Law Librarianship Commons^™

Book Review Of Finding The Answers To Legal Questions, Benjamin J. Keele

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Free Websites For Virginia Legal Research, Paul Hellyer

Library Staff Publications

It’s no secret that free websites give away content sold by high-cost subscription databases, but you might not know how useful free sites are. If you think there’s always a trade-off between cost and quality, think again. Some free resources for Virginia legal research are as good as—or better than—subscription sites. And some free resources aren’t quite as good as what you can buy, but are an option.

Working With Kf Modified: Changes And Enhancements, F. Tim Knight, Humayun Rashid, Darren J. Furey

Librarian Publications & Presentations

Provides an overview of the KF Modified classification scheme, introduces some recent editorial changes and enhancements, and includes some interactive cataloguing exercises.

Access To Digital Legal Information: Focus On The English-Speaking Caribbean Countries, Yemisi Dina

Articles & Book Chapters

The Internet and various digitization initiatives have opened up immediate access to legal materials such as statutes, bills, law reports etc. through government websites and the Legal Information Institutes. There is a dearth in the legal information that is free and openly accessible for countries in the English-speaking Caribbean even though there has been relative progress in the last ten years. A number of these countries have Freedom of Information or Access to Information legislation which requires that government must make information openly accessible to its citizens. This paper reviews developments and government efforts in providing free and accessible legal …

Regulating Social Media Use In The Workplace, Yemisi Dina

Editorials and Commentaries

The advent of social networking sites (SNS) has become a reality of the digital age. These sites are highly interactive, creative and addictive for individuals to exchange personal, professional and social ideas but its use has also been the subject of litigation in the courts lately just like any man made invention. People using these sites have sparked a number of legal challenges that have dramatically changed the world. This raises a number of questions as to whether there are clear guidelines on the use of these tools by employers and employees.

This paper is a case commentary of one …

A Survey Of Electronic Research Alternatives To Lexisnexis And Westlaw In Law Firms, Laura K. Justiss

Law Library Staff & Faculty Works

The author conducted a survey of law firm librarians in 2010 that identified electronic research database alternatives to LexisNexis and Westlaw and ranked them by subscription frequency. The survey also generated information regarding suggested or mandated legal research policies in law firms for the use of alternatives to LexisNexis and Westlaw and examined their applicability to billable and nonbillable research.

Research At Your Own Risk: Free Online Statutory Codes Are Widely Available But Are They Good Enough To Meet Users' Needs?, Paul Hellyer

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Thinking About Technology – Watson, Answer Me This: Will You Make Librarians Obsolete Or Can I Use Free And Open Source Software And Cloud Computing To Ensure A Bright Future?, Darla Jackson

Other Faculty Publications

In February 2011, Watson, IBM's "smart" computer, defeated two former Jeopardy champions. While the application of the technology may support some legal research functions, the current state of the technology probably will not allow Watson to replace law librarians in the near future. Yet, given the economic realities of our firms and institutions, librarians do need to consider technologies that may reduce the considerable cost associated with discovering and maintaining access to legal information. Free and open source software and systems and cloud-based initiatives may provide innovative approaches librarians should consider.

Tenure Advice For Law Librarians And Their Directors, Carol A. Parker

Faculty Scholarship

Successful tenure candidates will excel as librarians, master shared governance concepts and understand their institution’s culture. Candidates should engage in self-reflection and seek feedback throughout the tenure-track process. Supportive directors and supervisors will provide support to candidates and ensure well-developed promotion and tenure policies exist and are consistently applied.

Thinking About Technology – Standard Bar Codes Beware- Smart Phone Users May Prefer Qr Codes, Darla Jackson

Faculty Articles

Quick Response (QR) codes are free to produce, allow access to data, and can be read with most smartphones. QR codes are already popular in some other countries and are gaining popularity in the United States. This article discusses this growing popularity and the reasons for it, how QR codes are being used in law libraries and the legal profession, and how they may be used by librarians in the future to add value through the marketing of professional and library services and by providing easy access to information from library resources.

