Blog

Beyond the book drive: Service Committee Happenings

By the LLNE Service Committee

For the last year or so the Service Committee has been working on a book drive. As of the start of 2015, we have chosen one library from each New England state and have donated (or will in the next few weeks donate) a small legal collection to these recipients.  The feedback we have gotten about this project has been fantastic. Considering the success of the project, we have decided to continue to work with the concept of outreaching to New England public librarians.

The start of 2015 has been busy for the service committee. The new year has brought the addition of Rebecca Martin as co-chair of the committee, the inclusion of several new members (the committee has almost tripled in size!), and the formation of two subcommittees to work on new projects. One of the subcommittees will be working on creating a web portal while the other will be working on developing in-person educational and outreach opportunities. Both subcommittees will continue to focus their projects on outreach to public librarians in New England.

Sometimes LLNE members cannot attend the Spring or Fall Meetings due to a number of factors. This is also true (and perhaps more true?) for the Annual Meeting. Realizing that this is a reality of the membership of our organization, the Service Committee is trying to bring projects to you.  We are looking for members to volunteer to assist with educational opportunities at local public libraries that have requested legal research training. We are looking for members to volunteer to be designated as available to help out a local public librarian colleague over email or phone in a pinch. If you might considering helping out the service committee outreach to public libraries in New England, contact one of the committee co-chairs, Rebecca and Catherine via email.

Also, we are always looking for new, different, and unique ways to outreach to public librarians. If you know of a listserv we should join, can think of a conference we might attend, or have a fantastic idea for a public library educational program, contact us! We would love to hear your idea or even work with you to make outreach happen in your neck of the woods.

Government Relations Committee

By Anne McDonald, Co-Chair, LLNE GRC, & Emilie Benoit, Co-Chair, LLNE GRC

This month’s blog will focus on the activities of the AALL Government Relations Committee and how law librarians, including LLNE members, can influence their members of Congress.

The Government Relations Committee (GRO) works closely with the staff of AALL’s Government Relations Office: Director Emily Feltren and Public Policy Associate Elizabeth Holland, who work diligently with members of Congress and other good government advocacy groups on information issues according to our priorities.  The Public Policy Priorities for the 114th Congress, outlines the Association’s policy goals for the next two years.  Once pertinent bills are introduced, the office staff will create a bill tracking chart and update several one-pagers.

In December 2014, the GRC sponsored a fascinating look into the makeup of the 2014th Congress, made some predictions and offered some tips for advocacy in this new political landscape.  Here are some excerpts:

Republicans won majority in both chambers in the November 2014 midterm elections; this is the largest Republican majority since 1928 and it is also a new Congress. Many members have served less than 6 years. With new challenges come new opportunities.

  • Since many Republican members of Congress hold a high regard for transparency in government, this should make it easier to advocate for greater access to government information, such as Congressional Reports, Executive Branch memos and more access to PACER.
  • Republicans emphasize smaller government, targeting ‘redundant’ programs for elimination and turning over to private sector. We need to educate Members of Congress about the Importance of Permanent Public Access to reliable government information in print and online.
  • Money talks: we need to show how law libraries and agencies like the GPO, and Library of Congress save money for the government and for the Taxpayers. The Federal Depository Library Project, as we all know, provides no fee public access and potentially saves Congress staff time by answering questions on law and policy that would otherwise go to the library user’s Members of Congress to research.
  • Show real world examples. Educate law makers about issues facing law libraries and how the work you do as a law librarian would be affected by a certain bill, such as elimination of the print index for the Federal Register.

Adapted from: AALL Government Relations Office. (2014). Look into our crystal ball: law librarian advocacy in the new Congress [PowerPoint slides]. http://www.aallnet.org/Documents/Government-Relations/Presentations/2014/crystalball121014.pdf

Fortunately for LLNE, there are just two new faces in Congress from any of the 6 New England states:  Frank Guinta, Republican representing New Hampshire’s second Congressional District and Representative Seth Moulton (D) from Massachusetts’s 6th Congressional District. The rest are all incumbents, which should make our task easier.

Want to get the latest scoop on the legislation we are tracking and GRC training opportunities?

Be sure to subscribe to the Advocacy listserv and the Washington Blawg.

There will be two upcoming training opportunities: online advocacy training on Feb. 11 titled “Understanding the Federal Budget Process” (register here) and the third annual Local Advocate Lobby Day on March 18 in Washington, DC (register here).  Both events are free for LLNE members, although Lobby Day participants must make their own travel and lodging arrangements.

