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SLA Boston & LLNE are partnering for this social gathering

Dine Around in Portland, Maine at the Portland Lobster Company!

Summer is here! Please join other information professionals from Maine and other parts of Northern New England for a delicious dinner at the Portland Lobster Company on Thursday, July 28th from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. The Portland Lobster Company is located in downtown Portland, Maine on Commercial Street and has a great menu with reasonable prices. They also have nice outdoor seating close to the water. Come and chat with other information professionals in this open forum! This is a great chance to get together with others in your profession and discuss common issues in your field – plus enjoy some Maine seafood!!!

Date: Thursday, July 28th at 6:00 pm

Place: Portland Lobster Company

Cost: Your own food and drink

Registration: Please register via SurveyMonkey by July 22nd, so that we can provide the restaurant an accurate count of attendees.

Parking: Folks should park either on Commercial Street (if you can find a spot), in the Fisherman’s Wharf Parking, or see more parking options.

“Dine Arounds” are smaller, more casual meals where you can connect with other SLA colleagues and other fellow colleagues while having a good time!

Questions? Contact: Kami Bedard at kbedard at pierceatwood.com or 207-791-1142

Hope to see you there!

The Inaugural LATCamp

Interested in using technology to ease the pain of creating end-of-semester outlines? Want to share library resources with law students and professors in a completely new way? Looking for a way to finally illustrate a case in class through the use of technology? Or are you just plain curious about the intersection of legal information and technology? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you should come to LATCamp!

LATCamp (Law and Technology Camp) is a one-day unconference hosted by the Harvard Law School on May 16. We welcome everyone who is involved with legal education throughout New England – students, professors, librarians, technologists. It promises to be an exciting day of lively discussions, brainstorming, and forming new ideas. See the About page for more information.

Applying to LATCamp couldn’t be easier! Just fill out the registration form with a little bit of information about yourself and why you want to come to LATCamp. Applications are due by April 18, 2011, and all participants will be notified by April 25 of their acceptance. Due to space constraints, we will be capping attendance at 75.

Once you’re accepted, you are encouraged to submit session proposals and to comment on others. Lively discussions before the day begins help to shape the discussion topics and to set the participatory tone for the day. You can also sign up for a Dork Short! Dork Shorts are 2-minute mini-presentations on projects you may be working on. They are presented before the whole group, and you can show off a web-based project, or just get up and talk, prop-free.

Send questions to Margaret Peachy at mpeachy@law.harvard.edu.

What? Wait a minute! It’s October 1? How can that be? I was just sworn in as LLNE President in….JULY? No! That can’t be right. Can it?
I can’t believe it is October already and I am sure many of you are feeling this very same way. I wanted to take some time out of the craziness that is September to fill you all in on what is happening with LLNE.

Snow in October

Amanda Merck, Chair of the LLNE Service Committee has organized a great event, where volunteers from LLNE will participate in Jumpstart’s “Read for the Record” campaign. This year they will be reading “The Snowy Day” to children at The Open Center in Somerville, MA on the morning of Thursday, October 7th. Please note: They were originally scheduled to read in the afternoon, but it has been changed to 10:00 am ‑ 11:30 am! They will be joined by Senator Pat Jehlen and Suzan Bocamazo, the new editor of the Mass Lawyers Weekly! Last year the MLW showcased photos of our event in their newspaper.

In its fifth year, Jumpstart’s “Read for the Record” campaign will bring together hundreds of thousands of people to break the world record for the number of children read to in a single day with a single book, TheSnowy Day. I hope you can join your volunteer‑minded colleagues but if you cannot attend the event please feel free to make a contribution on our book drive website: http://www.readfortherecord.org/site/TR/RFTR/General?team_id=6010&pg=tea
m&fr_id=1130

If you cannot donate or join the volunteers in Somerville there is something else you can do ‑ you can read to a child and then register it on the Jumpstart website, http://www.readfortherecord.org/site/PageServer?pagename=pledge_2010_form. There is great power in reading to a young child! And you can be a World Record Holder!

Thank you, Amanda, for organizing this great event!

Completing the National Inventory

Those of you at the annual meeting in Denver in July heard me speak about the importance of AALL’s current project to complete a national inventory of primary legal materials. It is AALL’s policy that the public have no-fee permanent public access to authentic online legal information on government websites, including the text of all primary legal materials. The state work groups are currently in the process of compiling the primary legal resources of every level of government for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. As you can imagine, this is a huge task and many of LLNE’s members are participating in this project. Below are the state working groups for the states that make up LLNE. If you would like to take part in this project please do not hesitate to contact anyone on this list. I am sure they would gladly take your help. It is my hope that by July 2011, when we are meeting at the AALL Annual Meeting in Pennsylvania, that each state in LLNE will have completed its inventory.
If you want to learn more about this project you can go to the AALL Government Relations Website at http://www.aallnet.org/aallwash/.

