Annual Report 2005 - 06
Student Services
Every year, Cornell Law Library improves and expands the professional services offered to Cornell Law students. Our annual Strategies for Summer program successfully reached more students than ever this spring. This series of events, held the first week in April, enables students to hone the research skills they will use during their summer employment. Pat Court held a general research review session, Jean Callihan and Matt Morrison conducted Internet research sessions, and all Research Attorneys provided Research Appointments with personalized research training to interested students, focusing on specific resources of their jurisdiction or practice area. Registration for any Strategies for Summer event automatically enrolled students in a drawing for a $50.00 Starbucks gift certificate, won by 2L Rebecca Rendell.
C
ornell Law Library prides itself on its expert legal research and vast collections available to faculty in support of their scholarship and teaching. All members of the library provided substantial research assistance to faculty in this regard. Here are some notable examples from the past year:
• Created an extensive historical table detailing United States Senate electoral outcomes by year
and party from 1900-2002; • Identified and compiled a set of software licensing materials; • Created a bibliography of materials dealing with the Anti-Terrorism and Death Penalty Act; • Advised on the creation of the Labor Law Clinic Library; • Researched the history of patronage and civil service reform;
Each student-produced journal has a Research Attorney who is their liaison to the library: Matt Morrison with Cornell Law Review; Thomas Mills with Cornell International Law Journal; Julie Jones with Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy; and, new this year, Pat Court with LII’s Supreme Court Oral Argument Previews. Jean Callihan coordinated the research orientation for journal editors and associates. Nancy Moore, Document Delivery Supervisor, instructed journal staff members on Law Library support via Borrow Direct and Interlibrary Loan. Other liaison efforts include Thomas Mills with the International Moot Court teams, and Janet Gillespie with the Cornell Law Student Association. Jean Callihan conducted the 4th Annual Student Legal Research Survey to discover students’ legal research experiences during their summer employment and keep our services current. Of the one hundred and nineteen students responding, 60% worked for law firms, an increase from 48% reported last year, and 16% worked for the government (federal, state, or local). Both print and online research was done by 90% of the students for at least half of their research. More than half (53%) were interested in receiving additional legal research instruction, with most indicating interest in advanced online research.
• Compiled historical materials on New York’s marriage law and current articles on the issue of
same-sex marriage; and • Researched the cost of international criminal tribunals.
In support of the law school’s commitment to empirical scholarship, Matt Morrison is collaborating with UCLA librarians and faculty in developing an online database of empirical legal scholarship for the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (JELS), based at Cornell Law School. This type of scholarship is notoriously difficult to research given the presently available tools. This database will be a tremendous resource to empirical legal scholars world-wide. The Law Library Faculty Publications Task Force investigated the feasibility of using DSpace or ePrints as an additional repository for faculty scholarship beyond the NELLCO Depository and SSRN. This would make faculty scholarship increasingly available to the public and broaden their international exposure. Jean Pajerek attended a session on the Cornell implementation of DSpace and also a workshop in Denver on how to administer an institutional repository in furtherance of this continuing project.
Two prize winners were drawn from the pool of survey respondents. Paul Saindon, pictured here with Jean Callihan, won a $25.00 Barnes & Noble gift certificate.
Evening reference hours improved this year to provide continuous research assistance from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Research Attorneys are now available from 5-6 p.m. Monday through Thursday to address student demand immediately after classes end for the day.
We solicited contributions for the Cornell Legal Scholarship Repository from both faculty and LL.M. students. Interest from LL.M. students was high, including one who has submitted his Master’s thesis. We also added the first non-English language entry which was on Labor Contracts written in Chinese, with an English abstract. In less than two months the article had been downloaded 62 times.
In addition to scholarship support, the Law Library also provides classroom support. Every semester, Research Attorneys provide targeted legal research instruction specific to a faculty member’s course to assist students in writing their papers. This year, these instruction sessions were provided in Law and Society, Immigration Law, the Asylum and Convention Against Torture Appellate Clinic, Ethical Issues in Criminal Practice, Principles of American Writing, Feminist Jurisprudence, Japanese Law, Law and Social Change, Legal Narratives, Competition Law and Policy, and History of the Common Law in England and America.
