AALL Vice President/President-Elect Candidate Interviews

AALL Vice President/President-Elect candidates Timothy L. Coggins and Victoria K. (Tory) Trotta present some of their views about the profession in the following interview. We thank them for their participation.

1. What is the most important issue facing the law library profession in the next five years?

Tim Coggins: The most important issue facing law librarians in the next five years is continuing to provide legal and other information to our many users (the public, judges, attorneys, law students, law professors, corporate officers, etc.) in an efficient and timely manner. This seemingly naive response is actually very complex because there are many factors that affect how well we can perform this responsibility. Law librarians work with users who have access to more information than ever before, and our responsibility is to help them sort, evaluate, manage, and use this information. Users need our expertise to evaluate the information as well as the many delivery systems and formats. Law librarians need to know their clients well and understand what is best for specific users. Users expect more and faster service, and we must manage our libraries to meet those needs and expectations. Our work as excellent human and financial resources managers will enable us to deliver our services faster and efficiently. We must constantly develop our own skills and knowledge through continuing education activities and networking with our colleagues to perform well. There are two more important components of providing legal and other information to many users: preservation of information and ensuring access to information. Information, including born digital information, must be preserved and archived in a way that ensures future accessibility. We also cannot ignore the importance of working closely with elected and appointed officials to ensure timely and equitable access to information for everyone, while at the same time committing ourselves to provide legal information to the public to ensure an informed citizenry.

Tory Trotta: After reading Beyond the Boundaries: Report of the AALL Special Committee on the Future of Law Libraries in the Digital Age, it’s hard not to feel that a paradigm shift is upon us. The Report brilliantly articulates the complexity of the library environments in which we all find ourselves. Information produced in electronic format is generating changes in the way we conduct our service programs. Reductions in the buying power of the fiscal resources under our control are interfering with our ability to provide the top-notch innovative collections and services we know our patron groups deserve. Moreover, we are witnessing a shift in the laws that render this exciting electronic environment somewhat less hospitable to library principles that have ensured service to our patrons - ownership, fair use, document delivery. It’s hard for us to keep abreast of the developments in all these areas.

Normally we would turn to our association to lead the way in crafting and delivering educational programs that could help us stay current. But just as our own institutional resources are under stress, so too are the resources of our association. Just when we need association leadership dedicated to educating current and future law librarians on the trends and realities of our new environment, our association’s ability to expend resources in this area is diminishing. I believe that finding adequate association resources for education and training will remain a critical issue for our profession during the next five years.

2. How do you respond to the legal researcher who refuses to use print materials because everything she needs is available online?

Tory Trotta: We all hear this myth with alarming regularity these days. While younger law students and newer lawyers are initially susceptible to this notion, I find they can be reasoned with to some extent. The most dangerous audience is the lawyer who serves in a managerial capacity and is using this myth to justify diverting precious resources away from the library collection and or library space to some other purpose, because ‘everything is online’. I find that an effective initial approach is to give an abbreviated ‘elevator speech’ in the form of an anecdote that illustrates a meaningful flaw in the researcher’s conclusions. Once I get a verbal ‘foot in the door’, I find I have a better chance of eventually disabusing the researcher of her ill-advised opinion. We all have our favorite stories, these are my current favorites.

1) “The Bond Buyer” – During my law firm days, a lawyer urged me to cancel the paper version of this newspaper and rely on the CALR file in order, he said, “to save money.” As you can guess, both formats were not identical. The truly frightening part of this tale was that not only did the CALR vendor not know what was and wasn’t included in the electronic version of the publication, neither did the Bond Buyer. Needless to say, the paper format was retained. 2) “The Sloppy Researcher” – A medical researcher relied on a Google search to identify potential adverse reactions to a chemical scheduled to be used in an asthma research study. An otherwise healthy research subject subsequently died after inhaling the chemical during the study. The warnings about the chemical actually appeared in articles published in the 1950s, and competent indexing of this information was readily available in book and even some electronic indexes. Google missed it. 3) “The Missing Supreme Court Footnote” – In the early days of the Cornell database of Supreme Court Opinions, a legal researcher went searching for information he knew to be contained in an opinion footnote – and he could not retrieve it. Upon reaching the database technician, he learned that the technician responsible for mounting this particular opinion in the database had left out the footnotes because he did not realize they contained any important information.

