedom which underpins justification of tenure generally. It identifies various tenure tracks for librarians and the standards for performance under which law librarians are currently reviewed, promoted to progressively higher rank, and awarded tenure. Finally, it recommends that library directors and other leaders within the profession make a concerted effort to encourage law libraries to employ more uniform and consistently rigorous standards for assessing law librarian performance for tenure or continuous appointment, and to develop more robust programs for encouraging librarian scholarship. Failing to do so can only weaken arguments that law librarians should continue to hold faculty status, and be able to attain tenured status, well into the future. An earlier draft of this article entitled, The Need for More Uniform and Consistently Rigorous Standards for Assessing Law Librarian Performance in Tenure and Continuous Appointment Policies, received the American Association of Law Libraries' LexisNexis® Call for Papers, Open Division award for 2010. A companion piece, “Challenges Associated with Providing Tenure and Continuous Appointment Opportunities for Academic Law Librarians,” may be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1490113.

Inspiring Innovation: Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating the Web 2.0 Challenge

Law librarians need Web 2.0. The Web is increasingly the primary way we reach our users - through our websites, online catalogs, research resources, and informational guides. Yet over the past 10 years, our users have seen the rest of the Web grow increasingly interactive: News sites encourage readers to discuss articles; wikis provide new frameworks for understanding and appreciating popular culture; and organizations and associations communicate with their members though weblogs. If we law libraries continue to develop primarily static web sites with no tools for our users to communicate, collaborate, and discuss resources and policies, then we will be seen as increasingly out of touch. Already, conventional wisdom believes libraries are irrelevant. We can only reestablish our credibility if we can convince our users to take advantage of our unique skills and resources. To do this, we need to offer services and applications that work like those with which they are already familiar.This does not mean that law librarians need to immediately embrace every Web 2.0 technology out there. But law librarians must develop a Web 2.0 toolbox from which they can choose the applications that are best suited to their patrons and their libraries - weblogs to broadcast the latest library news, chat boxes for instant communication, or online photo-sharing accounts for highlighting recent library events. How can law librarians find the best tools for their libraries? Few librarians have time to explore all of the possibilities and learn every new resource. To help law librarians focus on the most important new Web 2.0 applications, the American Association of Law Libraries Computing Services Special Interest Section (CS-SIS) hosted an online, 5-week course designed to introduce popular Web 2.0 applications to all kinds of law librarians. Participants ranged from court librarians to firm librarians to academic librarians, from recent library school graduates to librarians on the edge of retirement, from technological newbies to librarian hackers. The course, the Web 2.0 Challenge, guided 100 participants though tools they could add to their toolboxes right way, such as weblogs, wikis, and social bookmarks.

Report to the International Association Of Law Libraries, 24th Annual Course on International Law Librarianship, at The European University Institute, San Domenico De Fiesole, Florence, Italy, 4th –8th September 2005

First, I would like to thank the members of the Scholarship Committee of IALL for giving me the opportunity to attend the IALL annual meeting celebrated in Domenico di Fiesole, Italy, last September. Our library has a limited budget for travel. We participate in the annual conferences of the American Association of Law Libraries, which uses almost our entire travel budget. In recent years, the opportunities for participating in good conferences are greater but our budget continues to be the same. That is why I think that the grants given by IALL to new attendants are a great way to encourage librarians to participate in professional development opportunities and should be promoted continually.

The Role of Executive Director in National Professional Associations

I am always at something of a loss when a new acquaintance asks, “So, what do you do?” Should I go for the straightforward, “I am Executive Director of the American Association of Law Libraries”? Should I go for the more general, “I am the CEO of a national professional association”? Or, more general still, “I am an association executive”?

No pain, no gain: stretching the library dollar

Based on a presentation originally given at the American Association of Law Libraries’ annual meeting in Seattle, 15 July 2003, ten important, though sometimes underdeveloped, approaches to fiscal management are presented. While originally intended for a law librarian audience, these sound, basic approaches are pertinent to all libraries in general, and especially small libraries located within larger organizations. The need to communicate with non‐library staff and management – and successful ways to do this – is emphasized.

