News from the KU Wheat Law Library | Spring 2012

HEARSAY news from KU’s Wheat Law Library

Volume 6, Issue 5

Spring 2012

IN THIS

ISSUE Open Access, SPARC, and a KU Law librarian

By Allison Reeve

Longtime librarian Kat Greene retires Meet the 2012 library student workers!

By Su Johnson

LibGuides and research

By W. Blake Wilson

A Day in the Life

By Allison Reeve

Visit Us! In Person: Green Hall 1535 W. 15th Street Lawrence, KS 66045 Online: http://www.law. ku.edu/library

DIRECTOR’S CORNER Is it my imagination? Am I seeing things?

At any time of day the five large tables outside my office on the west side of the reference room are filled with students prepping for class, commiserating after class, chuckling, napping, poring over notes and highlighting their favorite passages in a textbook. What do I make of this activity and why do I bother to write about it in a column? Something has brought law students back into the library. No matter the weather you can find students in carrels, the small lab, the comfortable chairs, and couches vigorously studying. It is cool to be in the library. I was so intrigued that I took pictures. Granted, Friday afternoon has its empty moments. But after spending four days a week in the library, by high noon on that fifth day, it is time to, excuse the pun, check out.

The laptop, iPad, e-book, Nook, and cell phone make it easy to read anything and everything in the palm of your hand. So why are people still coming into the library? Our lives have become gadget driven, and as a result we are a bit more self-centered. These toys, however, have not eliminated our need to be social. Law students still want to interact, share and discuss what just happened in class with their classmates. We are teaching more courses that require collaboration as well as individual study. Many of the law students in the pictures literally live in the library – in addition to studying in the library, they also work there.

Now that I have set the stage, enjoy these pictures of students living life in the library.

See you in the library!

Joyce McCray Pearson, Library Director.

Season’s Greetings

from all of us at Wheat Law Library

For more photos of the packed library, check out page 7!

2

wheat law library - hearsay

Open Access, SPARC, and what they mean to KU Law On March 12 and 13, I attended the first ever Open Access (OA) Meeting of The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), a group of libraries founded to support emerging and open scholarly communication. The acronym is quite fitting as the discussion and trends in OA are sparking a number of ideas, projects, and collaborative efforts locally, globally and throughout academia. The University of Kansas is a member of the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) within SPARC. Recently, the coalition has been busy tracking H. R. 3699, “The Research Works Act,” and has responded to the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Request for Information.

What exactly is open access? The Budapest Open Access Initiative defines OA as, “free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.”

The University of Kansas sits at the forefront of the OA movement.

KU was the first public university to adopt an open access policy in 2009 endorsed and initiated by faculty.

This policy is upheld and projects are implemented at KU Libraries’ Center for Digital Scholarship. The SPARC OA meeting even opened with an address from Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little.

The appreciation of OA is not new to KU Law or legal academia. In 2009, a group of law library directors drafted the Durham Statement, which asserts the benefit to legal scholarship through a shared commitment to OA. During the conference I led a discussion on OA trends in law schools. We shared the names of researchers, models of OA implementation, and questioned what drives scholars to pursue OA. Interestingly, we found that although law may be a traditional discipline, researchers are leading the pack in OA scholarly communication.

How is KU Law participating in the OA movement? An increased use of ScholarWorks and Social Science Research Network (SSRN) by KU Law faculty is noted. Statistics show that KU Law’s research is viewed around the globe and with increasing frequency. As of March 2012, Law School publications have over 83,000 views

with over 22,000 downloads through ScholarWorks, and SSRN reports over 24,000 downloads. These statistics suggest that our faculty spark a profound impact on the legal community through open scholarly communication.

The list of benefits to law schools, faculty, libraries, students, and taxpayers is extensive. If you are interested in learning more about OA, please go to the following websites or let a librarian know that you want greater access to research.

Budapest Open Access Initiative: http://www.soros.org/openaccess Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship: http://cyber. law.harvard.edu/publications/ durhamstatement#statement Open Access at KU: http://www.lib.ku.edu/openaccess The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC): http://www.arl.org/sparc Allison Reeve, Cataloging and Technical Services Librarian

Librarian Kat Greene retires after 30 years of dedicated service After a long, successful tenure at the Wheat Law Library, Automation & Acquisitions Librarian Kat Greene has retired.

Kat worked at the university for over 30 years, most of those years in the law library. She held several positions, including secretary to the director and acquisitions assistant, and she received tenure in her most recent role.

Kat has served us in many capacities as she worked tirelessly with vendors, university libraries staff and collection

development librarians and staff to grow the collection to its current richness and format diversity. She also assisted many faculty members with acquisitions and research projects. She provided an inventory and evaluation of the entire collection for a large weeding project. Most recently Kat was the leader in organizing a very successful joint conference in November with the Mid America Association of Law Libraries and the Southwest Association of Law Libraries that is still receiving rave reviews.

Please thank Kat for her great service and dedication to the library and law school. I know I will miss her tremendously!

Joyce McCray Pearson, Library Director

spring 2012

3

Su Johnson invites you to meet the 2012 Library Student Workers!