Faculty Services
Teaching
To facilitate researchers’ use of the many electronic legal resources provided by the Law Library, Julie Jones developed the Online Legal Resources database on the web, with technical assistance from Sasha Skenderija. This was an important project to highlight the numerous digital resources that provide rich collections of legal documents available to the Cornell law community beyond the online catalog.
The Research Attorneys continued to partner successfully with the Lawyering faculty to bring essential legal research skills to the first year students. Pat Court, Jean Callihan, Charlie Finger, Julie Jones, Thomas Mills, and Matt Morrison covered topics including statutes, case law, secondary sources, Westlaw and Lexis, administrative law, and the Internet through lectures, hands-on training, and exercises in both the fall and spring semesters.
Collections
Jean Pajerek coordinated the addition of nearly 22,000 bibliographic records representing the titles in The Making of Modern Law to the online catalog, providing access to over 10 million pages of American and British historical treatises. Bibliographic records provide easy access to new e-titles as they are added to the HeinOnline Legal Classics Library and to the LLMC Digital Collection.
www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library/liberia
With technical assistance from Sasha Skenderija, Thomas Mills developed a web site on Liberian Law to highlight the important primary resources collected during the Liberian Codification Project and rare manuscripts dealing with Liberia's early history. Thomas is working with Lawyers Without Borders, a United Nations Committee (UNMIL), and the State Department to help re-establish the rule of law in Liberia by making the present Liberian Code readily available.
The Research Attorneys continued to offer upper level courses which remain popular with students: “first course that I feel I will be able to directly apply in my legal career” “instructors did an excellent job”
International and Foreign Legal Research was taught by
Thomas Mills in the fall, and due to popular demand, was offered again in the spring.
“supportive and helpful”
Julie Jones created and taught a successful new law school course entitled Law Practice Technology in the spring semester to upper class law students and LL.M.s, which had the second longest waiting list of all law school courses offered that semester.
“learned skills and techniques”
U.S. Legal Research for LL.M. Students was taught by Pat
“this class was very organized”
Comments from course evaluations
Court in both the fall and spring semesters, due to high student demand. Jean Callihan and Matt Morrison each taught a session of this class in the spring.
Pat Court, Jean Callihan, and Matt Morrison taught the Advanced Legal Research 3 credit seminar during the spring to upper class students, giving them the opportunity to analyze the available legal resources in their chosen substantive area of law.
World Law Reform documents are now available in online form only, rather than on microfiche. Mae Leckey cataloged these web documents providing full text access through the online catalog to the individual documents on legal issues from around the world.
In addition to its customary orientation workshops, the Law Library created new workshops throughout the year to target specialized audiences:
U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978: This digital collection of more
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than 240,000 documents makes searchable records that are of prime importance in legal, political, economic, and constitutional history. Researchers can more easily study and analyze the words and trends of the Court. The Cornell Law Library already has one of the few original paper collections of these documents directly from the Court, and the most recent years of Records and Briefs are available on Lexis, Westlaw, Internet, and microfiche.
Pat Court participated on a panel presentation on Interdisciplinary and Critical Legal Studies for LL.M. students, presented by Professors Meyler, Heise, Riles, and Kysar. She discussed how students could publish their writings on these topics in the Cornell Legal Scholarship Repository (see page 2);
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Jean Callihan participated in a National Business Institute Continuing Legal Education program in Syracuse and presented a workshop on “Internet Strategies for Legal Professionals”;
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Thomas Mills presented, with Xian Wu and Beth Katzoff from Wason Library, a workshop on Chinese-Japanese-Korean Legal Research for the entire Cornell University campus; and
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Jean Callihan and Charlie Finger taught a 1.5 Ethics credit CLE class on "Ethical Lawyering in a Technical World" during the Alumni Reunion.
Catalogers began a three-year reclassification project to move materials out of the now obsolete “JX” International Law classification and into the modern “KZ” Law of Nations classification scheme. Over 2,500 titles have been reclassified in this first year of the plan.