Please join me in thanking the following individuals for their participation in this very important project.

Connecticut
Camilla Tubbs, Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Library (coordinator)
Steve Mirsky, Connecticut State Library
Darcy Kirk, University of Connecticut School of Law Library
Ryan Harrington, Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Library
Cesar Zapata, Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Library

Maine
John Barden, Maine State Law & Legislative Reference Library (coordinator)
Christine I. Hepler, Donald L. Garbrecht Law Library, University of Maine School of Law
Louise A. Jensen, Drummond, Woodsum & MacMahon
Ian Bourgoine, MLIS student at University of Pittsburgh Library and Information Science Program and Intern at the Donald L. Garbrecht Law Library, University of Maine School of Law

Massachusetts
Susan Zago, LLNE Immediate Past-President, Northeastern University Law Library (coordinator)
Joan Shear, Boston College Law Library
Michelle Pearse, Harvard Law School Library
David Bachman, Boston University Pappas Law Library
Kevin Coakley-Welch, Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office

New Hampshire
Mary S. Searles, John W. King New Hampshire Law Library (coordinator)
Donna Gilbreth, New Hampshire State Library
Cindy Landau, Franklin Pierce Law Center Law Library

Rhode Island
Anne McDonald, Rhode Island Department of Attorney General (coordinator)
Karen Quinn, Rhode Island State Law Library
Emilie Benoit, Roger Williams University School of Law

Vermont
Paul Donovan, Vermont Department of Libraries (co-coordinator)
Patricia Gabel, Court Improvement and Innovation, Vermont Judiciary (co-coordinator)
Jane Woldow, Vermont Law School Julien and Virginia Cornell Library

The Fall LLNE Meeting

The fall LLNE meeting will be held at Northeastern University School of Law Library in Boston. At this meeting we will be learning how to improve workplace health and worker’s morale. Libraries are being faced with demands for doing more with less and in some cases libraries are being closed or being threatened with closure. Information is coming in from all angles and monumental change happens as we sip our morning coffee. How can you be more efficient and more effective? How can you keep your spirits up as well as your colleagues and customers? Come to the Fall LLNE Meeting and find out!

Jay Hargis, Director of Learning & Development at Tufts Medical Center will give the keynote address on “Catching the Morale Virus” and how to keep an upbeat attitude at work and then spread it around. Hamish Blackman, CEO of Wellness Corporation will talk about individual stressors and examines techniques for managing events, behavior, and attitude. Jason Eiseman, Librarian for Emerging Technologies at Yale Law School will do a presentation on dealing with information overload. Stephen Donweber, Senior Legal Information and Educational Technology Librarian at Pappas Law Library will be our facilitator for our joint brainstorming session on how we can apply these ideas and concepts to our own situations.
I hope to see many of you there on November 19. With the holidays fast approaching by this time, maybe Mr. Blackman will also talk to us about holiday stressors and how to manage those!

I hope you all enjoy the remainder of the fall! I look forward to meeting and working with you this year as your President

Christine I. Hepler
LLNE President 2010-2011
Associate Director
Garbrecht Law Library
University of Maine School of Law

I am pleased to announce that for the third year running the Volunteer Law Librarians of New England are participating in Jumpstart’s “Read for the Record” campaign. This year we will be reading “The Snowy Day” to kids at The Open Center in Somerville, MA on the afternoon of Thursday, October 7th. We will be joined by Senator Pat Jehlen. Please let me know as soon as possible if you would like to participate. I will arrange for transportation from Post Office Square, Boston.

Learn more: http://www.aallnet.org/chapter/llne/whatsnew.htm

Headquartered in Boston, Jumpstart is a national non-profit organization that brings college students and community volunteers together with preschool children for year-long, individualized tutoring and mentoring. In its fifth year, Jumpstart’s “Read for the Record” campaign will bring together hundreds of thousands of people to break the world record for the number of children read to in a single day with a single book, The Snowy Day. We will do our part to help break the record at S.M.I.L.E. pre-school. I hope you can join your volunteer-minded colleagues!

If you cannot attend the event – I know that we are a far-flung group – please feel free to make a contribution on our book drive website:
http://www.readfortherecord.org/site/TR/RFTR/General?team_id=6010&pg=tea
m&fr_id=1130

Even a small donation will make a big difference to a young child who has no books of their own at home. If you cannot donate or join the volunteers in Somerville there is something else you can do – you can read to a child and then register it on the Jumpstart website.

There is great power in reading to a young child!

If you want to join us on October 7, or if you have any questions or ideas for our LLNE Service Committee, please get in touch with Amanda Merk amerk@seyfarth.com .

Greetings and Happy Summer! The newest edition of the LLNE News is here!

We have included a quick guide to the some of our LLNE member’s presentations at AALL. Our guest columnist this issue is Kathryn Croco Michaels, a Law Librarian Fellow at the University of Denver. She has great insight into the majestic mountain ranges of Colorado –a great day trip for AALL! We are also re-introducing book reviews to the newsletter. Roger Lemire has written a review “The Checklist Manifesto,” by Dr. Atul Gawande.