Thinking About Technology – 2010: The Year Of The Ipad?, Darla Jackson

Other Faculty Publications

In April 2010 Apple released the iPad. Other technology producers have announced upcoming releases of tablet computers. This article discusses how the iPad may serve the needs of the legal community and potentially affect law libraries.

Finding The Middle Ground In Collection Development: How Academic Law Librarians Can Shape Their Collections In Response To The Call For More Practice-Oriented Legal Education, Leslie A. Street, Amanda M. Runyon

Library Staff Publications

To examine how academic law libraries can respond to the call for more practice-oriented legal education, the authors compared trends in collection management decisions regarding secondary sources at academic and law firm libraries. The results of their survey are followed by recommendations about how academic and firm librarians can work together to best provide law students with materials they will need in practice.

Thinking About Technology – Collaboration Versus Communication: Selecting The Appropriate Tool, Darla Jackson

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Llne Letter To Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Susan Drisko Zago

Law Faculty Scholarship

A letter from Law Librarians of New England President Susan Drisko Zago urging Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to restore funding to the State Library of Massachusetts for FY 2010 and subsequent years to a realistic level needed to maintain and increase its collections and services.

Library Anxiety Of Law Students: A Study Utilizing The Multidimensional Library Anxiety Scale, Stacey L. Bowers

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this study was to determine whether law students experienced library anxiety and, if so, which components contributed to that anxiety. The Multidimensional Library Anxiety Scale (mlas) developed by Dr. Doris Van Kampen was used to assess library anxiety levels of law students. The mlas is a 53 question Likert scale instrument that measures the construct of library anxiety. Participants in the study were law students enrolled in a private midwestern university during the 2009-2010 academic year who completed the survey instrument. Law students are a unique graduate school population who undergo an extremely rigorous and competitive course …

Change And Continuity (Rip Van Winkle's Reference Office), Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

How much has law librarianship changed over the past twenty years? Ms. Whisner imagines coming back to her library after being asleep for twenty years, and concludes that while our tools have changed, the basics of our jobs have remained remarkably stable.

Time To Blossom: An Inquiry Into Bloom’S Taxonomy As A Hierarchy And Means For Teaching Legal Research Skills, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

Within law librarianship and legal education, there has been far too little scholarly engagement on the underlying pedagogy at the heart of legal research instruction. To correct this deficiency, law librarianship needs to open a dialogue and should consider adapting Bloom’s Taxonomy as a common schema for a collaborative effort.

This paper was initially presented at the "Conference on Legal Information: Scholarship and Teaching," held at the University of Colorado Law School on June 21-22, 2009, as part of its Boulder Summer Conference Series. It follows the author's own recently published challenge to law librarianship and legal research instructors to …

A Law Library Development Project In Iraq: Looking Back Two Years Later, Kimberli Kelmor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Sometimes you get a chance to work on a project so complex, even you don't come to fully understand its impact until years later. At least that has been the experience for me regarding the opportunity I had to work in Iraq with the International Human Rights Law Institute (IHRLI) from February 2004 to January 1, 2006. As I reported in a previous essay, IHRLI, an institute of the DePaul University College of Law headed by Cherif Bassiouni, received a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Higher Education and Development (HEAD) contract to work with three Iraqi law schools.' …

A Close Encounter: People To People International's Legal Research And Library Science Delegation Visits China, Richard Leiter

Marvin and Virginia Schmid Law Library: Faculty Publications

Last October, I had the privilege of leading a delegation of (mostly) law librarians on a 10-day professional visit to Beijing and ghai, China. The goal of the trip was to get acquainted with Chinese legal bibliography and China's legal system. The visit was arranged and facilitated by the People to People International Citizen Ambassadors Program headquartered in Spokane, Washington. (If you haven't heard of the organization, please check out its Web site at jwptpAi.so rsgta.)t ed on the Web site, "The purpose of People to People International is to enhance international understanding and friendship through educational, cultural, and humanitarian …

Preserving And Ensuring Long-Term Access To Digitally Born Legal Information, Sarah Rhodes, Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