Jess Lewicki (3L—woo hoo!) is a Jackson Hole, Wyo., native who grew up ski-racing and hiking.

She graduated from the University of Portland in organizational communications and political science. Her favorite things in life are sushi, wine, documentaries and travel.

Zen Mayhugh (1L) is originally from Leavenworth, Kan., but has lived in seven states since high school: Arizona, California, Idaho, New York, Utah, Colorado, and Kansas. His degree is in finance from Brigham Young University.

He likes to walk on his hands when he’s all alone in the library.

Doug Coe (2L) is from Wichita.

He did his undergrad at Trinity University, but he is proud to be a Jayhawk now! Since being in law school, he has established himself as one of the school’s foremost cartwheelers.

4

Bri Harris (2L) is originally from cold and snowy Roseville, Minn., but she also spent about two years living in South Africa between undergrad and law school. While in South Africa, she learned to scuba dive and once went shark diving with dozens of reef sharks and tiger sharks (she has video to prove this)!

Chris Omlid (3L) grew up in Grand Forks, N.D., and received a bachelor of arts from the University of Minnesota, Morris.

His unusual bit is that he plays a mean game of foosball.

Maggie DiSilvestro (1L) was born in Topeka, grew up in Wichita and Kansas City, and now lives in Lawrence. She went to Newman University in Wichita for undergrad and was a summer starter at KU in May of 2011. She is Italian and Swedish.

Natalie Nelson (3L) is originally from Wichita but has called Lawrence her home for the last seven years. Her post-graduate plans are to be determined, but she will most likely stay in Kansas. She has had an aversion to the words “sheet” and “packet” for about as long as she can remember.

Brian Huston (1L) is from Overland Park. He received a bachelor’s in management and business administration from Kansas State University. He played in the Little League World Series, and can clap with one hand.

Bruno Simões (2L) was born in Austin, Texas but doesn’t remember being anything but a Jayhawk.

Something unusual about him is his advanced wheelchair operating skills. During his junior year of high school, he fractured his left foot during soccer practice and his right foot two weeks later hopping up a flight of stairs.

Addison Polk (Junior) is our only non-law student assistant. She is from Wichita but grew up mostly in San Antonio, so she had a heavy accent until she was about 15. She is a Spanish major with a business minor, but she wants to go to law school. She just took the LSAT and is waiting for results.

wheat law library - hearsay

CELEBRATE NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK! Monday, April 9

• Have a piece of the National Library Week cake in the First Floor Commons beginning at 10:10 a.m.

Tuesday, April 10

• Today is National Library Workers Day. “Libraries Work Because We Do!”

Wednesday, April 11

• Annual Hazel Anderson Book Sale from 8:30am - noon. in the Lower Commons.

Thursday, April 12

• 11th Annual Friends of the Wheat Law Library Lecture & Luncheon. The Hon. John K. Pearson, United States

Bankruptcy Judge, District of Kansas, Retired, will deliver the luncheon lecture.

Friday, April 13

• Amnesty Day: Bring back overdue law library materials today and the fine on each will be waived.

Week-Long Activities include:

• Library Trivia Quizzes: Test your skills • VIP Circulation Staff: Law school administrators, staff, and faculty will work the circulation desk.

Annual Friends Luncheon will feature Judge John K. Pearson Make plans to attend the 11th Annual Friends of the Wheat Law Library Lecture & Luncheon! This year’s event takes place on Thursday, April 12 starting at 12:30 p.m. in the Rice Room in Green Hall. We are fortunate to have the Hon. John K. Pearson as our keynote speaker.

He served as a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Kansas from 1986 until his retirement in 2000.

During his tenure, he sat on the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado for one year and on the 10th Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for five years. Prior to joining the bench, Pearson managed the Wichita office of McDowell, Rice & Smith, where his primary practice areas included commercial law and bankruptcy. He has been the recipient of a Department of Justice Special Achievement Award and the Kansas Bar Association President’s Outstanding Service Award.

The title of this year’s lecture is “Depublish or Perish,” which Pearson says refers to the problem of the legal field being swamped by too much authority. In order to remedy

the situation, some cases need to be removed from the maintstream.

As always, the Friends luncheon benefits the Wheat Law Library and helps position it for another successful year. An individual Friends membership is $50, $250 for a law firm or corporate member, and free for students. Non-members may attend the luncheon for a $15 donation.

spring 2012

5

A Day in the Life: Allison Reeve I’ve heard many clichés and stereotypes about librarians. We dislike noise and conversation.

We have poor eye-sight requiring glasses, bad hair requiring buns, love to read, and own cats.

And, of course, the cataloging librarian works in a dark, musty back room with low lighting surrounded by dusty books on ancient carts, emerging only to slither her way through the endless stacks.

Well, I do wear contacts, I sometimes wear a bun, and I do try to read at least a chapter a day, but I only have one cat. I am also the librarian that patrons ask to quiet down (this has happened twice in my library career) and whose desk and shelves are tidy enough not to give her away as a cataloger. However, the Cataloging and Technical Services Librarian position at Wheat Law Library does not allow for any of the other standard stereotypes.

