Cornell University Law Library: A Year in Review 2019-2020

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

A year ago, I presented my first message, filled with excitement about the opportunity to work with the extraordinary Cornell Law School. Now, in mid-2020, I see that eventful times awaited me— excitement, yes, if not of a kind I had anticipated then.

This time has not been easy by any measure. Many of us have friends, family, and colleagues who have experienced difficulties in connection with the global pandemic. At the Law Library we faced challenges of our own. We saw retirements and departures of colleagues, and we endure a hiring pause implemented before vacated positions could be filled. We also must limit expenditures, to help the university to ensure financial accessibility to all meritorious Cornell students and future students.

Nevertheless, the creativity and spirit of the Law Library and the Law School teams could not make me prouder; they regularly inspire me. You’ll read about the role the Law Library played in the successful switch to remote learning in March. Without skipping a beat, over the span of about a week the Law Library team planned and executed an impressive transition to make learning, teaching, and research resources and services available online to students and faculty.

The Law Library acquired and created resources to guide students in new learning platforms, resources, and strategies, and to assist faculty with their remarkable adaptation to new technologies and pedagogies, two-thirds of the way into a semester. And we redesigned Law Library resources, services, and physical space, to ensure research, instruction, and learning continuity in the unprecedented circumstances of the current academic year.

I wrote a year ago that an environment of rapid change would require the Library to be a step ahead to guide our community through it. We certainly met this challenge this year. I remain proud and honored to lead this fine Law Library.

Kim Nayyer

Edward Cornell Law Librarian

CORNELL LAW LIBRARY RESPONSE TO COVID-19

At 5PM on Friday, March 13, 2020, the Law School ceased all Ithaca-based instruction in alignment with the larger campus-wide shutdown. At that moment, all Law Library and University Library in-person services were also temporarily terminated. Despite the abrupt disruption of normal operations, the Law Library continued to provide legal scholarship, research, and teaching services, demonstrating that the heart of the Law Library is defined not by our physical space, but by our incredible people.

The Law Library partnered with the Dean of Students’ Office and other Law School administrative offices to ensure students had the technological and academic resources to successfully complete the remainder of the semester. In addition to loaning reconfigured laptops for student use, Law Library administration and staff worked with Law School faculty and their assistants to provide digital and scanned course materials for when instruction resumed remotely on Monday, March 23.

Over the next three months, the Law Library continued to review and revise how student and faculty resources were administered in response to ever-changing circumstances. A new initiative implemented during this time was the new Law Library weekly student newsletter, Keywords, which delivers information and resources in answer to the most current library-related needs. The photos displayed in the next several pages are a small representation of other changes undertaken in the Law Library in response to COVID-19, including:

• Assessing library spaces to determine new capacities under safety guidelines

• Cordoning off access to library stacks and placing signage on all Law Library floors

• Creating an online seat reservation system for law student study spaces

• Designing a contactless pickup system for revamped checkout process

• Transforming scanning request system, eliminating in-person component for safety of students, faculty and staff

A self-serve cleaning station in the socially distanced Gould Reading Room.

The contactless pickup location at the entrance of New Ground.

Law Library all-staff Zoom meeting held August 11, 2020. Top Row (L - R): Jean Pajerek, Cassandre Norgaisse, Sally Butterfield, Kathleen Hartman, Jackie Magagnosc

Middle Row (L - R): Janice Pfaff, Matthew Morrison, Jacob Sayward, Nina Scholtz, Alison Shea Bottom Row (L - R): Kim Nayyer, Shannon Slack, Sabrina Sondhi, Dave Conroy, Melissa Littlejohn

Phone participants (not pictured): Elizabeth Teskey, Cynthia Lange, Ula Knepper

In the month before the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the transition to working from home, Information Management team members had been engaged in a large project to rationalize print collection space in conjunction with a planned Law School space repurposing project. Unusually, we had to halt a major project midstream.

At that point, as for so many other people, the focus of our work changed completely—from work that was performed completely onsite to work that had to be performed completely offsite. The Library’s priority was to determine the best way to continue providing services to our community. The Information Management team played a key role in this: We paused the shipment of print materials already in the acquisitions pipeline; we asked publishers to switch to electronic invoices from paper ones, ensuring that no payment hiccups would interrupt access to resources; with the Acquisitions team, we augmented the temporarily inaccessible print collection with more resources in electronic format; and we quickly enabled access to these resources through the Library catalog.

These tasks became the new focus of some staff; at the same time, other staff members had to pause any regular work that required handling of physical materials that were not being received during this time. These staff took on long-deferred maintenance projects to clean up data in our database. The team made the most of this unexpected occasion to tackle these focus-intensive projects in a steady, concerted manner. In another project, Access Services staff collaborated with Information Management to transcribe oral history videos to make them accessible to the hearing-impaired. This is a timeand labor-intensive project that lends itself perfectly to working from home.

