As many of you know, Sara Robbins, director of Brooklyn Law School’s library for twenty years, was killed in a pedestrian accident on December 13, 2006. Ms Robbins served as Chair of ALL-SIS in 1996-97. She received her J.D. from Ohio State and M.L.S. from Pratt Institute. She began her career in librarianship as a Cataloger at Brooklyn Law and then went on to serve as Head of Technical Services at Cardozo Law School. Before attending law school, she worked as Morris Cohen’s research assistant on his Bibliography of American Law. Sara’s primary publication was the coffee table book, Law: a Treasury of Art and Literature. She regularly served on ABA site inspection teams, was a member of the ABA’s Committee on Libraries, and, at the time of her death, the executive committee of the AALS Section on Libraries. A short biography of her is available here. ALL-SIS made a donation to the Centennial Fund in her memory.
The Collection Development Committee of ALL-SIS is currently in the process of updating its directory of collection development contacts for all academic libraries. You can expect an e-mail or phone call to confirm your contact information from Courtney Selby or Edward Hart sometime during the spring of 2007 as we work toward completion of this project.
Coleman Karesh Law Librarians meet the Chief Justice of the United States
Supreme Court
On October 19 & 20, 2006, the Honorable John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice
of the United States Supreme Court, visited the University of South Carolina
School of Law. On October 19th, he was honored at a reception and formal dinner,
hosted by President and Mrs. Andrew Sorensen, and on October 20th, he presided
over a moot court argument at the School of Law. The law librarians at the
Coleman Karesh Law Library were invited to the dinner and had the opportunity
to meet Chief Justice Roberts after the moot court argument. Chief Justice
Roberts was charming and gracious to all. To watch the streaming video of the
oral arguments and the question and answer session with the chief Justice afterwards,
go to mms://ms3.deis.sc.edu/AllAccess/Roberts_10_20_06.wmv.
The Alexander Campbell King Law Library of the University of Georgia recently received a Briggs Award from Briggs and Associates, a supported employment firm. The award was given for creating a job for a local citizen with developmental disabilities and successfully integrating her into the staff of the library and the law school. The job creation process used, called “job carving,” looks at the unmet staffing needs of the library and matches them with the interests and talents of the supported employment client.
Mark Podvia, Dickinson School of Law of the Pennsylvania State University, graduated in December from Penn State with a Master of Arts degree in American Studies.
Leslie A. Pardo, formerly the Circulation & Faculty Services Librarian for the Cleveland Marshall College of Law Library at Cleveland State University, is now the Access Services Librarian for the John J. Ross-William C. Blakley Law Library at Arizona State University.
Colleen Williams has joined the Young Law Library, University of Arkansas as Reference Librarian. She was previously Reference Librarian at the Georgia State University College of Law Library.
The Barry University School of Law Library has added a third Reference Librarian to its faculty. Jennifer Greig arrived in October 2006. She previously worked as an attorney in North Carolina before returning to school for her library degree. This is Jenny’s first law library position, and she shows tremendous promise and aptitude. Jenny looks forward to meeting her many academic law librarian colleagues from across the country when she attends the AALL Annual Meeting this summer. Welcome Jenny!
Duke University Law Library is pleased to announce the appointment of Lauren Collins to the position of Reference Librarian. Lauren will begin her new position on March 1, 2007. Lauren earned her M.L.S. from the University of Michigan and her J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She comes to Duke with experience in both law practice and professional law librarianship. Most recently, she served as Public Services Librarian/Instructional Services at Wayne State University’s Arthur Neef Law Library. Lauren will supervise the law library’s Faculty Research Assistants Program in addition to teaching, faculty liaison and other reference services responsibilities.
The Seattle University Law Library is very pleased to announce that Tina S. Ching joined their staff as a reference/research librarian on January 2nd. Tina holds a J.D. from University of Oregon School of Law and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Washington. She was formerly the Electronic Services Librarian at the Arizona State University Ross-Blakely Law Library.
Candle Wester-Mittan joined the Southern Illinois University School of Law Library faculty as access services librarian and assistant professor on December 4, 2006. Candle is a recent M.S.L.I.S. graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received a J.D. from the University of Nebraska and a B.S. in business administration from Nebraska Wesleyan University. Candle will also be teaching research in the school’s lawyering skills program.
Congratulations to Ruth Hill, Head of Reference at Loyola Law School of Los Angeles. Ruth is to succeed Alvin Roché Jr. as Director of the Law Library at Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Congratulations, Ruth!