Claire Germain, the Edward Cornell Law Librarian and Professor of Law, served as President of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). She traveled widely through the United States and Europe representing AALL at conferences and working groups, including the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) in Florence, Italy. Notably, she spoke at the 70th Anniversary celebration of the Federal Register in Washington, D.C. Among her many accomplishments as President, Claire greatly encouraged law librarians to partner with decision makers in their institutions and to pioneer change by building relationships and raising our visibility.
From left to right: Thomas Mills, Jean Callihan, Jean Pajerek, Claire Germain, Julie Jones, Janet Gillespie, Matt Morrison at 2006 AALL Centennial Annual Meeting
From left to right: IALL President Jules Winterton, Stuart Basefsky, Claire Germain, and IALL Second Vice-President
InSITE, the bi-weekly current awareness newsletter of legal web site annotations, celebrated its 10th Anniversary this year. Marked with the introduction of an RSS feed, the occasion received much attention from the information community. The "Law Librarian Blog" now reproduces the entire content of each issue of InSITE, and we have been cited in other blogs, and in an article in Law Library Journal. The first issue of InSITE was published on February 19, 1996.
Planning & Facilities The Space Planning & Collections Task Force made some preliminary recommendations for establishing a new area for older materials needing protection, creating a high tech group study room, refurbishing the seminar room for multiple use, and installing new comfortable seating for students. Progress has been made in reviewing duplicate sets of reporters and journals for withdrawal, which would make space for the growing on-site collection. Most library offices received new carpet in June. This is the first recarpetting since the wing was built in 1988. It is a noteworthy improvement to the work space. Recarpetting Technical Services in 340 Myron Taylor Hall.
Š Sheryl D. Sinkow Photography
In the News
O From left to right: Cornell University Librarian Sarah Thomas, Dean Stewart Schwab, Professor Bob Summers, Law School Advisory Council member Sheppard Guryan, J.D. '67, Joan P. Guryan, and Law Library Director Claire Germain.
n September 23, the Law Library celebrated the acquisition of its 700,000th volume and the five volumes leading up to that milestone. Timed to coincide with the visit of the Law School Advisory Council, books by Professors Clermont, Hillman, Simson, Wippman, and Dean Schwab were included, and the 700,000th was Form and Function in a Legal System-A General Study by Professor Robert Summers. Cornell University Librarian Sarah Thomas welcomed the guests, while Professor Germain discussed the accomplishments of the library and faculty. Dean Schwab delivered remarks on Form and Function and presented a framed book plate to Sheppard A. Guryan, J.D. '67. The Summers book was purchased with funds from the Sheppard Guryan Law Library Endowment on the History of Jurisprudence and American Legal Thought. Mr. Guryan is one of several very generous Law Library donors on the Advisory Council.
This year the library hosted three open houses in the Rare Book Room: one for the Law School Staff and Administration, one for LL.M. and J.S.D. students, and one for Alumni. These events provided distinct constituencies of the Law Library the opportunity to explore our unique rare books and special collections. Collection experts Claire Germain, Thomas Mills, Jean Callihan, Brian Eden, and Nancy Moore answered questions and highlighted some of the notable Claire Germain sharing the rare features to attendees. book collection with Dean Schwab (right) and Patti Dickerson (left)
Julie Jones created a series of five bookmarks using photographs she took of the Law Library. These have been popular, quickly disappearing from the library. To update our look, we changed the name and banner of our newsletter to The Primary Source. It is now published on the first of every month while school is in session. The new design and format have received consistently positive feedback from both students and administration.
Outreach
Crystal Hackett received the 2006 CUL Outstanding Performance Award, a great honor bestowed on library staff who have made significant contributions to library operations and services. December saw promotions for several Research Attorneys. Jean Callihan is now an Associate Librarian; Matt Morrison, Thomas Mills, and Julie Jones were each promoted to Senior Assistant Librarians. Services awards went to Jane Drumheller for 5 years and Pat
Thomas Mills attended the Northeast Foreign Law Cooperative group meeting in NYC to coordinate
collection development efforts with law libraries at Yale, NYU, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Fordham, and Georgetown. Cornell Law Library became a full member and assumed primary collecting responsibility for Israel, Thailand, Sweden, and Liberia. Thomas has been working with a high-ranking member of the Thai government to secure Thai legal materials directly from government sources in order to build the collection. He also attended the IALL conference in Florence, is the book review editor for IALL’s International Journal of Legal Information, served on the IFLP Advisory Board, and attended a grant writing workshop in Boston. From left to right: Pat Court, Crystal Hackett, Claire Germain
Court for 15 years of service to the University.
