Cornell Law Library Myron Taylor Hall Ithaca, New York 14853
Annual Report 1987/88
Stress was a very prominent component of almost every activity in the Law Library this year. Two dedicated long-term employees left, Alan Diefenbach from the reference staff and Lois Peret from the cataloging staff. The acquisitions budget was cut for the year, creating great pressure on collection development. The implementation of the NOTIS system was not as smooth as had been hoped. Fortunately the construction around Myron Taylor had little impact on the library until the very end of the year.
Staff Alan Diefenbach joined the Law Library reference staff in 1970. Over seventeen years he developed a fine expertise in international and foreign law as well as the most thorough knowledge of this collection of anyone on the staff. When he moved to the Harvard Law Library in June 1987, he left a tremendous void here. We did not attempt to hire an experienced foreign law librarian to replace his expertise, rather we embarked on training other staff to fill his place. Margie Axtmann assumed responsibility for maintaining and developing the foreign and international collections, acquiring the additional title of "Foreign and International Bibliographer" to mark this responsibil ity. She attended a special foreign law institute following the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries in June 1988 to advance her skills in this area and plans to audit certain law school courses. A recent library school graduate, with a law degree, was hired to fill the reference vacancy. Because of his inexperience, the Practice Training I course was taught by two people -John Hasko and Bruce Kennedy - rather than the three or four who had taught it for the past several years. Unfortunately the new reference librarian's front-line reference skills were disappointing, so he left at the end of the year. Another loss in the Public Services Department was felt deeply when Nancy Moore, the leader of the support staff, accepted a promotion to the inter-library lending staff in Olin Library. Nancy's promotion was the direct result of her effective and pleasant service in the Law Library. Lois Peret, who had been a copy cataloger in the Law Library for twelve years and had become a respected, stabalizing force in the Cataloging Department, married and moved to Vermont during the summer of 1987. Janet Gillespie moved from Public Services to take Lois' position, but when Nancy Moore left, Janet elected to move back to Public Services in Nancy's position. Mae Leckey was then promoted to Lois’ position and Kathy Hartman, who had started her library career in Acquisitions here some ten years before, was lured back from Uris Library to take Mae's position.