Slides from past trainings are available on the Presentations page: http://www.aallnet.org/Documents/Government-Relations/Presentations/2014.

Although the Government Relations Office primarily focuses on federal information policy issues, in recent years the office has been involved in some state issues, particularly UELMA and is available to assist chapters with UELMA and related state issues.

AALL’s Director of Government Relations Emily Feltren reports that the Uniform Laws Commissioners in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine have put UELMA legislation on their enactment plans, which does not in itself guarantee that legislation will be introduced and followed through, but this does give some weight to the importance of UELMA.

The legislatures in New England states are in the first weeks of a new session and have not had much action to date. LLNE GRC will be tracking legislation related to information policy and libraries in all of our member states and keep our members up to date in the coming months. Here is the link to AALL’s state issues pages. http://www.aallnet.org/mm/Advocacy/aallwash/stateissues

“Gotta Get Back in Time” – LLNE Ten Years Ago

By Laurel Davis, Boston College Law Library
Archives Committee Co-Chair

Writing this post is making me want to buy a Huey Lewis & the News album or watch Back to the Future, but I’ll try to finish writing before allowing the distraction to overtake me.

So, what were the folks at LLNE up to 10 years ago? To find out, I combed through the first LLNE newsletter to come out in 2005.

Susan Vaughn, then at Suffolk University Law School and now a colleague at Boston College Law School, was writing about a struggle that we still face today when teaching legal research. She posed a question about what level of focus should be kept on print resources and how to convince students that sometimes print is the way to go; she also made the point that, while these specific questions are important to explore, the more important lesson for the students is the one about the process of research—not the particular sources or platforms.

Other notable pieces included: an update from then-President Raquel Ortiz about LLNE’s activities (including a new blog and a new LLNE academic scholarship!) and the upcoming annual meeting in San Antonio; a fun “Legal Limit” cartoon by newsletter co-editors Sharon Persons and Susan Vaughn about the desolation of nighttime roving reference duty and more; a quite amusing Miss Nomer advice column; some Feng Shui advice for one’s office; and news about the new Social Law Library space in the John Adams Courthouse!

Take a look, and enjoy this glimpse back in time at LLNE!

Life Membership Honors LLNE’s Stars

By Raquel M. Ortiz
LLNE Membership Development Committee chair

What does it take to become an LLNE life member?  The LLNE Bylaws tell us generally what life member status requires:  a person retired from full time law library employment and who has served as an active member of LLNE for at least 10 years.

Recently, the LLNE Executive Board discussed in detail what we thought active membership means. That discussion and research into other AALL chapters, has led us to solidify three major categories of “Active” LLNE members that seem apropos for this honor.

First, former members of the Executive Committee, who all serve for two or more years, are automatically eligible for life membership.  Serving as the President, Secretary, Treasurer or Education Director carries significant responsibilities within LLNE and ensures that the organization runs smoothly and our financial, educational, and reporting obligations are met.  Those who volunteer their time in those roles are generally members who have volunteered their time to LLNE in other ways so as to make an impression upon the Nominating Committee that requests their service.

A second category of active members are those members who served 5 or more years as committee chair, assistant clerk, resident agent, or committee member.  These roles are equally important to the vibrancy of LLNE as a chapter.  While the Executive Committee carries the heavy load of running LLNE, most of LLNE’s initiatives begin and are maintained at the committee level.  LLNE’s committees are responsible for our award-winning Legal Research Instruction Program and blog, our fantastic scholarships, coordinating LLNE meetings, our newsletter and social media, advocacy at the local and national level, and our extensive service to the community.  The tireless efforts of these volunteers move LLNE forward and bring it to the national spotlight.

Finally, we recognize those members who have made extraordinary contributions to LLNE, AALL, or the profession of law librarianship.  This category recognizes cumulative contributions rather than extended service in an LLNE leadership role.  Contributions are in areas of interest to LLNE: advocacy, leadership, mentoring, promoting public access to government information, publications, service, scholarship, teaching, or any combination of these contributions.

Of course, these categories of active membership simply bring up a member for consideration for Life Membership. You, our members, are ultimately the ones who bestow this honor to your colleagues when you vote at our business meetings.  Our members make LLNE a chapter that is all about “communication, collaboration, networking and fun”.  Those of us on the Executive Board serve because you inspire us to give more to this organization and as members of our wonderful profession.

