Joint Roundtable on Library Services to Pro Se Patrons and Prisoners

Every year, the SR-SIS, LISP-SIS, and SCCLL-SIS co-sponsor a very popular Joint Roundtable on Library Services to Pro Se Patrons and Prisoners. Our Roundtable this year will be on Monday, July 12th, from 12:00 - 1:15, in the Convention Center, Room 604 (lunch provided).
We'll have two speakers this year. Brian Huffman, Washington County Law Librarian from Washington County (MN) Government Center, will report on the Public Libraries and Access to Justice Conference that was held in Austin, TX, last January (sponsored by the Self-Represented Litigants Network of the National Center for State Courts). He'll share his experiences and take-aways from the Conference, including related activities post-Conference. Kimberli Morris, Assistant Law Librarian, Reference, Penn State Dickinson School of Law, will discuss her experiences as a corrections librarian in the Baltimore County Detention Center. She will also be outlining her current research, which analyzes inmate requests for legal information and the capacity of free Web-based legal resources to respond to those requests. Amy Hale-Janeke, Head of Reference Services for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Library, will moderate the program and speak briefly on the the 5th Circuit Law Library's experience with handling prisoner letters.
Please join us for this year's Roundtable. It promises to be as interesting and relevant as they have been in the past.

Open Forum for Program & Workshops for 2010

Have Program or Workshop Ideas? Attend Today’s Open Forum

By Anne Myers, Librarian for Serials Services, Yale Law Library
& Chair, 2011 Annual Meeting Program Committee

Plan now for the 2011 annual conference and join the 2011 Annual Meeting Program Committee’s Open Forum Monday at noon in CCC-Room 606.
The Open Forum provides the opportunity for all members to ask questions about the proposal process and to learn more about the key elements that make a successful proposal. The Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC) values questions and suggestions from the newest to the most experienced law librarians. SIS Education Committee members are especially encouraged to attend because of the unique role that SIS’s play in the proposal process.
2011 is the year of no theme. The Annual Meeting has always been considered our premier educational event. We’ll give you help in shaping your program and workshop proposals. In Philadelphia we will be using program tracks based on the updated Competencies of Law Librarianship to assist members to find the programs that best suit their needs. There will be six tracks in the areas of:
• Library Administration and Management
• Research, Reference, and Client Services
• Information Technology
• Collection Development and Cataloging
• Teaching
• General or Core Programs

Fellow law librarians understand the challenges we face and the accomplishments we achieve better than anyone else. Your proposals will tell us what types of programming will assist you in your daily work, inspire you to make changes in your professional and private lives, or satisfy your curiosity about a particular area of the law or librarianship.
The online Program and Workshop Proposal Collection site (http://proposals.aallnet.org) is already open for your input. The site will enable you to develop your proposal in your own workspace, share it with your colleagues and submit it online by the September 15, 2010 deadline (yup, the deadline this year gives you an extra month to complete proposals). Proposers should be sure to consult the Program Proposer’s Handbook, which also is available on the site.
Proposing a program or workshop benefits the entire law library community. To find out more about the proposal process, join the AMPC at the Open Forum, Monday at noon in CCC-Room 606.

Call for Papers Session Fetes 2010 Winners

Each year AALL, with the sponsorship of Lexis-Nexis, conducts a Call for Papers competition to recognize librarians who author significant works of scholarship. This year’s winners will discuss their papers in Session F1: The Librarian as Author. Lee Peoples, director of the Oklahoma City University Law Library, will offer introductory comments drawing upon his significant experiences balancing the demands of writing and job responsibilities.

Winning the Open Division was Carol Parker (UNM), who wrote on the need for consistent and rigorous standards for librarian tenure. Daniel Baker (Univ. of Houston) won honors in the New Members division for his study of Wikipedia citations within law review articles.

The Student Division award this year is shared by Benjamin Keele (now at William and Mary), who examined the feasibility of law review citations including digital object identifiers, and Deborah Shrager (soon to graduate from the Catholic University LIS School). Shrager is being recognized for her empirical study of which Web 2.0 tools are actually being incorporated into law library services.