The main focus of my duties as a cataloger is to let patrons know what we have available and make it accessible, whether those materials be print or electronic. To accomplish this goal I handle a variety of tasks. Many days I will spend some time finding or creating the best cataloging records to ensure our materials are available and findable. This means that Marsha Tiemann, cataloging manager, and I scrutinize new and old cataloging records to ensure our faculty, students, and public patrons have access to our materials.

It is also important for Wheat Law Library to stay current on cataloging trends and new technologies that help us achieve our goals for access. Recently, the library worked with one of our electronic subscription vendors to load records of digital materials available through Making of Modern Law into our catalog. Despite the location of an item, in the stacks or on the web, my goal is to make it accessible to you.

This semester I spend part of my days sitting in on the Advanced Legal Research course and working on assignments. Participating in this course develops my skills as a legal researcher able to assist all patrons at the library reference desk. It also helps to keep the technical services side of my position tied to public services.

Additionally, I work closely with Chris Steadham, associate director, to assess large donations for inclusion in the collection.

In my position I must also keep Wheat Law Library connected to the main university library system. This means working closely with the cataloging and systems departments on the hill to ensure we all stay connected to best serve the University, Lawrence, and Kansas communities. As can be seen, no one day can be predictable in this cataloger’s life. I invite you say hello and ask questions, not only about what I do, but concerning some of the special projects going on in Wheat Law Library.

6

wheat law library - hearsay

NEWS & NOTES u The library has a new database!

Loislaw provides access to two collections of legal treatises: the Missouri Bar Association CLE Library, which contains Missouri legal practice materials covering almost 50 topic areas, and the All Treatise Library, which contains selected Aspen legal treatises.

Topics include bankruptcy, real estate, estate planning and probate, business practice, construction law, elder law, employment discrimination, evidence law, family law, litigation, personal injury, and product liability. u This spring, Associate Director Chris

Steadham taught the Kansas Supreme Court Research Clinic. u Want to find out what new books

are available in the library? It’s easy to do online. Just visit: http://guides.law. ku.edu/newbooks. You can also contact Su Johnson at sujohns@ku.edu with questions about additions.

LibGuides: one-stop shopping for your legal research needs As anyone who has had to do research in a specific area of law can tell you, a significant amount of time can be spent on the task of gathering up all of the sources at your disposal. A search through the library’s catalog may result in a full listing of what’s available. However, there is no easy way of searching a library catalog that will result in finding, say, only primary materials or only reference materials.

Researchers would have to take the further step of looking at each listing to determine how they should categorize it.

That’s where LibGuides come in. LibGuides are research guides on various topics that have been compiled by Wheat Law librarians. These guides are a one-stop shop for what’s available to faculty, staff and students on topics ranging from administrative law to the Uniform Commercial Code, and they contain references not only to books on our shelves but also to electronic databases, both free and proprietary, that cover the subject.

For example, our Agricultural Law LibGuide contains citations to reference materials (e.g., agricultural statistics and

Agricultural Law Digest), texts and treatises (e.g., “Animals and the Law: A Sourcebook,” “Litigating Animal Law Disputes”), government documents, Kansas and Missouri materials, periodicals (Drake Journal of Agricultural Law, Midwest Agricultural Law Journal), and online resources.

Each one is tabbed for easy use.

So check out the Wheat Law Library’s LibGuides at http:// guides.law.ku.edu/ and take a look around.

W. Blake Wilson, Head of Instructional & Research Services

The weather’s heating up, and so is activity in the library Students maximize time before break, take advantage of Wheat Law’s amenities to collaborate, research, study, and learn.

spring 2012

7

SIGNS OF A NEW SPRING: Colorful flowers have been spotted popping up all over campus, including the flora dotting almost every tree around Green Hall.

EIGHT OF A KIND:

An Andy-Warhol style print featuring Judge John K. Pearson, this year’s Friends Luncheon speaker, draws a crowd.

As the largest and oldest law library in Kansas, the Wheat Law Library is an integral part of the School of Law. It serves the law school and university community in legal and interdisciplinary scholarly pursuits and provides attorneys, judges, and the general public with access to legal information.

Key components of this mission include collecting and preserving Kansas, national, and international legal documents, teaching legal information literacy, and serving as a legal information gateway by providing access to sources beyond the scope of the physical collection.

Wheat Law Library Staff Ashly LoBurgio Basgall - Faculty Services Senior Researcher Pamela Crawford- Head of Public Services Katherine Greene - Automation & Acquisitions Librarian Su Johnson - Circulation Department Manager Joyce A. McCray Pearson - Director & Associate Professor Jeff Montgomery - Serials Department Manager Allison Reeve - Cataloging and Technical Services Librarian Christopher Steadham - Associate Director Marsha Tiemann - Cataloging Manager Gale Troth - Accounts Manager W. Blake Wilson - Head of Instructional & Research Services CONTACT INFORMATION: Phone: 785/864-3025. Email: lawref@ku.edu.

spring 2012

8