Author: SaraMonalea

Learned Hands: LLNE Fall Service Project

In honor of the LLNE Fall Meeting titled “Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms in Law Libraries and in Legal Practice”, the Service Committee is promoting the use of the online legal game, Learned Hands.  Developed by the Stanford Legal Design Lab and Suffolk’s Legal Innovation and Technology Lab, Learned Hands is a crowdsourcing game that helps develop access to justice technology.  The game asks players to spot possible legal issues in real people’s stories.  When you spot a legal issue, you are teaching the technology how to spot the issue as well.  The technology will then be used to help link legal resources to the people who are searching for help. Anyone can play!  To participate, go to https://learnedhands.law.stanford.edu/.  Creating an account only takes a minute.  Once you have an account, start reading stories and answer questions about any legal issues you find.  You accrue points for every question you answer.  Our goal is to reach 50,000 points by the end of November!  To help us reach that goal, please email me (jessica.almeida@umassd.edu) your username so we can add your points to LLNE’s overall total.

PT Library Assistant Position Opening with Accufile

PT Library Assistant – Boston, MA

Accufile, Inc., a professional library services firm, is seeking an experienced part-time Library Assistant to join our team! The ideal candidate will have the ability to work 15 hours a week (3 days).  You must have current legal research experience to be considered for this position.

Core responsibilities:

Provide basic reference-level research such as article, docket, serial and case pulls.

Ability to curate news feeds for BNA Convergence newsletters

Familiarity with/ability to learn Softlink catalog platform

Process print materials, including check-in, labeling, barcoding, and routing,

including:

·        Process and check-in electronic resources 

·        Add users and manage user subscriptions

·        Update MARC records with Cassidy Cataloging files as needed

·        Audit catalog as needed

Respond to requests regarding legal department employee passwords and access, including:

·        Issue, maintain and delete passwords for Westlaw, WestLegal Ed, Bloomberg Law, Law360, NILS 

Manage material orders, including:

·        Maintain, order and cancel material orders

Invoicing, including:

·        Open and process all incoming mail

·        Process, track and reconcile invoices

·        Maintain accounting ledgers and handle all special billing situations

·        Communicate with clients concerning billing discrepancies and questions

·        Maintain and audit ledgers as required

As Needed:

·        Supervise high interns with loose-leaf filing, or perform the filing themselves 

·        Data entry for CI surveys

·        Maintain Library Website Statistics spreadsheet

Requirements:

·        Undergraduate/Associate’s level degree/coursework highly desirable, library coursework or progression towards library degree preferred

·        Strong proficiency in all MS office products

·        Current legal research experience a must!!

·        Self-starter, ability to work and move work forward under minimum/remote supervision 

·        Experience with customer service and client communication 

 To be considered for this position please forward cover letter and resume to Karen Gatteny at jobs@accufile.com.

Nominations for the Emerging Leader Award

Hi LLNE Members,

AALL is now accepting nominations for the Emerging Leader Award. This award recognizes newer members who have made significant contributions to the profession and have demonstrated the potential for leadership and continuing excellence. Self-nominations are accepted and encouraged.

Selection criteria

The nominee must: 

·         be a member in good standing of AALL

·         have 10 or fewer years of law library experience

·         have made a significant contributions to the Association and/or the profession

·         have shown outstanding promise for continuing service and leadership (please provide specific examples of his/her continuing activities)

·         not have previously received an Emerging Leader Award

The nomination deadline is January 31st. Letters of recommendation can take some time to gather and holidays are approaching, so we encourage you to begin the process as soon as possible in order to meet the deadline.

More details on the award, including a link to the Nomination Form, can be found here: Emerging Leader Award (https://www.aallnet.org/community/recognition/awards-program/emerging-leader-award/)

Opening at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New Haven, Connecticut

The U.S. Courts Library for the Second Circuit has an opening for a branch librarian in New Haven, Connecticut. This is an exciting position with the opportunity to work closely with our federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy judges, law clerks, and court staff. 

The New Haven Library is located on the Green in the historic Richard C. Lee U. S. Courthouse. Between our Manhattan headquarters library and six branch libraries, we currently have a staff of twenty-four.

For more information, please see the announcement at http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/docs/Jobs/FY19-31_BranchLibrarian.pdf.