Speakers will highlight their experiences completing these excellent papers, and offer their insights for other librarians planning a writing project. “The Librarian as Author” will be held Monday, July 12th at 10:45 in CCC 102-106.

Bloggers Get Together in Denver

Join the Bloggers Get Together at the AALL Annual Meeting at Denver, CO

Time: 5:00 p.m.-6:30 p.m.
Date: Monday, July 12th
Place: Katie Mullen’s Irish Pub – Downtown Sheraton (off the 16th Street Mall, 2 blocks from the Convention Center)

We will have a private area of the pub and access to some great food deals!

Speaker: Andrew Hyde (Andrew works for Techstars in Boulder)
Blogs: http://andrewhy.de/
http://www.techstars.org/
Follow Andrew on twitter @andrewhyde.

To reserve your spot, please feel free to contact Barbara.fullerton@morningstar.com or 214-800-4576.

Watch Live-Stream Videos from AALL in Denver

AALL kicks off its 103rd Annual Meeting and Conference in Denver this weekend, and even if you can't be there in person, you can get a sample of each day's offerings. The following programs will be live-streamed over the web (please note that all times are Mountain Daylight Time):
• Opening General Session/Keynote Speaker- Sunday, July 11, 10:15-11:45 a.m. (MDT)
• D6: Research Guides 2.0: Creating Guides that Patrons Love- Monday, July 12, 8:45-9:45 a.m. (MDT)
• I1: Ten Things Every Law Librarian Needs to Know About Copyright- Tuesday, July 13, 10:45-11:30 a.m. (MDT)
You can access the webcasts via the links above, or by finding the programs on AALL2go, our online learning center. If you can't watch the programs live, archived webcasts of the programs will be available free to members after the conference. Whether you're attending our conference in Denver, or tending to your job back at the office, you can be part of the audience.