Theory into Practice: CALI Author

by Brian Flaherty

In my inaugural “Theory into practice” column, I talked about taking some of the great things I took away from the AALL conference in San Antonio, and putting them into practice in my Advanced Legal Research class – specifically I had students take pictures of things that they thought were, or should be regulated. My experience incorporating this into my class was great – it went smoothly, wasn’t as much work as I thought it would be, and inspired some clear understanding of the difference between statutes, regulations, and ordinances.

Of course, my co-teacher pointed out that while everything I wrote was indeed true, I was painting an unduly rosy picture of my success in incorporating all of those nifty conference take-aways. That not everything I’ve learned-there and tried-here has gone as… smoothly as what I wrote. Perhaps, she said, I should write about something that was significantly harder to incorporate. Perhaps I should write about my experiences with CALI Author.

Why CALI Author

We’re all familiar with CALI Lessons – and we are all familiar with the fruitless search for the perfect CALI lesson: the one that will help students learn about publication patterns, online indexing, disposition tables – the things we want them to know, but don’t want to spend the time on in class. Don’t get me wrong – there is some great CALI stuff out there (some of it written by people I hope are reading this article) – but nothing that was perfect for my purposes. So several years ago, I came upon the brilliant idea to write my own. I could write it specific to my need, and could customize it to reflect internal library resources.

I downloaded an earlier iteration of CALI Author, with manual, thinking “I’m reasonably good at this stuff – I can make this work.” I proceeded to spend the next two hours feeling like I was back in the early 90s, trapped in HyperCard for Mac (for those of you who took that class at Simmons, you know what I mean). And so thinking “I’m a reasonably good teacher, I can get by with existing CALI lessons,” I deleted this earlier iteration of CALI Author, with manual.

A visit to the most recent CALI conference at Harvard convinced me to try again. Furthermore, CALI’s ever helpful Deb Quentel promised me that if I couldn’t make Author bend to my will, she would help. And so I downloaded it at the beginning of last summer, read the manual, and started making sample pages, sample questions, sample links, and saving sample lessons.

When you get the hang of it, CALI Author is clunky, but no big deal, really. In short order you can learn to learned to create pages that lead to other pages, you can create scored multiple choice exams, even add and manipulate images. But then, for example, you discover that you’ve made a mistake on page three of a twelve page lesson, so you edit or delete page three, and KA-BLAMO, everything you’ve done vanishes, only to be found in an alphabetical list of pages at the end of the list, which you didn’t know existed until AFTER that panicked Email to Deb Quentel (Thank You!). There’s a whole series I could write called “Squashing the CALI Author Bugs” – but in the interest of time I will tell you that there are many traps for the unwary, but two things proved invaluable: first, the folks at CALI – especially the ever helpful Deb Quintel – are geniuses of patience and service. And second, there is a YouTube video series that includes a great tutorial series – far easier than the manual.

AutoPublish

So now that you’ve got your perfect CALI Author lesson, what do you do with it? The process of actually publishing a CALI lesson for public consumption takes some time – far too long if, like me, the lesson you’re writing is for use in your class next week. So CALI Author gives you the ability to publish something privately and make it available by sending the lesson URL – “AutoPublish.” Furthermore, if your students log in to CALI before doing the lesson, you can track them through the AutoPublish link on your dashboard. Again, be forewarned, the process is not as straightforward as perhaps you’d expect; you have to publish the lesson, and upload each media file separately – and every time you go back into the lesson it appears as though you have to re-upload all of the media (you don’t). But the ability to have them host the lesson that you can run privately is great.

Editing existing lessons

One of the really great features you get with CALI Author is the ability to download existing CALI Lessons and adapt them for your purposes, to target your students. For example, let’s say there is an especially great lesson that covers print statutory research, and you want to use the same structure but incorporate online research. You can download the lesson and open it up in CALI Author, then edit the images, questions, and “book pages” to include an online component. You are not editing the CALI lesson as it appears at http://www.cali.org; when you are finished, you need to AutoPublish it and send it out to your students. But it’s a great shortcut to creating targeted lessons, while avoiding some of the complex and time-consuming outlining.

Epilogue

You eventually manage to create what you think is the perfect CALI lesson, comparing KeyCite Shepards an BCite, showing the fallibility of citators, showing the conflicting treatment notes. You test it, you show it off, and it works nicely. But don’t get complacent… things can STILL go awry. After this steep learning curve, I finally released a lesson to do just this- point out some of the flaws and contradictory information found in citators. And wouldn’t you know it… in just one semester, one of the vendors changed their citation information! Oh well – back to the drawing board (ps: if anyone is interested, that lesson is here: http://www.cali.org/node/15905/)

2015 and 2016 LLNE Meetings

By Elliot Hibbler

Has it already more than a month since the Fall meeting? This morning’s dark, snowy walk to the MBTA says yes.  

