Author: Katharine Haldeman

Good Morning Members!

The 2023-2024 LLNE year has wrapped up and we have many things to celebrate! First, we had the opportunity to appoint our first Equity Director, Kathy Fletcher, who hosted an amazing e-board retreat in February. We worked hard to fill vacant committee positions. LLNE also hosted the Legal Research Instruction Program again in March, which had a total of 15 students register, two of whom attended on the LRIP scholarship. In the Fall we had a wonderful meeting hosted by Northeastern University in Boston, “The Fog of War: International and Foreign Legal Research in Today’s World” and the Spring meeting was held at Social Law Library in Boston on “History in Law | Law in History”.

The committees had another successful year as well. We were able to fill some vacant spots on committees needing help. The Annual Report will summarize committee work so look for that soon!

I am excited to welcome Maureen Quinlan from Maine Law as our incoming President. I look forward to working with Maureen over the next year.

Please remember to mark your calendars for the Fall meeting on October 25th in Maine, hosted by Maine Law and the Maine State Law and Legislative Reference Library.

Thank you everyone for another great year in LLNE!

Sara Monalea McMahon, Hampshire Law Library, outgoing LLNE President

From Maureen Quinlan

An interesting and educational Spring LLNE/ABLL Conference was hosted by the Social Law Library. It was titled History in Law / Law in History. I thoroughly enjoyed each lecture.  Professor Amar and Justice Kafker provided a thought-provoking session on Law In History. The session gave me a clearer awareness of how Constitutional Law is perceived and how to understand Constitutional Law in the context of the past and today.

The panel of expert librarians on legislative history gave us insight into the resources available in each New England State to understand legislative histories. Providing legislative history information requires an understanding of each state’s resources and the patrons’ needs.

The final presentation on preservation problems with e-resources with Caroline Walters and David Walker defined the current state of the preservation challenge. The discussion led to some practical ways librarians can help solve the problem for future generations. Asking vendors to consider creating an archive of superseded materials is one practical tip for helping open the conversation. Over time it has the potential to create awareness and begin to address the issue.

I wanted to announce the Save the Date for the Fall LLNE Conference.  The date is Friday, October 25th. The Conference is being held at the McKernan Hospitality Center located on the campus of Southern Maine Community College (SMCC) in South Portland.  

We hope to plan a fall conference as interesting as this past spring conference. The fall conference’s working title is The Role of Law Libraries in the Age of AI. Further details will follow.

The McKernan Center is a converted mansion that sits on the SMCC Campus with views of the Atlantic Ocean. The SMCC campus is a lovely place to visit, with a beach at the end of campus.  SMCC still does not charge for parking. The campus is just over the bridge from Portland.  Autumn is considered by many to be the best time to visit Maine.  Foliage, pumpkins, and local apples are readily available. The Spring Point Inn is attached to the McKernan Center and sometimes has a few rooms available.   

I was trying to remember the first LLNE Conference I attended. If you can not remember the last LLNE Conference you attended, it may be time to consider joining us on October 25th.  The LLNE Conference will not be held in Maine again for years!  Do not miss another opportunity.

The Service Committee would like to present its Spring project: Supporting digital historical initiatives. Most of the projects below ask for assistance with transcribing documents. Transcription adds so much value by helping make documents more discoverable in catalogs and other search engines. Digital transcription projects are projects you can work on from the comfort of your own home (with one exception below). Be a part of history while helping to share it with others!

The organizations below welcome your support:

State Organizations:

Massachusetts Historical Society: https://www.masshist.org/mymhs/

Digital Main Transcription Project: http://digitalmaine.net/projects/contributors

ArtInRuins (Rhode Island): https://artinruins.com/support/#donate-time-andor-expertise

Regional Organizations:

Historic New England: https://www.historicnewengland.org/explore/library-archives/casey-family-papers-archive/help-transcribe-the-casey-family-papers/

National Organizations:

National Archives and Records Administration: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/get-started-transcribing

Native Northeast Portal: https://nativenortheastportal.com/

“The Native Northeast Research Collaborative‘s Native Northeast Portal contains primary source materials by, on, or about Northeast Indians from repositories around the world.  Documents are digitized, transcribed, annotated, reviewed by the appropriate contemporary descendant community representatives, and brought together with scholarly annotations and academic/community commentary into one edited interactive digital collection. The Portal currently contains thousands of records associated with scores of Native communities.”

All public librarians are encouraged to apply for a scholarship, sponsored by the LLNE Access to Justice Committee, to attend our chapter’s Legal Research Instruction Program.

The Legal Research Instruction Program (LRIP) is a six-week online seminar geared towards public librarians interested in learning more about law librarianship. Each week, a different aspect of legal research is covered — everything from an overview of the U.S. legal system to finding business transactional documents. The class will run on Tuesday evenings from March 26th through April 30th. 

