From the Law Librarian

It is wonderful to be back! Exactly ten years after leaving the Lillian Goldman Law Library, I returned to a warm and enthusiastic welcome in the summer of 2021 (read more on page 27 of this report). Notwithstanding the fact that my arrival occurred in the middle of a global pandemic, it has truly felt great to return to a well-beloved library.

Since the publication of our last annual report, the Lillian Goldman Law Library has bravely faced and continues to adapt to a context redefined by a global pandemic. You will read in this report how our prodigious staff collectively rallied to maintain continuity of excellent services to our users. We did not stop acquiring and processing materials in print as well as digital formats, thus preserving the ability of faculty and students to conduct research and scholarship. Our research, reference, and instructional services successfully migrated to virtual platforms. Library outreach such as our Faculty Book Talk Series continued in virtual and hybrid spaces. Undeterred by the pandemic, we even hosted our first successful Symposium on Citation and the Law in spring 2021 with over 500 registrants joining us virtually from all over the world. Another first for us was a well-attended virtual pre-release film screening to the law school community of My Name is Pauli Murray in fall 2021.

In spring 2020, we were saddened by the death of Dan Wade, Curator for Foreign and International Law who had spent over three decades at Yale building our foreign and international law collections. We bade farewell in spring 2021, to Mike Widener our esteemed and highly regarded Rare Book Librarian of 15 years. We were excited to welcome a new Rare Book Librarian, Kathryn James, and new research librarians, Nicholas Mignanelli and Trezlen Drake to the library. You can read the full details about these transitions in our report. As our library emerges from a global pandemic, we are creatively delivering impactful services in non-traditional and novel ways. Our users have come to anticipate a full suite of library services in physical and virtual spaces, and we are making every effort to respond to these new expectations. Our bold and somewhat audacious vision remains to be the best academic law library in the world.

Femi Cadmus Law Librarian and Professor of Law