2010 Spirit of Law Librarianship Recipient Announced

The Roy M. Mersky Spirit of Law Librarianship Award Committee is pleased to announce that David Selden, Law Librarian at the National Indian Law Library/Native American Rights Fund, is the 2010 recipient of the award. The Committee thanks everyone who submitted nominations.
David is best known in the law library community for his work to make United States Tribal law, codes, and constitutions more accessible to the public, attorneys, and researchers. However, his public service passion is promoting efforts to increase environmental sustainability and reduce climate changing greenhouse gas and carbon emissions.
From 2006 to 2009, David initiated and coordinated a Colorado Adopt-A-Highway volunteer litter control program for National Indian Law Library (NILL) and Native American Rights Fund (NARF) employees on a two-mile stretch of highway in the Boulder area. This project increased NARF’s visibility in the community and modeled good stewardship of the environment.
Since 2004, David has served as the volunteer race director for the Colorado Indian Bar Association’s Red Rock Scramble, an annual run/walk event to raise funds for American Indian law student scholarships. In this capacity, David planned and directed the 2008 event as the first officially certified Race without a Trace in Colorado. This event was both zero waste and carbon neutral and included other sustainable features. Zero waste and carbon neutral features continue to be a standard part of this popular annual event.
David became a volunteer Eco Auditor for a project in his home town of Lyons, Colorado, in 2007. This program trains community members as eco auditors, in order to help other interested community members live more sustainable lives. Homeowners in the program learn how to measure and evaluate their energy use, consumption, and overall impact on the climate and environment, and are presented with solutions for a more sustainable lifestyle. To date, nearly 100 families have participated in this Green Heart Community Initiative.
David is a member of the Lyons Sustainability Advisory Council, which works to solve environmental problems on the local level. This organization empowers citizens and businesses in Lyons to become more sustainable and work with governments and other organizations to implement positive change. David’s concentration relates to transportation issues and sustainable events. Since David joined the Council in 2008, the intergovernmental regional transportation service has added a popular 8:15am bus from Lyons to Boulder for morning commuters, and the Red Rock Scramble has become a model for other environmentally sustainable events held in Lyons.
In early 2010, David initiated and coordinated a Colorado Adopt-A-Highway volunteer litter control program for the Lyons Community Foundation (LCF) on a two mile stretch of highway at the southeast entrance to Lyons. This project increases LCF’s visibility in the community and models good stewardship of the environment.
David has consistently integrated his concern for the environment with his professional life. He initiated and chaired the Native American Rights Fund Green Office Committee. From 2007 to 2009, his efforts resulted in a 21% annual carbon emissions reduction in the Fund’s Boulder offices. David personally performs annual eco audits of the offices to create baseline energy consumption data for goal setting. David and his committee accomplish these goals by successfully implementing projects such as:
• Zero waste policies and procedures. These initiatives include recycling and composting programs that allow employees to recycle and compost materials collected at their homes and in their offices.
• A Green Office Purchasing Plan for supplies, appliances and equipment.
• A Green Office Education Program for employees, which includes presentations on energy consumption and carbon footprint, weekly “Green Office Tips” via email, sale of composting kits, and loans of a Kill-A-Watt meter to employees to measure energy use in the office and at home.
• A "hard to recycle program" for library books, fluorescent and CFL light bulbs, plastic bags, office equipment, etc.
A Carbon Offset Fund for NARF and NILL employees to voluntarily purchase carbon offsets for personal and business airline flights.
Three of David’s responses to the Member to Member questions have appeared in AALL Spectrum:
• Why environmental sustainability is the most important political issue of our time
• Top three green tips for law librarians
• Making my dream library environmentally sustainable
David’s environmentally-focused column, tentatively titled The Eco-Conscious Librarian, will debut in the September 2010 issue of AALL Spectrum.
David reduced his travel-related carbon footprint by carpooling in his hybrid vehicle with a colleague to the 2008 AALL Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon, as well as to the 2009 WestPac Annual Meeting in Bozeman, Montana. The carbon footprint reduction was about 75% as compared to flying to these conferences.
In March 2009, David presented a well-attended and well-received program addressing how law and special libraries can become more environmentally sustainable. Colorado Association of Law Libraries and Rocky Mountain Special Libraries Association members attended, and several participants asked to use his slides to make similar presentations in their workplaces.
David was named a Special Libraries (SLA) “Knowledge to Go Green” Champion in February 2009. This award recognizes individuals who apply “green” principles and make changes to the way they perform their work on a day to day basis.
In January 2010, David received a partial scholarship to attend the University of Colorado’s Sustainability Management Certificate program.
As these many and varied examples illustrate, David is an excellent advocate for environmental sustainability and carbon reduction issues. As he wrote in his Sustainability Management Certificate scholarship application:
“While the problems of sustainability and climate change are immense and complicated, each person or organization that I interact with can have a direct beneficial impact on this problem.”
The Award Committee members are: Richard Leiter, Director and Professor Schmid Law Library, University of Nebraska College of Law Terry Martin, Interim Director, Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas School of Law, Richard J. Spinelli, Senior Vice President, William S. Hein Co., Inc.,.and Donna M. Tuke, Editor and Publisher, Alert Publications.

We Want Your Childrens Books!!

We want your childrens books in Denver! Once again, the Social Responsibilities Special Interest Section is organizing a book drive to benefit local children in the host city. This year we are working with an excellent organization, called “Reach Out and Read Colorado”. Reach Out and Read trains doctors and nurses to advise parents about the importance of reading aloud and to give books to children at pediatric checkups from 6 months to 5 years of age, with a special focus on children growing up in poverty. By building on the unique relationship between parents and medical providers, they help families and communities by encouraging early literacy skills so children enter school prepared for success in reading.
There will be bins to place your donations into in the conference center. Additionally, you may make financial donations that will be passed on to this charitable organization. If you do have books to donate, they should be age-appropriate for children ages 6 months to 5 years of age. Please avoid books on subjects such as religion, death, divorce, or medical issues. Both new, and slightly used, books may be donated. Cash donations are appreciated and will be used to purchase new books for eligible children. For a donation of $40, a child can be provided with a 10 book “library”.
Your donations will be distributed in the Denver metropolitan area, particularly in low-income communities. Many of these children do not have books at home, meaning that these donations may make a difference that will last a lifetime. Please donate!