Top: Law Library mail accumulated during three-month long suspension of in-person services.

Bottom: Law Library staff room 340 transformed into mail handling staging area by Information Management staff.

The shift to remote instruction prompted the Law Library not only to make teaching, learning and research materials and resources available, but also to redesign our services offerings and delivery. Although it’s often said metaphorically, this year the Law Library truly worked to meet our communities where they are.

Cornell Law research librarians regularly provide valued reference services by email, helping students, faculty and others in our community with their legal information inquiries. Often longer consultation and research assistance appointments are needed. In March, such in-person meetings had to pause for this time. The move off-campus did not reduce the need for this service (and perhaps created even more demand). This spring, research librarians shifted this service also to the online environment, holding numerous one-to-one and group research consultation meetings with via videoconference.

Though limited in number by the departures and hiring pause, Law research librarians also developed more workshops this year than in recent years. Before the switch off-site, the Law Library delivered workshops to Law JD and graduate students in research management technologies and to faculty in newer library services. Online, we delivered research workshops to students, and scholarly services workshops to faculty.

Law librarians regularly create and maintain guides, to curate legal resources and describe research strategies for different legal topics or skills. This spring, the Law Library met the moment and subject of need for our students and faculty, creating six new research guides or guide sections to highlight online learning strategies, online research sources, and even online pedagogy best practices.

The Law Library welcomed four new team members, all in January of 2020. Janice Pfaff joined us as an Information Management assistant, reporting to Jackie Magagnosc. Janice works with all members of the Information Management team, in receipt of new collection materials, creation and maintenance of catalogue records, database maintenance projects, among other collection maintenance activities.

Shannon Slack joined the Access Services team as a Circulation & Repository Associate. Her usual duties focus on work at the circulation desk and interlibrary borrowing, and in the remote era she facilitates contactless and curbside lending and scanning services.

Shannon also assists with uploads of Cornell Law School faculty scholarship to research repositories. She reports to Sabrina Sondhi, who is responsible for Access Services team until we are able to recruit a full-time supervisor of the team.

Cassandre Norgaisse joined the Library Administration office, first as a temporary Executive Administrative Assistant and then in a newly redescribed position, Administrative Manager for the Law Library. Cassi coordinates cross-unit projects and communications, including preparation of the new Law Library newsletter, Keywords. She also supports the Edward Cornell Law Librarian.

The Law Library successfully recruited Alison Shea to join our team of research librarians, and she reports to Nina Scholtz. Alison has widely recognized expertise in Foreign, Comparative, and International Law librarianship and in library

She holds liaison relationships with Law faculty and

whose research and work touch on foreign and international law, and she works closely with Cornell’s LLM students.

CANTWELL RESEARCH PRIZE

19TH AMENDMENT EXHIBIT

In 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed. It prohibited denial of the right to vote on the basis of sex, giving most American women the right to vote. Adopted in 1920 after ratification by the states, the 19th Amendment was the culmination of decades of work, beginning with the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY.

In commemoration of the 100-year anniversary of this achievement, the American Bar Association and the Law Library of Congress created a traveling exhibit celebrating the people and efforts involved. Cornell Law School was the first stops of this exhibition tour in October 2019. In partnership with the Law Library, the decision was made to purchase a copy of the exhibit, so that it may continue to inspire the future classes of Cornell Law students. It remains on prominent display in the hallway outside the Dean of Students’ Office.

FIRST PRIZE Patenting Pot: The Hazy Uncertainty Surrounding Cannabis Patents, by Andrew Kingsbury, Class of 2021 Andrew Kingsbury’s paper examines the rush to patent new cannabis products that has resulted from many states’ move to legalize medical and recreational cannabis. The resulting problems include the lack of prior art due to decades-long prohibition of cannabis and patent examiners’ lack of experience and knowledge related to the cannabis industry. This topic required in-depth research on patent law, federal and state regulation of drugs, recent patents of cannabis, as well as litigation of this specific issue and analogous issues. Andrew concludes that alternative approaches to claim construction are needed for challenging cannabis patents.

SECOND PRIZE Without the Forbidden Fruit: Returning to the Wild Beast Test, by Jennifer Yuby Ashley Mullen, Class of 2021

Jennifer Yu looks at the four different formulations of the insanity defense and focuses the body of her research on the application and potential criticisms of the “wild beast test.” Jennifer approached her work as “a deep dive into the religious, philosophical, and psychological underpinnings of insanity” and spends time evaluating sources from these areas to better illustrate the legal concept of insanity. She suggests that by “returning to the wild beast test, we can more narrowly define insanity at baseline in a way that more holistically captures what it means to be not-human.”