Technical Services Student Assistant Stephanie Hoffman received the Cornell University Student Employee Recognition Award during National Student Employment Week, presented by Kirsten Gabriel, Program Coordinator for The Cornell Tradition.
Library Staff
Stephanie Hoffman
Jean Callihan continued to serve as Treasurer of the Association of Law Libraries of Upstate New York (ALLUNY), and is a columnist for the organization’s newsletter. She attended the annual ALLUNY meetings in Buffalo and Syracuse. She continued as a member of the AALL Research Committee, which awarded $10,000 in grants, and will take over as Committee Chair in July. Jean coordinated a program for the 2006 AALL Annual Meeting in St. Louis on “Successful Networking: Nontraditional Liaison Programs.” Jean has book reviews published in two issues of the International Journal of Legal Information. Pat Court was elected to the Alumni Board of the Indiana University School of Library
and Information Science and attended the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools on Empirical Scholarship, in January 2006. For the 2006 Annual Meeting of AALL, Pat coordinated “Trends in Legal Education and Law Practice,” a colloquy with a law school dean, law firm partner, law library director, and judge on the new directions in law and justice, to help librarians envisage transformative library services. Charles Finger is vice-president/president elect for the Association of Law Libraries of
Upstate New York (ALLUNY), coordinating programming for the annual spring institute in Syracuse, and attending the meetings in Buffalo and Syracuse. Julie Jones served as a member of the AALL ALL-SIS Faculty Services Committee, co-
presenting results of a survey regarding services provided to faculty members at the 2005 AALL Annual Meeting in San Antonio. She served on the AALL Public Relations Committee, judging the AALL Excellence in Marketing Contest. She attended the AALS Conference in Washington, D.C., and attended the ALLUNY Spring Conference in Syracuse. She worked on three articles, two discussing library marketing, and one involving judicial statistics. All will be published late summer and early fall of 2006. She continues to serve as editor of the Law Library’s newsletter, The Primary Source.
Matt Morrison chaired the Editorial Board sub-committee on Law Library Journal Article of the Year and
joined the Law Library Journal/Spectrum Editorial Board, attending the annual Board meeting in Chicago in November. He prepared and advised on revisions to the Gale Encyclopedia of Everyday Law, Second Edition, as a member of the publication’s Editorial Advisory Board. Matt attended the ALLUNY meeting in Syracuse, and the CALI Conference on Law School Computing, hosted by Nova Southeastern in Ft. Lauderdale in June. As well, he coordinated a discussion between the Research Attorneys and the Lawyering faculty on the current state of legal research in law practice. Jean Pajerek was co-author with two CUL colleagues on an article on the maintenance of electronic
serials, which was published in the July 2005 issue of Library Resources & Technical Services. She worked diligently to select educational programs as a member of AALL’s Annual Meeting Program Committee. She worked with the Franklin Pierce Law Center on their Google Search Appliance project, creating a 1000-record sample of bibliographic records for them to use as a testbed. She attended the annual conference of the North American Serials Interest Group, including a pre-conference on institutional repositories. Sasha Skenderija lectured and continued to consult the Fulbright Senior Specialist Program. He advised
on the development of the new National Library of Technology in Prague, lectured on U.S. research library developments, and has continued to consult on organization and digital initiatives at the NLT. He attended the CASLIN 2006 International Librarianship Conference, devoted to issues of users’ feedback. Sasha attended the conference on Computers in Libraries 2006, and visited UCLA Law School at the invitation of Professor Katherine Stone to plan the migration of the Globalization and Labor Standards (GALS) database from Cornell to UCLA Law Library. He published two articles discussing academic knowledge environments.