Looking back, the folks from Boston College Law Library and the Association of Boston Law Librarians did a great job as hosts. The meeting was held at BC’s Connors Center, in quaint Dover, MA. Attendees were treated to a day of panels and discussion focusing on ways to reinvent the law library. We heard from many different stakeholders in the continued success of law libraries, including law firm librarians, judicial law librarians, academics and attorneys themselves. Of course, none of it would have been possible without the support of the meeting’s sponsors. 

Speaking of meetings, have you been thinking “I get so much out of the LLNE seasonal meetings, but I wish for once the theme would be…?” Have you ever wanted to invite a hundred law librarians over to your organization for a day of learning and lunch? Here is your opportunity – the Education Committee is looking for a host for the Spring 2016 meeting! Let one of the Education Directors (Elliott Hibbler or Bob DeFabrizio) know if you are interested in hosting. No one would say it is an easy commitment, but you will have the Education Committee backing you up all the way. 

If you have an interest in mindfulness, you don’t have to wait long for an LLNE meeting about the topic! The University of New Hampshire School of Law and the Association of New Hampshire Law Librarians will be hosting the Spring 2015 meeting in Concord, NH on April 24th. I am already looking forward to it! 

Theory into Practice: Teaching with Social Media

By Brian Flaherty

Back in July I blogged about using social media as a tool to teach legal research – the post was a review of a “deep dive” program I went to at the AALL Annual Meeting.  Going into the program I was incredibly skeptical.  I was imagining spending a good deal of time “getting up to speed” with different media and platforms, only to be met with the same eye-roll from students that I get from my kids when I give them advice on especially nifty IPhone Apps.   Nevertheless, I came away from the program with some ideas for using social media in teaching – or at least turning over some of the control to the students.

One of the ideas that came out of the program was incorporating Instagram in teaching research: have students take pictures of things they think are or should be regulated, and upload them  for others to work with.  In (or before) class, we could have students look for applicable laws and regulations – teasing out the differences between things that are dealt with in the statutes vs. things that are dealt with through administrative regulation.  Also, given the number of research exercises we have our students do, I imagined this as an opportunity to have them create some of the research exercises rather than us.

I decided to try this idea – ironically, minus the traditional “social media” aspect.  I had students take pictures and send them to me – and I used them to create a classroom presentation and exercises.  But honestly, the idea of creating an Instagram site for our class, and having everyone log into it (or subscribe to it, or follow it, or whatever one does to Instagram) was daunting.  I realized, though, that in terms of this being a “social media” exercise, I realized that we didn’t have to use one of the major platforms (Instagram) for it to be “social media.”   Having them take pictures, send them to me, and then share them with the class was a social media based exercise.

The whole thing worked out as well as I could have imagined.  I gave students two weeks to take and send pictures (I sent out the assignment the week before spring break).  In addition, I told them to spend a bit of time – no more than a half hour – looking up whatever laws and regulations they could find on their subject.  Send the photo and the regulating authority to me by email.  I created a powerpoint of most of the photographs, which we cycled through in class, researching each thing in turn.  It took a good deal of preparation on our part to know where we wanted to guide the discussion for each – but to be honest, this preparation was more enjoyable than struggling to come up with interesting topics to research.

We got a huge variety of photographs to work with – from pictures of homeless people (laws against vagrants, vagabonds and tramps, panhandling ordinances), to pictures of overflowing trash in Boston (Sanitary code, Boston City Ordinances), to a picture of a hot chocolate vending machine (Rhode Island: milk product dispensed from a vending machine).  One person took a picture of his bedroom ceiling and wrote “why is there no light on my ceiling?”  (Sanitary code: light and electric outlets in habitable rooms).  In doing these exercises in class students had do some involved searching – they had to use statutory and regulatory schemes, they had to find city ordinances, and we had them track down enabling legislation.

We will absolutely do this kind of exercise again next year.  Student were actively engaged, it got us working with unfamiliar topics, and we would up talking about why different things are governed by different types of authority, i.e. statutes vs. regulations vs. ordinances.   From here, I’m going back to my AALL notes to figure out: what other cool things are my colleagues doing that I can adapt?

The Evolving Congress – Publicly Available Volume of the CRS Reports

H/T The Criv Blog.

The Congressional Research Service has a volume publicly available in Scribd called “The Evolving Congress,” celebrating 100 years of the CRS. Sections include The Members of Congress, The Institutional Congress, and Policymaking Case Studies. Take a look at it here.