 For more information about the LRIP course, go to https://llne.org/llnes-legal-research-instruction-program-is-back/ or contact Brian Flaherty directly at brian2@bu.edu.

The LLNE Access to Justice Committee is providing two scholarships to cover the cost of registration. Applicants must be public (non-law) librarians from the New England region.

Applications should be submitted through this Google form https://forms.gle/Wdyy1hiYQJtzNwY89 by March 19, 2024. Scholarship recipients will be notified by March 22, 2024.

Please send questions about the scholarship to Anne Rajotte at anne.rajotte@uconn.edu.

We encourage all LLNE members to share this scholarship opportunity with their local public libraries and any public librarians that would be interested in this excellent professional development opportunity.

LLNE is happy to announce that our Legal Research Instruction Program (LRIP) is back and registration is open!

The program is entirely online, every Tuesday from 6:30-8:00pm starting March 26th and ending on April 30th.

LRIP will cover:

• A general overview of the US Legal System
• An introduction to legal research methods, including secondary sources
• The role of case law, the courts, and case finding tools such as digests
• The organization of statutes and conducting a legislative history
• Finding regulations
• Understanding administrative law
• Finding transactional law documents
• Finding information about businesses and people
• Putting everything together with legal research strategy.

For more information, about the course, visit the program’s webpage or contact Brian Flaherty directly.

Registration is $150 and closes on March 23rd! Stay tuned for information on scholarships!

Registration URL: https://www.jotform.com/form/240584669539169#preview

by Nicole Belbin, Service Committee Chair

The Fall Service Project marks the Service Committee’s first service project with our newest committee member, Rebecca Valentine, Associate Librarian at UMass Law. She has proven herself an invaluable member of our committee already and John, Stephanie, and I are so happy she joined us. For the Fall 2023 Service Project, the Service Committee chose to highlight the International Institute of New England (IINE) in Boston. They do amazing work supporting refugees and immigrants and have recently seen an unprecedented influx of Haitians into the Boston area. We felt their mission complemented the theme of the Meeting, The Fog of War: International and Foreign Legal Research in Today’s World, nicely. We sponsored a goods drive for members to bring in or purchase items online via their Amazon Wishlist. LLNE members generously donated towels, sheets, toys, and hats, among other items.

We learned a lot about coordinating a goods drive with this project! As luck would have it, IINE had its annual full staff meeting on November 3, the same day as our Fall Meeting. This put a small monkey wrench into coordinating the drop off of donated items to IINE’s office, as none of the Service Committee members were available to deliver the goods another day. The Planning Committee was extremely helpful in storing the items and helping us figure out alternative means of getting the items where they needed to go. Ultimately, Katie Kerekes, Senior Law Library Intern at Northeastern, saved the day. She delivered the items to IINE on November 7.

If you didn’t get a chance to donate an item during the Fall Meeting but would like to support this great organization, they are still in need of winter coats or you can purchase other much-need items from their Amazon Wishlist.

As always, thank you to our members for your continued generosity. The Service Committee is looking forward to offering impactful service opportunities for LLNE members in the New Year.

Registration for LLNE’S Fall 2023 Meeting, The Fog of War: International and Foreign Legal Research in Today’s World, is now live! You can register here, on the meeting LibGuide! The registration fee is 70$ and the registration form will be open until October 20th.

Check out the LibGuide for additional information about the theme, schedule, speakers, and travel.

We hope to see you there!

Save the date and join us for the Fall LLNE Meeting!

Friday, November 3, 2023
The Fog of War:
Foreign and International Legal Research in Today’s World
Hosted by Northeastern University School of Law Library

We welcome Maureen Quinlan as the Vice President/President-Elect and Nicholas Mignanelli as the co-Education Director. We’d also like to congratulate Rachel Weiss for being re-elected LLNE treasurer.

The LLNE Nominations Committee is pleased to announce the slate of candidates for the upcoming election at our next annual meeting. All candidates have been approached and are willing to serve. The slate is as follows:

Vice-President/President Elect: 

Maureen Quinlan
Reference & Gov. Doc. Law Librarian
Garbrecht Law Library
University of Maine School of Law
246 Deering Avenue
Portland, ME 04102
(207) 780-4835
maureen.quinlan@maine.edu

Treasurer:

Rachel Weiss
Research Librarian
Nixon Peabody LLP
53 State St.
Boston, MA 02109
(617) 345-6141
rweiss@nixonpeabody.com

Education Director:

Nicholas Mignanelli
Head of Library Programming and Lecturer in Legal Research
Lillian Goldman Law Library
Yale Law School
127 Wall St.
New Haven, CT 06511
(203) 432-8153
nicholas.mignanelli@yale.edu 

LLNE Nominations Committee:

Barbara Schneider, Chairperson
Mindy Kent
George Taoultsides