Written laws, records and legal materials form the very foundation of a democratic society. Lawmakers, legal scholars and everyday citizens alike need, and are entitled, to access the current and historic materials that comprise, explain, define, critique and contextualize their laws and legal institutions. The preservation of legal information in all formats is imperative. Thus far, the twenty-first century has witnessed unprecedented mass-scale acceptance and adoption of digital culture, which has resulted in an explosion in digital information. However, digitally born materials, especially those that are published directly and independently to the Web, are presently at an extremely high risk …

Who Gets To Be The Expert?: Legal Research Skills Certification In Legal Education, Richard Leiter

Marvin and Virginia Schmid Law Library: Faculty Publications

This article considers the question of whether there is a need for law schools to offer certification for specialization in legal research skills and discusses various approaches to legal research skills cer­tification. The author argues that it is unnecessary to offer legal research certification as it is presupposed that a basic legal educa­tion should include instruction in how to find and read the law. Anything less is a failed legal education.

Exactly how special are legal research skills? Are they special enough to warrant certification? As a matter of fact, the act of legal researching is so intimately connected with …

The Law Librarian Of The Twentieth And Twenty-First Centuries: A Figuration In Flux, Theodora Belniak

Law Librarian Journal Articles

Through inspection of scholarly writings of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Ms. Belniak articulates the skill sets, knowledge areas, and personality characteristics of the archetypal law librarian over the last one hundred years.

The Law Librarian’S Tool For Fair Compensation In The Best - And Worst - Of Times, Femi Cadmus, Loretta Orndoff

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Canadian Legal Information Institute - Ten Years On, Yemisi Dina, Louise Hamel

Articles & Book Chapters

CanLII, the free virtual law library for Canada, has its roots in three separate developments. The first was the launch of the Legal Information Institute movement, with Cornell and Australia as the first models of these efforts. Second, in Canada, LexUM (Centre for Research at the Universit6 de Montreal's Faculty of Law) had a long history of supporting open access to law since it started publishing the case law of the Supreme Court of Canada. Third, the Director of the Law Society of Upper Canada at the time was advocating to the National Virtual Library Group of the Federation of …

Open Access To Student-Edited Law Journals, Benjamin J. Keele

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Thinking Like A Research Expert: Schemata For Teaching Complex Problem-Solving Skills, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

The difference between expert and novice problem solvers is that experts have organized their thinking into schemata or mental constructs to both see and solve problems. This article demonstrates why schemata are important, arguing that they need to be made explicit in the classroom. It illustrates the use of schemata to understand and categorize complex research problems, map the terrain of legal research resources, match appropriate resources to types of problems, and work through the legal research process. The article concludes by calling upon librarians and research instructors to produce additional schemata and develop a common hierarchical taxonomy of skills, …

The Changing Shape Of Legal Information, David H. Michels, Mark Lewis

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

As IT, Reference and Instruction librarians, we have experienced significant changes to the shape of legal information over the past five years. The changes are to both the very nature of legal information and how we perceive it. This can be illustrated by our use of the phrase "legal information". Depending on your age and life situation, the words "legal information" will have created specific images in your mind. These changes in perception challenge how we develop our programs of legal research instruction.

Making The Leap To Management: Tips For The Aspiring And New Manager, Femi Cadmus

Faculty Scholarship

As the result of innate ability, a fortunate few are able to effortlessly transition from line positions. However, most of us need to plot the path to management astutely and with deliberation. Library professionals might also become "accidental" managers, finding themselves thrust into an unplanned and perhaps unwanted managerial position for which they were not prepared. This is particularly true in the current climate of constrained budgets characterized by restructuring, job freezes, and layoffs.

Bluebook, Citations, And All That Jazz, Frederick W. Dingledy

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

The Missing Lawyering Skill, Richard Leiter

Marvin and Virginia Schmid Law Library: Faculty Publications

Educating Lawyers, a new book from the Carnegie Foundation, analyzes our modern system of legal education, and, in some measure, finds it wanting. The authors set out to evaluate legal education's response to decades old criticisms that it fails t teach lawyering skills and legal ethics.