Tim Coggins: There are several answers to this question. First, depending on what she wants and her definition of legal research, everything she needs might be online. She might only be searching for a name, an address, a specific recent opinion, a statute, etc. If so, then she is fortunate that there is considerable information online. Secondly, if her research requires more, then I would identify the reasons why she simply should not rely exclusively on online sources. Among those reasons are a determination of the comprehensiveness of the online source and the authenticity and authority of the online materials, the currency and method of up-dating of the online resource, the intellectual property implications that affect availability of online materials, and the pricing of the online resources compared to the print. My guess, however, is that these objective criteria might not change her mind, so I would patiently (and subtly I hope) suggest an analogy to illustrate the importance of not limiting her research.

She might consider an employment law issue, for example, that involves specific statutes such as age discrimination. Restricting her legal research only to sources online would be like limiting her search in this situation to only age discrimination statutes. If she locates and reads the statutes only, clearly her research is not complete. She has not located and read any age discrimination court decisions that have considered and interpreted the statutes and any agency regulations that detail implementation of the statutes. Without researching and analyzing the court decisions and administrative regulations, her research is weak (at best) and likely damaging to her and her client. Effective legal research involves searching (in most instances) for statutes, cases, and regulations. Similarly, effective legal research means that you might have to use print as well as online resources. Using online resources only likely will mean that you are presenting a weak case.

3. A student contacts you and says he is interested in becoming a law librarian. He knows what law librarians do, but his question is whether or not law librarianship is still a viable career choice. What would you tell him?

Tim Coggins: Quite simply, “Law Librarians Rock!” Hoping that the excitement in my first comment would get his attention, I would then tell him that law librarianship not only is a viable career choice, but likely the most exciting career choice he could make. He says that he knows what we do, but I would explain to him how important what we do is to judges, attorneys, law students, law professors, public users, clients, and numerous other groups. We provide the information and resources to these groups to make their work products, their lives, and yes, society in general better. We make certain that the information that attorneys and judges use is relevant, useful, and up-to-date. We make certain that law students know how to navigate the many materials found in our law libraries. We help public users, respecting their need for information and respecting them as individuals. We care about access to information and work closely with governments to ensure that there remains equitable access to information.

Moving away from the emotional side of my argument, I would suggest that he read two articles. The first article, “Propagating the Species: Will Librarians Go the Way of the Dodo Bird,” is authored by Christopher Vallandingham and appeared in the February 2003 AALL Spectrum. This article details the job opportunities available in the information profession, discusses the shortage of librarians, and presents profiles of several law librarians. The second article, “Care and Maintenance of the Successful Career: How Experienced Law Librarians Make Their Work Rewarding,” is edited by Paul George and appeared in the Fall 2001 Law Library Journal. This article includes twenty-three essays by experienced law librarians who write about the enthusiasm that they have for their jobs and law librarianship. Most writers conclude that law librarians do, indeed, rock!

Tory Trotta: I feel very positive about the future of law libraries and law librarianship. The faces of our libraries will change in ways we only have inklings of now, but I believe that law librarians will always be needed. Why? Because the information revolution wrought by the digital environment has complicated researchers’ lives, not simplified them. And as long as people need information, many will want assistance in identifying and selecting appropriate resources and others will seek help in navigating and evaluating that information. For these skills, we will remain the experts. The intellectual future for tomorrow’s professional lies in studying trends in publishing, technology, learning theory, and of course legal education and legal practice – all areas where change is constant and innovation continues to proceed at lightning speed. The practical future lies in converting that knowledge into creative applications and solutions that will better serve the particular information needs of our patron groups. I would tell him that law librarianship is a rewarding and fun career for those professionals who embrace unrelenting change, a learning curve that never seems to moderate, and the challenge of creative problem solving. Lastly, I would tell him that he won’t be alone on his journey – the expertise and generosity of the like-minded colleagues that constitute the American Association of Law Libraries will astound, comfort and sustain him in the years to come.