Target Audience: Law librarians interested in providing services to military members and veterans
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will be able to articulate anecdotal and statistical indicators of the need for legal assistance for military service members and veterans.
2) Participants will be able to summarize three means of support that law librarians can provide to address the needs of service members and veterans.
While a growing number of service members are returning home, many of those still deployed abroad continue to serve despite intensifying legal issues at home. Additionally, because of the increasing number of veterans returning home with medical and other significant needs, veterans are finding it more difficult to successfully assert claims for medical and other types of assistance. Further, criminal courts are seeing an increasing number of cases involving veterans. The American Bar Association, state bar associations, and academic institutions are implementing programs to provide legal assistance to service members and veterans. This program will attempt to describe the scope of the need and familiarize participants with some of the program initiatives and resources designed to help address the legal needs of service members and veterans. The panel members will also discuss how law librarians can support these programs.
Target Audience: Law librarians from all types of libraries whose patrons need access to declassified records for their research
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will be able to identify five challenges related to the federal government’s declassification policy and assess the effectiveness of the National Declassification Center in addressing these challenges.
2) Participants will be able to list effective strategies for locating and making use of newly declassified records to benefit their library users and contribute to a more open government.
The National Declassification Center (NDC), established by Executive Order in late 2009, has the vital task of preparing a revised backlog of approximately 385 million pages for public release by December 31, 2013. Many of these records are of great interest to legal researchers. NDC Director Sheryl Jasielum Shenberger will discuss the progress the NDC has made in addressing this growing backlog and prioritizing records for release, as well as the challenges that remain. Nate Jones, FOIA Coordinator for the National Security Archive, will assess the progress that the NDC has made from an outsider’s perspective, and Catherine Dunn, Government Relations Committee Chair and moderator of this session, will outline the sources available for accessing declassified documents and discuss how researchers can use them effectively.
Target Audience: Librarians interested in improving their services
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will be able to identify problems users have working with web-based interfaces.
2) Participants will be able to implement a cost-effective usability program.
How can you design systems that work efficiently, while avoiding common problems? Enter usability testing, a process to observe user interaction with a system intended to discover and fix problems. Contrary to popular belief, usability testing need not be expensive or even overly time consuming. This program will demonstrate different types of usability testing, including sophisticated software tools and low-tech solutions; discuss the “test early and often” model of usability testing; and show how to budget time and money for a successful usability testing program. Participants will also see a live usability test conducted during this program.
Target Audience: Reference and acquisitions librarians, electronic services librarians
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will become knowledgeable about usage statistics and how to gather them.
2) Participants will have the ability to analyze third-party aggregators and ERM integration.
Library analytics have become more important than ever in the electronic era. As budgets tighten and students demand more online resources, evaluating usage of such resources becomes a key issue in allocating expense funds. Statistical analysis is one way to determine whether a library is getting its best bang for the buck. However, obtaining and analyzing such statistics can be a scattered and challenging process. Speakers will discuss the ways libraries obtain patron usage statistics with a central focus on electronic resources. Participants will see demonstrations of third-party statistical gathering software, as well as learn how to gain access to statistics held and distributed directly by vendors. An overview of COUNTER and SUSHI compliance will also be presented.
Target Audience: All librarians who are interested in developing strong advocacy skills
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will identify the elements of an effective, purposeful story and will be able to create such stories.
2) Participants will be able to incorporate storytelling within their advocacy efforts.
Whether persuading an administrator within your institution or lobbying for external action, storytelling can be a powerful and compelling advocacy tool. Telling stories about real people and real challenges is an effective means for convincing others of your viewpoint. What makes a good story? How can you incorporate the elements of storytelling into your advocacy efforts? After learning the fundamentals of a persuasive story and how to successfully integrate the story within a strategic advocacy campaign, participants will have the opportunity to practice their newly acquired skills in small groups. Volunteers from the small groups will share their story drafts with the larger audience and receive constructive feedback.
Target Audience: Public services staff in all types of law libraries
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will gain a better understanding of the future of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) in a digital world.
2) Participants will learn what options are available as libraries collaborate to provide regional FDLP sites (services).
This program will examine the future of the Federal Depository Library Program, now that the old print model of distribution is largely a thing of the past. How is the Government Printing Office adjusting to the new world of digital information?
Target Audience: Anyone who uses multiple online legal research vendors in their normal workflow
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will be able to assess the advantages and disadvantages of newer generation vendor engines over classic versions of Bloomberg Law, LexisNexis, and Westlaw.
2) Participants will be able to discuss how the adoption of these new versions of standard research tools affects the education of end users and workflows in libraries.
What began as a lively discussion of WestlawNext last year in Philadelphia continues with this sequel program. This forum will enable librarians familiar with Bloomberg Law, LexisNexis Advance, and WestlawNext to compare the developments of these research tools and consider the effect these changes have had in libraries. The discussion will contrast the latest interfaces of these services to their classic versions, as well as to each other. What worked? What failed? Have these “improvements” changed the workflow at your institution or company? Did these changes impact user preference? And, how can vendors improve future product generations? Practical matters – such as implementation, user education, accuracy of results, document sharing, billing practices, and user satisfaction – will dominate the discussion.
