President Obama’s Commitment to Openness vs. The Slow Pace of Changing Culture in Washington

The Future of FOIA

On his first full day in office, President Obama issued a memorandum that directed agencies to lean toward openness when responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, thereby reversing the Bush Administration’s long trend toward secrecy. Attorney General Eric Holder followed the President’s memorandum in March 2009 with guidance that instructed agencies to make disclosures whenever possible, while acknowledging the importance of the FOIA exemptions to protect national security and personal privacy. AALL was very pleased with these actions and views them as a promising sign of the Administration’s commitment to changing the culture in Washington from one of secrecy to one of affirmative disclosure.

On Tuesday, July 13, at 2:15 the AALL Government Relations Committee (GRC) is sponsoring an exciting and timely program moderated by GRC member Susan Nevelow Mart, The Future of FOIA (J1). The panel will feature Miriam Nisbet, Director of the new Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at the National Archives and Records Administration, and Anne Weismann, Chief Counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Ms. Nisbet will provide an update on the progress she and her staff have made in educating agency personnel about FOIA requirements and mediating FOIA disputes between agencies and requestors. OGIS was established under the OPEN Government Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-175), legislation which the Government Relations office staff had helped develop and which AALL strongly supported for many years. We were very pleased when Ms. Nisbet, long a friend of libraries, became the first Director of OGIS in September 2009.

Ms. Weismann, a respected FOIA expert, will offer an assessment of how well agencies are meeting the new mandates. CREW is a frequent FOIA requestor and has led many efforts to increase public access to government information. Through her work at CREW, Ms. Weismann has been involved in the lawsuit to make public the Bush Administration’s previously missing emails.

With such distinguished speakers, this is a program you won’t want to miss. We look forward to seeing you there!

The Rights of Indigenous Peoples

FCIL-SIS Indigenous Peoples Interest Group
and the Native Peoples Law Caucus present: The Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Tuesday, July 13
11:45 am – 12:45 pm
Professor Glenn T. Morris will present an introduction to The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which was created to address the unique situation of indigenous peoples around the world. While drafting was begun in 1983, the Declaration was not passed until September 13, 2007. Affecting the over 370 million indigenous peoples around the world, it is a complex document, little known outside the world of indigenous studies. One hundred forty three countries voted in favor of the Declaration with only 4 negative votes (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States). As reflected in the new Library of Congress law classification "KI," for works dealing with indigenous peoples in the western hemisphere, it is a detailed area of law. This program will provide both domestic and international law researchers with an opportunity to learn more about issues concerning indigenous land rights, the environment, climate change, and the obligations of states, as well as resources on the drafting history and subsequent developments.

Navigating Your Way to the Classroom: Law Librarians Teaching New Law School Classes

Monday, July 12
4:00 pm – 5:15 pm
Level: Introductory
Competency: Teaching
Sponsor: FCIL-SIS. Co-Sponsor ALL-SIS

The 2007 Carnegie Report on Legal Education could potentially result in greater teaching opportunities for law librarians. Three librarians who teach upper-level legal research courses will guide participants through the design, approval and implementation of a new course and the design of a syllabus with learning goals and assignments. They will identify the skills and practices necessary for building one's credibility as a professor.

After Hotel Rwanda and Welcome to Sarajevo: Preserving Trial Evidence and Documentation in a Multi-Media Age

Sunday, July 11
1:30am – 2:45pm
Level: Intermediate.
Competency: Core Competencies for Law Librarianship
Sponsor: FCIL-SIS

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is scheduled to close in 2010, and many questions have arisen as to the best way to preserve materials, which encompass different media and archival, policy, technological, and security concerns, such as safety issues for witnesses and judges. Using this case study, the speakers will discuss how law librarians can help organizations retain information for the future and the different technologies that can be used. The lessons learned can be extrapolated to other trial collections and judges' papers.

A Baobab Grows in Brooklyn: Training U.S. Law Students to Work in a South African Legal Aid Clinic

Monday, July 12
10:00 am – 10:30 am
Level: Intermediate
Competency: Reference, Research and Patron Services
Sponsor: FCIL-SIS

Jean Davis will discuss the research training that she provided to intrepid Brooklyn Law School students who worked in a 2009 pilot program at the University of the Western Cape Legal Aid Clinic in Cape Town, South Africa. She will incorporate the students' comments and present a publicly accessible web guide highlighting free sources, subscription databases, and "hidden gems" such as a clinic manual developed for South African law students.

