Author: EmmaWood

Election Results: Congrats to Sara, Christie, and Jessica!

Sara McMahon, Christie Schauder, and Jessica Panella have been voted in by our membership to fill three open positions on the LLNE Executive Board. Thank you to everyone who voted. Read on for bios of Sara, Christie, and Jessica:

Sara McMahon (Vice President/President Elect, 2022-2023)

Sara Monalea McMahon is the Head Law Librarian at the Hampshire Law Library, located in Northampton, MA, which is part of the Massachusetts Trial Court Law Libraries. She has been a member of LLNE since 2017, serving on the Access to Justice Committee and most recently co-chair of the Communications Committee.

Christie Schauder (Secretary, 2022-2024)

Christie is a Research Librarian at Choate, Hall & Stewart in Boston. She has been in law libraries for 7 years now. She got her start in law librarianship at the Social Law Library while still attending Simmons for grad school. Christie has found the community to be incredibly welcoming and is excited for another term on the Board.

Jessica Panella (Education Co-Chair, 2022-2024)

Jessica is the Head of Access and Administrative Services at the University of Connecticut School of Law Library. She has worked in academic law libraries for more than fifteen years in the areas of patron services and library administration. Jessica received her BA from UConn and MLIS from Drexel University. Her areas of interest and expertise are design thinking, competitive intelligence, library measures/metrics, as well as financial and knowledge management.

LLNE-SNELLA Members Support the Books-to-Prison Project

Thanks to all who donated at the LLNE-SNELLA Spring 2022 meeting! The LLNE Service Committee partnered with the Lillian Goldman Law Library’s Books-to-Prison Project, an initiative spearheaded by Julian Aiken, Yale Law Library’s Assistant Director for Access and Faculty Services. Donations of new or like-new paperbacks (fiction or popular non-fiction) as well as recent law books help the project establish libraries in jails and prisons across Connecticut. The Project has also provided books to domestic violence shelters and will be working to expand outreach to additional local community programs.

Members had the opportunity to donate books to the Books-to-Prison Project either during the 2022 LLNE-SNELLA Spring Meeting at Yale Law School, by mail if they could not attend the meeting, or through  donating e-gift vouchers to a local Connecticut bookstore. Through the generosity of LLNE-SNELLA members, the Books-to-Prison Project has so far received a total of 34 books and $200 in gift vouchers!

It’s never too late to make a donation! If you’d like to donate books to the Project, they can be mailed to:

Julian Aiken

Yale Law Library

127 Wall Street, New Haven, 06511

Or you can purchase an electronic gift card through RJ Julia Independent Booksellers and send it to julian.aiken@yale.edu.  

If you have any questions, please contact co-chairs, Jessica Almeida at jessica.almeida@umassd.edu and Kaitlin Connolly at kaitlin.connolly@jud.state.ma.us.

Thank you all again for supporting this cause!

The Service Committee

Interview with Spring Meeting Panelist Yasmin Sokkar Harker

We have one more panelist to feature before the Spring Meeting tomorrow. Yasmin Sokkar Harker is Student Liaison Librarian and Law Library Professor at CUNY Law. Her research interests include legal research pedagogy, critical information literacy, legal research and social justice, and information access issues. Read below for a more about Yasmin:

1.       Tell us a fun fact about yourself! I participate I am in a book club that focuses on post apocalyptic science fiction. 

2.       Do you have any pets?
Two cats.

3.       What is your favorite hobby? Reading fantasy and science fiction, trying and failing to become fluent in a second language.

4. What do you think is one of the most important aspects of critical law librarianship? How much you can broaden your own critical perspective on legal information by learning from others and having intellectual humility.

For more information about speakers, take a look at this Libguide for the Critical Law Librarianship-LLNE / SNELLA Spring 2022 Meeting!

Interview with LLNE Spring Meeting Panelist Ronald Wheeler

As we continue to get ready for the LLNE Spring Meeting, we want to share this interview with Ron Wheeler, the plenary panel moderator:

  1. Tell us a fun fact about yourself!  
Ronald E. Wheeler, Jr.
Director of Fineman & Pappas Law Libraries

I once attended a Madonna concert dressed as Madonna. 

  1. What is your favorite New England spot and why?  

Downtown Providence because it is urban and foody and cultured and full of life. 

  1. Do you have any pets?  

No, but I still hope to one day own a very large dog. 