Target Audience: Law librarians in all organizations who are asked to provide strategic information for their own or parent organization
Learning Outcomes:
1) Law librarians in all organizations will be able to immediately use the information presented to enhance the strategic knowledge-base of their own or parent organization, and thereby, make a measurable contribution to the future.
2) Participants will be introduced to the basics of two, strategically focused skills – environmental scanning and trend analysis – to augment their own professional skill set.
Environmental scanning and trend analysis are two techniques that are used regularly in any number of settings to help organizations plan for and position themselves for the future. Law firms might use these techniques to anticipate client demand for their services. Law schools may need to prepare for curricula changes. Governmental bodies may be faced with regulatory or reporting requirements. All libraries are constantly challenged to anticipate changes in collections, services, staffing, and technology. By providing actual examples and demonstrating the use of proven techniques, this program will show how law firms, law schools, and government libraries can leverage environmental scanning and trend analysis to position their parent organizations, and themselves, for long-term viability. Drawing upon their own expertise and experience, the panelists will individually describe their own findings and methodologies, and then engage the audience in a discussion of best practices and information-gathering techniques that are common to the kinds of organizations represented and have contributed to organizations’ strategic decision-making.
Target Audience: Law librarians interested in planning and conducting a digitization project
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will be able to create a digitization policy for their libraries.
2) Participants will learn how to identify sources of costs in projects and in archiving digital content, considering in-house or outsourcing options.
This program will cover the basics of creating digital products, including best practices, specifications, metadata, workflow, quality control and assessment, and vendor relations. Additionally, participants will learn how to manage digital content, including making the content available for users, assessing user needs, ingest of content, access issues for digital content management, preservation options, and digital repositories. This program is co-sponsored by the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA).
Target Audience: Academic, government, and court reference and collection development librarians
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will be able to analyze a research problem in terms of the legal system, the human rights issue, and the appropriate treaty.
2) Participants will be able to identify and apply the knowledge of the appropriate institutional source; the stage in the institution’s process at which the relevant information/document is likely to be found; and the type of document that is most likely to have the information needed to solve the problem.
Part I of this program will teach participants the advanced skills they need to research difficult problems in the United Nations Charter-based and treaty-based bodies. Presenters will use examples of violations of human rights law and the institutional responses to them to illuminate the characteristics of the treaties; the enigmatic organization and procedures of the institutions created by the Charter and the treaties; and the unique documents produced by those institutions. Participants will return to their institutions able to solve research problems that they could not have previously addressed.
Target Audience: Information professionals in law schools, government libraries, prison libraries
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will be able to track the history of the Anti-Abuse Act of 1986, which created the disparity between U.S. federal criminal penalties for crack cocaine and powder cocaine, to the recently passed Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduces that disparity.
2) Participants will be able to analyze the potential impact that the new legislation is expected to have in predominately low-income, African-American communities.
Since the late 1980s, increasingly more severe sentencing has been applied to the possession or distribution of crack cocaine, which is more often associated with low-income, African-American communities. However, while African-American defendants account for roughly 80 percent of those arrested and jailed for crack-related offenses, public health data reveals that two-thirds of crack cocaine users are more likely to be white or Hispanic. For a first-time trafficking offense involving five grams or more of crack cocaine, or 500 grams or more of powder cocaine, the statutory penalty range was five to 40 years of imprisonment. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 set out to reduce the racial disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. Attendees will discover the motivation behind the original legislation that created the sentencing disparity and the implications of the new legislation for low-income, African-American communities.
Target Audience: Reference librarians in all libraries who need to research people or companies
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will be able to identify and utilize the best and most cost-effective online resources for their public records research.
2) Participants will be prepared to analyze and evaluate public records databases and their content.
Looking for information on a person or company? This program will cover sites and strategies useful in public records research. Participants will learn creative ways to use (mostly) free web sites to find location and real property data, birth/death and marriage/divorce records, company affiliations, professional licenses, court records, and more. Additional discussion will cover public records databases and how to critically evaluate the information. The speakers each have more than a decade of experience in conducting research on people and companies, and will provide concrete examples and strategies used in their work.
Target Audience: Technical services librarians, public services librarians, information system managers, database managers, library directors
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will tour the key features of Google Scholar’s search service for legal opinions and journals.
2) Participants will discover indexing problems with legal collections and the approaches Google Scholar has adopted to solve those problems.
Google Scholar has recently implemented an extensive database of U.S. case law. Legal professionals, law students, and other users can find and read the decisions that govern their lives. Google Scholar is not only used by students, faculty, librarians, and researchers, it is also used by professionals in many large law firms. For the first time, one of the founding engineers of Google Scholar, Dr. Anurag Acharya, will join AALL to share the approaches taken to meet the challenges of legal materials. Dr. Acharya will present Google Scholar’s search service for legal materials, describing and illustrating key features. He will also explain how Google approaches problems specific to indexing legal collections. The program will conclude with a 30-minute question-and-answer session.