F.H.Blume's Annotated Justinian Code

FCIL-SIS Roman Law Interest Group presents
F.H. Blume's Annotated Justinian Code: A Western Classic
Monday, July 12, 2010
10:45 am – 11:45 am

Why did Wyoming State Court Justice Fred Blume work in his spare time to produce an annotated English translation of the Code of Justinian? Why did other common law lawyers and jurists, including Roscoe Pound and Oliver Wendell Holmes, write on Roman law? Why did Justice Stevens cite Roman law in a 2005 opinion? What other Roman law influences lurk in American law? Timothy Kearley, Director of the Law Library & Professor of Law, University of Wyoming College of Law, will introduce the Code of Justinian and share the story of Justice Blume's work and the creation of the Annotated Justinian Code website. Lucia Diamond, Librarian for The Robbins Collection at the University of California, Berkeley, will highlight other Roman law influences in the U.S.

Cannibalism and Lunch

LH&RB –SIS PROGRAM
Sunday, July 11, 2010
12:00 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.
CCC Room 107

“DIGGING” COLORADO LEGAL HISTORY:
ALFRED PACKER: THE MAN, THE MYTHS, THE CANNIBAL

Professor James E. Starrs of The George Washington University Law School, forensics expert and internationally-known authority on exhumation, returns to AALL to discuss the case of Colorado cannibal Alfred (Alferd) Packer, a member of a February 1874 gold prospecting party who returned in the spring, well-fed and without his five companions. Packer was charged at his first trial with murder, not cannibalism, which was not a crime in Colorado then - and still isn't. He was convicted in 1883. When his conviction was reversed on a technicality, his retrial resulted in conviction for five crimes of homicide. Professor Starrs led a team of experts in the exhumation of the Packer party members and will discuss his analysis of the scientific data gleaned from the victims’ bones. This data undermined Packer’s trial testimony, confirming that Packer had cannibalized all five of his companions, when he had contended that he had cannibalized only two under duress when food ran out. Come join us for a fascinating trip through forensic science and the law. Lunch will be served and you’ll also get to hear a poem written about Starrs’s exhumation, “T’was the Night Before Digging”!

Mapping the Profession's Future through the Core Competencies

You know the song, “The Times They Are A-Changin” by Bob Dylan. I think we can all agree times have changed and are changing in our profession today and that the future of law librarianship is a topic of conversation in law libraries across the country.

We all have the opportunity now to take this conversation to the next level at the annual meeting on Monday the 12th from 10-10:30AM in CCC 205-207. The Continuing Professional Education Committee (CPEC) is presenting a half hour program in July at the Denver conference introducing the revised Core Competencies. The revision is the result of more than a year long culmination of online discussions on updating the core competencies. The program will talk about what the competencies are used for and will review the process used by the CPEC that resulted in the main changes made in the revision. The committee’s main focus of the program is to get feedback from you.

Ask yourself, what changes do we see occurring as participants in the profession? What is our vision of ourselves as law librarians? How can this vision be incorporated into the core competencies? By entering the discussion now you can strengthen the meaning, applicability and relevance of the core competencies to correspond to your current vision of the profession, whatever you decide that is. You may be a seasoned veteran speaking with the voice of experience, or you may be an up and coming GenX/GenY librarian who can articulate a fresh point of view. Whatever your vision, your participation in this discussion will only enhance the outcome.

The CPEC would like to establish the Core Competencies as a living document. The last revision of the competencies was approved in March 2001 by the AALL Executive Board. The CPEC hopes to establish a continuing dialogue with all AALL members with regard to the competencies so that the competencies aren’t something that just gets pulled off the shelf every ten years for revision only to go right back on it. The committee recognizes that change is rapid and that there may be things even in the newly revised competencies that people may not agree with or would like to see added. But you need to let us know.
AALL sees the competencies as a way, “to define the profession of law librarianship and its value to the legal field, today and in the future, by identifying, verifying, and actively promoting competencies of law librarianship”, and describes the competencies as, “the knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal characteristics that help distinguish superior performance”.

Change is constant, but every once in a while we must take a snapshot of the way we see things today to give definition to what is now and guide us into the future. The core competencies are that snapshot. Help us get it as in-focus as possible.

Legal Information Preservation Alliance Meetings

Legal Information Preservation Alliance Meetings
Margaret K. Maes, Executive Director

The Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA) will hold its annual business meeting on Sunday, July 11, 12:00-1:15 p.m., in the Hyatt Regency Centennial Ballroom G.

LIPA is also presenting Program J-3: The Durham Statement on Open Access One Year Later: Preservation and Authentication of Legal Scholarship on Tuesday, July 13, 2:15-3:15 in the Colorado Convention Center, Room 201-203.

Established in 2003, LIPA is a non-profit organization of 95 academic, federal, state and public law libraries, with additional support from AALL. LIPA members work on collaborative projects to preserve print and electronic legal information.

Anyone interested in preservation and the work of the Legal Information Preservation Alliance is welcome to attend the business meeting or visit Table 1018 in the Exhibit Hall. Contact Margie Maes (mkmaes@gmail.com or 812-822-2773) for further information.