  1. What is your favorite hobby?  

Dancing, reading, traveling 

  1. What do you enjoy most about being a law librarian?  

The people I work with. 

  1. How did you end up where you are, doing what you’re doing? How did you end up in your specialty?  

A combination of hard work, dumb luck, serendipity, and remembering to always be my true and authentic self. 

  1. What do you think is one of the most important aspects of critical law librarianship?  

The need for us to always question what is presented to us as truth. 

Interview with LLNE Spring Meeting Speaker Justin Simard, Michigan State University College of Law

We are so excited for the LLNE / SNELLA Spring 2022 Meeting! In anticipation of our day at Yale Law School discussing Critical Law Librarianship, we hope you enjoy this interview with the keynote speaker:

Justin Simard is an Assistant Professor of Law at the MSU College of Law where he teaches Professional Responsibility, Commercial Law, and Legal History and directs the Citing Slavery Project. Justin has a B.A. in History from Rice University, a J.D. and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania.
  1. Tell us a fun fact about yourself! I’m a host for a breeding mom for Leader Dogs for the Blind. That means that I help whelp and raise future guide dogs. Here’s a link that describes our work: Voices of the Leader Dog Community: Lauren Eckberg and Justin Simard – Leader Dogs for the Blind
  2. What is your favorite Michigan spot and why? I’ve only been in Michigan for a couple of years, so I haven’t had the chance to explore as much as I’d like. Bath, a town near East Lansing, has some great dirt roads for running and trails for cross country skiing. That might be my favorite spot so far.
  3. Do you have any pets? Yes. In addition to the breeding mom, Java, who is a black lab, I have two cats: Ella and Mäusel.
  4. What is your favorite hobby? I enjoy distance running.
  5. What do you enjoy most about being a law librarian? My favorite thing about being a professor is exploring ideas that are important to me and sharing them with my students and others. I love talking with law librarians because of our shared interests in legal research and citation.
  6. How did you end up where you are, doing what you’re doing? How did you end up in your specialty? I developed an interest in American intellectual history in college thanks to Professor Thomas Haskell, whose class I took in my first semester at Rice University. I had also been interested in the law, and Professor Haskell encouraged me to pursue a J.D. in addition to a Ph.D. In graduate school, my advisor, Professor Sarah Barringer Gordon, introduced me to the graduates of the Litchfield Law School. Using them as a starting point, I ended up studying how the legal profession’s work drafting agreements, performing due diligence, securing notes, and giving advice shaped the American economy. This commercial role brought lawyers into direct contact with the law of slavery. When I found out that some of the opinions they wrote were still being cited today, I began to study that influence and catalog it at www.citingslavery.org
  7. What do you think is one of the most important aspects of critical law librarianship? It is important to examine what is often unexamined. Critical law librarianship can encourage the legal profession to reflect on what it often takes for granted.

Register today: LLNE-SNELLA Spring Meeting at Yale Law School

Hello,

Registration is now open for the LLNE-SNELLA Spring Meeting at Yale Law School in New Haven on Friday, June 17, 2022. The meeting, on Critical Law Librarianship, will provide an opportunity for attendees to explore the ways in which critical theory and critical legal theory apply to law librarianship and legal information.

Please follow this link to register and for additional information: https://libguides.law.uconn.edu/c.php?g=1235370&p=9039706 

The registration fee is $50. We accept credit cards on the registration form. The deadline for registering is June 9, 2022.

Since this is the first in-person event hosted by our regional chapters in a while, and in light of the continuing pandemic, we have designed the program in an effort to ease the anxieties and health and safety concerns many of us share. The meeting will begin later – and end earlier – than usual to accommodate commuters. Lunches will be boxed so that you can spread out and hopefully enjoy the outdoors (weather permitting). And the day will end with library tours and an outdoor ice cream social. We hope you can join us!

Yale University’s visitors policy, which is subject to change between now and June 17, requires that visitors to campus be fully vaccinated and boosted. Visitors must also carry proof of vaccination and booster documentation, and provide it if asked. In the event that public health recommendations and Yale University policies require us to cancel this in-person event, refunds of registration fees will be issued and the event will be rescheduled and moved to an online format. We appreciate your cooperation as we gather for an informative, fun, and rewarding day together.

All the best,

Mike VanderHeijden

Head of Reference

Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Law Library

michael.vanderheijden@yale.edu