Predicting Publication prices: Are the Old Models Still relevant?

The three brief articles here are based on presentations given in June 2002 at the Annual Conference of the American Library Association in Atlanta at a program sponsored by the ALCTS Committee on Library Materials Cost Index, titled Publication Prices: Are the Old Models Still Relevant?--Editor Predicting Publication Prices: Introduction Pamela Bluh For many years, the library community has maintained an exceptional and persistent interest in monitoring price increases for library materials; during periods of economic uncertainty or recession, this topic takes on added significance. In 1957, perhaps in response market conditions in the late 1950s, an ad hoc Committee on Cost of Library Materials Index was established. Its members spent the next two years developing a methodology predict publication prices for the library community, and in 1959 the committee shed its ad hoc designation and became a standing committee of the Acquisitions Section of the Resources and Technical Services Division, the forerunner of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, a division of the American Library Association. The initial members of this committee were James W. Henderson (New York Public Library), William H. Kurth (National Library of Medicine), who served as chair, Sidney E. Matthews (Ohio State University), Frank L. Schick (U.S. Office of Education), Helen Welch (University of Illinois Library), and Avis Zebker (Brooklyn Public Library). They were responsible for assembling the pricing information, which first appeared in Library Journal (Kurth 1960). This modest beginning paved the way over the years for additional cost studies and, in 1965, a name change Library Materials Price Index Committee more closely reflect the group's activities. The committee's succinct charge, to prepare and publish price indexes of library materials, gives it considerable freedom and flexibility. Over the years, the composition of the committee has increased and so, too, has the number of price indexes for which it is responsible. As with any venerable group, the Library Materials Price Index Committee has struggled from time time with questions about its role and the relevancy of its activities. Several of the indexes seem be in a state of limbo, and recent difficulties in the subscription agent community have raised concerns about the timeliness with which the data can be obtained, as well as the future of the indexes in general. The meteoric rise of e-journals and the overabundance of acquisitions models for e-journals are making price predictions much more complicated. The current dire economic outlook is one more factor be considered as the question of the relevancy of the committee's current and future work is examined. The convergence of all these factors precipitated discussion among members of the committee about whether the price indexes, as they are presently constituted, still provide useful information and whether they are worth continuing. Could external factors signal the demise of the price indexes? Should new methodologies for tracking prices be explored? How could prices for electronic publications be handled? Has the time come retire some of the indexes permanently? What might the role of the committee be with regard preparation and publication of the price indexes in the future? To search for answers these fundamental questions, the committee sponsored a program in June 2002 at the Annual Conference of the American Library Association in Atlanta titled Publication Prices: Are the Old Models Still Relevant? at which presentations by two librarians (published in this issue of LRTS), an economist, and a vendor examined the role of price indexes in various settings in an effort shed light on their relevancy in today's marketplace. Mark McCabe, Assistant Professor of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology, has done considerable work for both the Association of Research Libraries and the American Association of Law Libraries analyze the trends that influence publishers and ultimately result in increased publication prices. …

Managing library association finances, two scenarios: American Association of Law Libraries and the Metropolitan Toronto Lawyers Association

The sound financial management of an association requires more than creating and following a budget. It needs accountability, a complete knowledge of the association and its purpose, an awareness of its membership and environment, and an eye for day‐to‐day detail. This article compares the financial management practices of two library associations.

Discovering Columbus

It took just a simple e-mail in the Autumn of 2000 to set the ball rolling towards one of the most informative, enjoyable and interesting professional experiences I've ever had. The e-mail in question was a request to fill in a questionnaire from the Foreign Comparative and International Law Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries. The questionnaire concerned participation in AALL's Clearinghouse for Internships & International Personnel Exchanges. This is a program used to promote exchanges and visits between law librarians in the US and abroad in order to develop both personal and professional relationships, and also to give librarians the chance to work with legal information sources pertaining to other jurisdictions. Library and Information Services (LIS) management here at the University of Wales Swansea (UWS) kindly agreed to explore both the avenues of hosting and that of ‘sending forth’ a law librarian within the program.