Cornell Law Library Staff Front row, sitting left to right: Jean Callihan, Janet Gillespie, Jean Pajerek, Nancy Moore Second row, standing left to right: Sue Hills, Julie Jones, Crystal Hackett, Laura Robert, Claire Germain, Jane Drumheller, Gary Bogart Third row, standing left to right: Matt Morrison, Charlie Finger, Sasha Skenderija, Elizabeth Teskey, Mae Leckey, Pat Jones Not pictured: Pat Court, Brian Eden, Betsy Hand, Kathy Hartman, Thomas Mills
Collaboration with CUL
Cornell Law Library continues to partner successfully with Cornell University Library, and all law librarians serve on CUL committees. Claire Germain continued to serve on the Library Management Team. Jean Callihan and Pat Court are members of the Council of Librarians, for which Jean Pajerek serves as co-chair of the Steering Committee.
Law Library Stats Gifts & Endowments The Law Library continues to benefit from the generosity of alumni and friends. This year, a new fund was established to create a collection of Israeli Law in English.
Pat Court participated in the CUL program for New Graduate Students in August; continues to serve on the Public Services Executive Committee (PSEC) and on the Public Services/Public Computing Advisory Committee. She conducted a tour of the Law Library for CUL staff, hosting a record number of participants.
Arthur H. Rosenbloom LL.B. ‘59 Law Library Endowment
Israeli Law
Jack Clarke ’52 Comparative Law Book Fund
Foreign, Comparative, &
Jean Callihan served on the Academic Personnel Policies Committee and on the PSEC Reference and Outreach Committee where she worked extensively on a CUL-wide statistical sampling program to measure reference activity. She also completed a 10 week course offered by Library Human Resources on Crucial Conversations.
Sheppard A. Guryan ’67 Law Library Endowment
Charlie Finger served on the Collection Development Executive Committee and the Social Science Selector Committee. Janet Gillespie served on the PSEC Access Services Committee and worked on complex issues of copyright and new services to faculty. Julie Jones served on Priority Committee #4: Communications & Marketing, which analyzed survey results and proposed next steps. That team is currently helping to hire a new CUL Director of Communications. Julie actively participated in the Mentor Program, and was given a two year appointment to the Fuerst Award Committee. In June 2006, she was appointed to the newly formed CUL group charged with the development of a Library of Case Studies for the Cornell University Task Force on Life in the Age of the Genome. Thomas Mills is on Priority Committee #3: Information Fluency, working with a select number of classes across campus to incorporate information fluency objectives, including his International and Foreign Legal Research class. He was part of a fourmember panel during CUL’s professional development week on structuring information and research classes. Jean Pajerek continues to serve as the Law Library’s representative to the Working Group on Cataloging and the Advisory Council for Technical Services and is a member of the Voyager Security Committee. She attended a workshop on “Managing Transitions” at the request of the AUL for Technical Services; a 6-hour workshop, “Metadata Standards and Applications;” a 14-hour workshop, “Metadata and Digital Library Development;” and attended the 10-week course in “Crucial Conversations.” Elizabeth Teskey continued to serve as co-editor of the CUL newsletter, Kaleidoscope, and to coordinate the United Way fund raising campaign for CUL.
International Law History of Jurisprudence & American Legal Thought Earl J. Bennett 1901 Collection
Statutory Material
Judge Alfred J. Loew Memorial Fund
Education & other Acquisitions
Harry Bitner Research Program
Research Fellows
Public Services Reference Questions Answered Materials checked out, renewed, or used in the building Items utilized from Rare Book Room and Cage One hour instruction session provided to 1,084 students Tours given to 230 participants Interlibrary loan items borrowed for law faculty & students Interlibrary loan items lent to other libraries Book & Copy Service materials provided to faculty from other campus libraries
8,415 23,201 300 252 21 1,254 1,757 1,821
Acquisitions & Cataloging Titles Cataloged: Print titles 2,026 Microforms 31 Serials microforms 13 Audiovisual 8 Computer files 20 Serials titles added 87 ——————————— Total 2,185
Total Serial Titles on June 30, 2006 Total Print Volumes on June 30, 2006 Total Volumes & Volume Equivalents
6,850 526,457 709,807
Cover photo: Kathleen Rourke September 2005 Back photo: Julie Jones June 2006