This issue of the newsletter also continues our regular favorites such as Miss. Nomer, Access Points, and a continuation of the series “Agents for the Books” – now in glorious Technicolor!

For those attending AALL this year, see you in Denver!

The Trustees and staff of the Social Law Library are greatly saddened by the death of Edgar J. Bellefontaine. As Librarian from 1961 to 1998 Mr. Bellefontaine was the guiding force behind the Library’s many improvements and innovations. He kept the Library’s primary focus squarely on the patrons who depend on its resources and services. He guided the Library’s adoption of new technologies, forged a commitment to historic preservation, and encouraged nearly four decades of energetic development. He never forgot that the Library was founded as a “social” organization to foster a sense of professionalism and community among the members of the bench and bar. He was brilliant, enterprising, engaging and forever innovative. Made up of equal parts Maine and Metropolitan Boston, he was a much loved and gifted custodian of the law.

***

Edgar Bellefontaine’s dedication to new and improving technologies, combined with his respect and thoughtful preservation of the past, created a unique period in the Library’s two hundred year history—an information renaissance—and made the Social Law Library a leader among the nation’s law libraries. The Library “firsts” realized during his tenure present a chronology of Social Law Library automation and advancement: The installation of a coin operated copier (1963) and microfilm reader (1972); construction of a micro-fiche production laboratory (1974); production of microfiche editions of the Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court Records & Briefs (1975); the Colonial Court Records Program, the nation’s first-ever program for the restoration, preservation and indexing of colonial court records (1975); installation of West Publishing Company’s computerized legal research system WESTLAW (1976); creation of the Copy Center (1984); first endowed book fund established (1984); LEXIS/NEXIS membership group program debuts, one of the first library-based LEXIS subscription services in the country (1986); first organization in the nation to publish state agency information on CD-ROM with publication of Mass. Administrative Law Library (1989), followed by publication of Mass. Substantive Law Library (1992); automation of the Social Law Library catalog with installation of the VTLS Library System (1993); introduction of the Social Law Library Website, www.socialaw.com (1995); and creation of the TechCenter, providing public computer terminals for online research (1995). As a service to solo and small firm patrons challenged by the high cost of “going digital,” SLL in 1996 became an Internet Service Provider (ISP), and offered email services as well as Web-page design and hosting services (1996). Throughout these years and since, visiting judges, educators, practitioners and librarians have come from throughout the world to learn about the American system of law and the use of technology in legal research.

A graduate of the University of Maine and the Boston College Law School, Mr. Bellefontaine was an extraordinary citizen of the scholarly, legal and law library communities. His published scholarship was on the subject of court rules and on early Massachusetts legal history. His publications include “Post-conviction Remedies under the Rules of Criminal Procedure” (1981); “The Early History of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court” (1990); “Chief Justice Francis Dana: Patriot and Federalist” (1992); “Waitstill Winthrop” (1995); “Honorable Isaac Addington: Fervent Public Servant and Reluctant Chief Justice” (1996); and “Samuel Sewall: The Last Puritan Justice” (1998). He served twenty-two years as a member of the Massachusetts Judicial Records Committee, and was founding Director of the Supreme Judicial Court Historical Society.

In the mid-70’s he served as Reporter for the Massachusetts Judicial Conference Criminal Rules Project and as a Reporter for the Federal Speedy Trial Planning Group for the District of Massachusetts and the District of Rhode Island.

He is a former President of the New England Law Library Consortium and the American Association of Law Libraries’ (AALL’s) State, Court & County Law Libraries Section. He also served on the Law Library Microform Consortium Executive Committee and on a number of AALL special projects and committees. He was also a former member of the Boston College Law School Alumni Council and recipient of its Daniel G. Holland Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1999 he received the highest distinction bestowed by the American Association of Law Libraries, the Miriam Gould Gallagher Distinguished Service Award. In addition, in 1996, in Edgar Bellefontaine’s honor, the Law Librarians of New England created and awarded him the inaugural Edgar Award for Innovation, Excellence and Dedication to the Practice of Law Librarianship. Other awards and recognitions extended to him include the AALL-SCCLL’s Bethany J. Ochal Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession, West Publishing Company’s Excellence in Government Law Librarianship Award, the Henry C. Lind Award of the Association of the Reporters of Judicial Decisions, and the Chief Justice’s Award for Distinguished Service to the Judiciary.

Founded more than two centuries ago, the Social Law Library is a cornerstone of the Massachusetts legal community—the “level playing field” of legal research essential to the administration of justice. For thirty-seven years, Edgar J. Bellefontaine’s extraordinary leadership transformed and advanced the institution. The Social Law family mourns his passing and sends their condolences to Edgar’s family and many friends.

***

A memorial service will be held at the Social Law Library. Date to be announced.