“Roger Williams University law school dedicates classroom in honor of state’s first female African American lawyer”

Howdy everyone! Hope everyone is enjoying the start to the new semester. Nicole Dyslewski, our Vice President/President-elect, is featured in the following article. Please give it a read and help us congratulate her! https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190910/roger-williams-university-law-school-dedicates-classroom-in-honor-of-states-first-female-african-american-lawyer

Member Articles in AALL Spectrum

Some of our members have been hard at work publishing articles in AALL Spectrum. Below are two articles that have recently been published in the September/October edition. Please give them a read and join us in congratulating the authors!

http://epubs.aallnet.org/i/1159178-aall-spectrum-september-october-2019-volume-24-number-1/0?

Spring Service Committee Project: Helping Transcribe a Journal from the Rhode Island Equal Suffrage Association (1888-1892)

This year the LLNE Service Committee continued to work closely with the Rhode Island State Archives for its 2019 spring project.  Participants transcribed handwritten document pages virtually, from the comfort of their own homes or offices, which was a different approach to the transcription party that was held on Roger Williams University’s Providence Campus in November of last year.  Participants received 5 pages (with the ability to request less or more to work on) from the Rhode Island Equal Suffrage Association (RIESA) journal, which is comprised of minutes, written in late 19th century cursive, of the meetings held between 1888 and 1892. Also included for participants were transcription tips and helpful resources on how to read historical handwriting.

I was unable to attend the transcription party in November, so Iwas excited to be given an opportunity to transcribe pages virtually.  I’ve worked on transcription projects in the past for my place of employment and as a volunteer for the genealogical research site FamilySearch, and over time I’ve found that I actually really enjoy it.  Older handwriting can be incredibly frustrating to read, and it often requires a bit of detective work; getting a sense of the way the author stylized certain letters and words and figuring out the context of the document, if it’s not immediately apparent, can often provide important pieces to the puzzle.  And what librarian doesn’t like a little bit of a research-related challenge?

I was assigned five pages in the RIESA journal that were a summary of a meeting held in 1891, and the main topics that were discussed included the need for women in law and government, the enfranchisement of women, and the protection of children factory workers.  It was incredibly easy to view the document online (no downloading was necessary) and write my transcription in Word.  I was fortunate that the secretary who took the notes for this particular meeting wrote relatively clearly, and it may have taken me no more than an hour of my time altogether to transcribe the pages.  There were a couple words I scratched my head over (like “grogshop”???), but by the end I was confident that I had everything transcribed correctly—spelling and grammatical mistakes included, even though it’s sotempting to make corrections!  It was also neat to read first-handabout the different speeches given during this spirited meeting by well-known names such as Mary Ann Greene and William Lloyd Garrison, with Anna Garlin Spencer presiding over the meeting.

Once the transcription was complete, I emailed the file to the Rhode Island State Archives.  While certain types of documents can be fed through optical character recognition (OCR), transcribing handwriting requires manual effort and time; it felt good to be able to help provide greater access to this important association’s records for researchers and the general public.  

Kaitlin Connolly

LLNE Service Committee

State Library of Massachusetts

Kaitlin.Connolly@mass.gov

Service Committee Transcription Project: Wrap-Up

The LLNE Service Committee would like to thank everyone who helped us transcribe documents for the Rhode Island State Archives this year.  

In the Fall, the committee hosted a transcription party with State Archivist, Ashley Selima.  LLNE members transcribed documents from the Rhode Island Suffrage Association from 1868-1871 and 1888-1892 at the Roger Williams Law Providence Campus.  Transcribers were then treated to a tour of the Rhode Island State Archives and a social hour at a local restaurant.  The committee would like to thank Roger Williams Law Providence Campus for the fantastic space and technological support.  We would also like to thank to LLNE and Lexis for sponsoring the event.  

After the party, members of the Service Committee wrote an article titled “Hosting A Successful Transcription Party”, which was published in the March/April 2019 issue of the AALL Spectrum.

In the Spring, the Service Committee took the transcription party on the road.  LLNE members from all over transcribed historical documents from the comfort of their home or office.  The committee is happy to report that we had 23 volunteers transcribe over 100 pages of the Rhode Island Equal Suffrage Association Journal from 1888-1892.  Thank you to everyone who volunteered and made this project a success!  

All the transcriptions will help make these fascinating historical documents more accessible to everyone.  The LLNE Service Committee would like to thank the Rhode Island Secretary of State’s office and RI State Archivist Ashley Selima for providing this wonderful opportunity.  

Thank you to the members of the Service Committee for all their work making this project a reality.  We are always looking for more volunteers!  If interested, email Jessica at jessica.almeida@umassd.edu.