Target Audience: Technical services librarians, administrators
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will benefit from hearing about other law librarians’ real-life experiences with RDA and will learn how to successfully implement Resource Description Access (RDA) in their libraries.
2) Participants will be able to assess the impact of RDA implementation on their online library catalogs.
Three U.S. national libraries are expected to implement the new cataloging code, RDA, beginning January 2013. Law catalogers who participated in the RDA testing process and training during the fall of 2010 and the spring of 2011 described their experiences at “The TS-SIS Hot Topic program: The RDA Decision and What It Means for Me and My Library!” in Philadelphia in 2011. The two law libraries represented at that program have decided to implement RDA well before the U.S. national libraries do so. Law catalogers from those libraries will share their experiences transitioning from AACR2 to RDA, and discuss the impact on workflow, productivity, OPAC displays, and information retrieval.
Target Audience: Law librarians interested in microform collection management and access
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will be able to describe the current status of microform-produced, law-related materials and the availability of microform equipment.
2) Participants will be able to compare options for managing and accessing microform collections.
For nearly a century, microform has provided compact storage of non-binary, human-readable information, allowing libraries to efficiently and effectively increase their collection size and variety of topical content. Recently, the production of microform and microform reading equipment has plummeted, but the quality of digitization from microform has vastly improved. Microform is becoming a legacy format, and libraries must decide what to do with their collections. This program will examine the current status of the production of law-related materials on microform, availability of microform equipment, and digitization of existing law-related microform materials. Additional discussion will cover the options for managing microform collections, as well as access to print and microform-based information in the next decade, including storage and preservation, scanning and digitization equipment, access methodologies, and user services.
Target Audience: Academic, government, and court reference and collection development librarians
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will be able to analyze a research problem in terms of the legal system, the human rights issue, and the appropriate treaty.
2) Participants will be able to identify and apply the knowledge of the appropriate institutional source, the stage in the institution’s process at which the relevant information/document is likely to be found, and the type of document that is most likely to have the information needed to solve the problem.
Part II of this program will teach participants the advanced skills they need to do research on difficult problems in the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and Court. Presenters will use examples of violations of human rights law and the institutional responses to them to illuminate the characteristics of the European and American Human Rights agreements; the enigmatic organization and procedures of the institutions created by the those treaties; and the unique documents that they produce. Upon returning to their institutions, participants will be able to solve research problems that they could not have previously addressed.
Target Audience: All librarians who deal with copyright issues
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will be able to explain their obligations and opportunities for using copyrighted materials.
2) Participants will be able to identify high-priority copyright issues at the federal and state levels that impact law librarians.
Law librarians are often the go-to professionals for copyright issues and questions. Whether we are evaluating the copyright issues of documents we need to use, seeking permissions, determining fair use, applying the Section 108 copyright exemption for libraries, or just answering everybody’s question of “Can I copy/scan/email/post/route this?”, copyright impacts our professional lives on a day-to-day basis. The digital revolution has complicated copyright by allowing forms of copying and distribution that were unheard of in the analog era. Keeping up with this ever-changing world is a particular challenge.
In a unique format, the Copyright Committee is presenting a series of short presentations on three hot topics in the copyright world. The first will focus on locating owners of copyrighted materials. A law librarian and practicing attorney will provide tips and suggestions for locating elusive owners of copyrighted “orphan” works. The second presentation will look at copyright coverage of state and local government documents. While virtually all federal documents are in the public domain under 17 USC Section 105, this federal law does not apply to the states, leaving states with various approaches. Speakers will highlight the skills for determining if a particular state document may be covered by a copyright. The final presentation will look at the most recent developments in copyright legislation and litigation, including the ongoing Google Books and Georgia State University lawsuits, recent suits claiming copyright protection for court briefs and “prior art” in patent claims, and the latest in the copyright piracy (SOPA) debate in Congress.
Target Audience: Librarians who support attorneys, comply with privacy laws, do licensing, and provide reference; IT staff
Learning Outcomes:
1) Participants will learn about attorney-client confidentiality requirements relating to legal research.
2) Participants will be able to apply confidentiality compliance techniques to licensing, reference, and some IT support for attorneys and judges, as well as clinical law faculty and students.
Attorney-client confidentiality is challenged by cloud computing, passwords that identify database users, vendor advertisements that identify subscribers, employer access to employee email, Internet Service Provider and web tracking access to online research activity, and some uses of social media. A Boston attorney with expertise in confidentiality and privacy law will outline the scope of ethical and legal requirements for attorneys and for the librarians and IT staff who support them. Participants will receive tips on how to support compliance with confidentiality requirements. A significant portion of the presentation will be devoted to audience questions in order to address specific concerns of those attending.