During the writing process, Jennifer realized that she needed to use her research “as a tool, rather than an end in itself” so she could eventually create her own narrative “guided by…authoritative voices, but not determined by them.” This realization eventually resulted in a paper that ended up being “a wonderful culmination of [her] personal faith, academic studies, and extracurricular pursuits.”

About the Cantwell Prize:

Funding for the Prize is provided by an endowment given to the Law Library by Barbara Cantwell in honor of her late husband, Robert Cantwell, a 1956 graduate of Cornell Law School.

PROFESSIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

JACKIE MAGAGNOSC

Chair, AALL Technical Services Special Interest Section Awards Committee

Panelist, Developing and Achieving Your Leadership Potential. 2019 AALL Annual Meeting, Washington D.C.

With Jean Pajerek, co-proposed and co-hosted Resource Description and Access (RDA) “Discussion Den” at AALL conference, in anticipation of the upcoming implementation of major changes to the cataloging code

Technical services law librarian columnist – Conference Roundup

Secretary, CUL Academic Assembly Steering Committee

Member, CUL Critical Cataloging Working Group to propose alternatives to the subject heading “Illegal aliens”

MATT MORRISON

Founder and Chair of new American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Caucus - Business and Corporate Research Instruction

Appointed to AALL Awards Committee that determines winners of the three most important awards for AALL members

Selected for and participated in the National Science Foundation I-Corps Short Course set up by CUL to develop support for entrepreneurial studies at Cornell

KIM NAYYER

Named a 2020 Fastcase 50 Award Winner

Named Chair, Section on Law in the Americas, Association of American Law Schools

Moderator, “Legal Ethics in the Use of AI” AALL

Co-author, “Artificial Intelligence & Implicit Bias: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” AALL Spectrum

Panelist, “The Crown, the Copyright, and the Law, Revisited” CALL

Invited panelist, “The Growing Dilemma Within AI – Unconscious Bias”

LegalTech

Invited co-host, “Indigenous Knowledge and Copyright” SADiLAR Webinar, Cape Town, South Africa

Invited panelist, “Being an Intervener in a Court Case” CFLA Webinar

Panelist, “Copyright and humanities research: A global perspective”

DH2019

Panelist, “Indigenous Knowledge, Intellectual Freedom, Copyright Issues and Academic Libraries” CAPAL19

JEAN PAJEREK

Co-developed and co-taught half-day AALL workshop on the use of Regular Expressions as a tool for facilitating batch manipulation of catalog records

With Jackie Magagnosc, co-proposed and co-moderated RDA “Discussion Den” at AALL conference in anticipation of the upcoming changes to the cataloging code

Taught five, 2-hour sessions on OCLC searching to CUL staff members as part of effort to prepare library staff for next year’s deployment of new library services platform

Continued to serve on CUL’s promotion to Librarian review board

Appointed to CUL FOLIO Reporting Core Group and CUL FOLIO Implementation Team; participated in group presentation for CUL staff members by the CUL FOLIO Core Reporting Team

Appointed to CUL Academic Early Career Voluntary Review Program committee; participated in virtual panel discussion, “CUL Annual Academic Promotion Review”

JACOB SAYWARD

Chair, Cornell University’s New Selector Training Task Force.

Co-Chair, ALLStAR Advisory Board’s Content Subgroup.

Chair, Government Relations/Advocacy, Association of Law Libraries of Upstate New York.

NINA SCHOLTZ

Immediate Past President, Association of Law Libraries of Upstate New York

Member, ALL-SIS Newsletter Editorial Board

ALISON SHEA

AALL FCIL-SIS Blog Post of the Year Award winner for “Locating UK and EU Guidance on Brexit”, DipLawMatic Dialogues

AALL FCIL-SIS European Law Interest Group Chair

Invited Speaker on Europe, AALL FCIL-SIS Webinar “Law Librarians Combatting Infodemic During COVID-19: Asia, Europe, Africa”

Member, ALA International Relations Roundtable – International Connections Committee

Chair, CUL Global Webinar Series Planning Committee

Co-Lead, CUL Liaison Steering Team

Member, CUL Instruction Team

Member, CUL COVID-19 Response Team Subcommittee on Community Support

SABRINA SONDHI

Chair of the American Association of Law Libraries’ Academic Law Libraries

Special Interest Section

Member of the Advisory Board and Co-Chair of the Content Committee for ALLStAR (Academic Law Libraries: Statistics, Analytics and Reports)

Member of Cornell University Libraries’ Outreach and Engagement Committee

Member of the Cornell University Library Forum Steering Committee

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