Laurence Seidenberg has joined the Syracuse University College of Law Barclay Law Library as Reference Librarian as of last spring, 2006. He is an attorney and has a J.D. from the University of Toledo College of Law and an M.L.I.S. from the Pratt Institute, NY. He also has a M. Ed. from The College of New Jersey and practiced law in New Jersey.
The Gould Law Library at Touro Law Center in Huntington, New York, has three new members of its reference staff. Roy Sturgeon is the new Foreign and International Law Librarian. Roy obtained an M.L.S. from St. John’s University, a J.D. from Valparaiso University, and an L.L.M. in Chinese Law from Tsinghua University. Leslie Wong is a new Reference Librarian at Touro. She obtained her J.D. from Hofstra University and is licensed by the State Bar of New York. She previously worked in real estate transactions and as an insurance defense litigator. She currently is attending Queen’s College and will obtain her M.L.I.S. in 2007. Christine Morton also is a new Reference Librarian at Touro. Christine has a J.D. from New York Law School and is licensed by the State Bar of New York. She previously worked in the area of mental health law. Christine graduated with an M.L.S. from St. John’s University in December of 2006. These three new librarians joined the Touro Law Center staff as the school prepared to move this past fall into a new facility in Central Islip, New York, directly adjacent to federal and state courthouses.
The members of AALL’s SR-SIS Standing Committee on Lesbian and Gay Issues proudly announce the release of Sexual Orientation And The Law: A Research Bibliography, published by Hein as AALL Publication Series #74. This significant work represents the collaborative efforts of law librarians across the country, many of whom are ALL-SIS members. This bibliography includes a previously published, unannotated bibliography covering the years 1969 - 1993, the new annotated bibliography covering the years 1994 - 2005, a wonderful introduction discussing social changes and the corresponding development of the sexual orientation legal literature by Brad Sears, the Executive Director of the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA School of Law, as well as a case name index and an author index.
Joel Fishman, Assistant Director for Lawyer Services, Duquesne U. Center for Legal Information/Allegheny County Law Library, has become the Book Review Editor for the Legal History & Rare Book Newsletter. He is the author of Index to the Pennsylvania Bar Association Quarterly Volumes 1-77 (1929-2006), contact Joel if you wish to purchase a copy; and articles on “Benjamin Franklin” in Rodney Carlisle, ed. One Day in History--July 4, 1776 (Harper Collins 2006) and “Oliver Cromwell” and “Trial of the Seven Bishops” in P. Finkelman, ed., Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties (Routledge 2006).
Carol Avery Nicholson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kathrine R. Everett Law Library, Ruth Johnson Hill, Loyola Law School of Los Angeles, and Vicente E. Garces, University of Minnesota Law Library, are co-editors of the recently published, Celebrating Diversity: A Legacy of Minority Leadership in AALL, AALL Publication Series No. 71.
Mark Podvia, Dickinson School of Law of the Pennsylvania State University, co-authored (with Professor William Butler) an introduction to a Lawbook Exchange reprint of the Honorable John Reed’s Pennsylvania Blackstone.
Radu D. Popa, Director of the Law Library and Assistant Dean for Library Services at New York University School of Law, has just published a fiction book entitled Lady V., at Spuyten Duyvl Publishing House, www.spuytenduyvil.net/fiction/ladyv.htm.
Laurence Seidenberg, Syracuse University College of Law Barclay Law Library, recently published a book review of Intellectual Property Law and Private International Law: Heading for the Future, by Joseph Drexl and Annette Kur, Hart Publishing, Oxford, UK (2005) in the NYU Global Law Book Review program at www.globallawbooks.org. The review is available at www.globallawbooks.org/reviews/detail.asp?id=302.
Fred R. Shapiro, Associate Librarian for Collections and Access and Lecturer in Legal Research at Yale Law School, has published the Yale Book of Quotations (Yale University Press, 2006). This is intended to supplant Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as the most authoritative quotation dictionary. It also effectively extends and updates the Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations, since it includes extensive coverage of legal quotations including British legal quotations not covered by the ODALQ.
Mary Whisner, Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington School of Law, has collected the first six years of her “Practicing Reference” column from Law Library Journal in a book. They are arranged thematically, updated, and indexed. Practicing Reference: Thoughts for Librarians and Legal Researchers is part of AALL’s Publication Series, published by William S. Hein & Co.
Please send future submissions for the ALL-SIS Member News Column to Sue Kelleher, skelleher@mail.barry.edu.