An Update on Ello

By Carli Spina

In the most recent issue of the LLNE News, I wrote about the new social network Ello. Since that article was published, Ello has continued to add some new features to respond to user concerns, such as settings that will make sure that you don’t encounter “not safe for work” content and the ability to block or mute other users. Perhaps even more interesting to LLNE blog readers, Ello also changed its legal status to address concerns that it would ultimately sell user data or allow ads to be placed on the network. In an effort to alleviate these concerns, Ello has converted to a Public Benefit Corporation (“PBC”) under the laws of Delaware. In a letter posted on the site, the founders and investors argue that this will bind them to their stated mission of remaining ad-free. Specifically, the letter states,

“Ello’s PBC’s charter states that Ello shall not for pecuniary gain:

  1. Sell user-specific data to a third party;
  2. Enter into an agreement to display paid advertising on behalf of a third party; and
  3. In the event of an acquisition or asset transfer, the Company shall require any acquiring entity to adopt these requirements with respect to the operation of Ello or its assets.”

This is an interesting and fairly high profile use of the relatively new (at least in Delaware) Public Benefit Corporation structure to alleviate a specific public relations problem for a company. Under Delaware law, a Public Benefit Corporation is “a for-profit corporation organized under and subject to the requirements of this chapter that is intended to produce a public benefit or public benefits and to operate in a responsible and sustainable manner. To that end, a public benefit corporation shall be managed in a manner that balances the stockholders’ pecuniary interests, the best interests of those materially affected by the corporation’s conduct, and the public benefit or public benefits identified in its certificate of incorporation.”[1] This provision was enacted on August 1, 2013 and on the first day Delaware saw a record 17 businesses file to become PBCs. However, after that initial rush to become a PBC, the incorporation of new PBCs or the conversion of other entities to PBCs slowed and in the end only 55 PBCs existed in Delaware 90 days after the effective date of the provision.[2] It remains to be seen how popular PBCs will become, but with several states offering this kind of corporate structure, it is important to understand the basics of how they differ from other corporate entities.

But, what does converting to a PBC mean for Ello? As a Public Benefit Corporation, Ello will have to state its principles in its certificate of incorporation and at all times balance these principles with stockholder interests when making decisions. This type of organization is specifically intended to benefit organizations that are not nonprofits but nevertheless wish to commit to a purpose beyond pure monetary gain, so it seems like a good fit for Ello, but at the same time, there is not much law clarifying exactly how this balancing should be done and, as some critics have noted, the company could always convert away from PBC status in the future if a sufficient number of shareholders agreed to the plan. Ultimately, for Ello, this conversion will likely have the desired effect of reassuring users to at least some degree that the company will remain true to its stated principles. And, the plan seems to be succeeding in at least one way: the company has already received $5.5 million in venture funding.

 

[1] Del. Code tit. 8, §362.

[2] Alicia E. Plerhoples, Delaware Public Benefit Corporations 90 Days Out: Who’s Opting in?, 14 U.C. Davis Bus. L.J. 247, 259 (2014).

 

Book Drive Update from the Service Committee

In the fall of 2013, the LLNE Service Committee decided to organize a book drive in connection with the Fall Meeting at Social Law Library as a service initiative. The book drive was intended to benefit one non-law public library in Massachusetts. The response to the book drive was incredible. Once we understood the potential impact of such a project, the Service Committee decided to replicate the book drive efforts in the other five New England states. For more information about which titles we chose and how we selected them, see the state book lists at http://llne.org/committees/service/.

Book Drive

One year later, the committee is finalizing the collections, choosing recipient libraries, and donating the books. The book drive would not have been possible without the generous assistance and support of LLNE members, libraries, vendors, publishers, authors, editors and the LLNE Executive Board. At the LLNE business meeting in Fall 2014 the members of the Service Committee gave a short presentation about the book drive and thanked all of the contributors and partners. If you missed it, below is a link to our slide deck which includes all of the names of the donors and partners: https://www.haikudeck.com/p/baRL0bH0kI/llne-fall-2014.

The Committee is in the process of developing ideas and planning projects for the coming year. Recognizing a need for a stronger relationship with non-law public librarians in the region, the Service Committee is exploring ways to further enhance those connections and contribute our knowledge and talents. Our goal is to promote the institutions currently working in our communities, to partner with public librarians and to try and find new ways to support the amazing work already being done by libraries and librarians in New England.

As always, we encourage LLNE members who want to volunteer to contact the current members of the Service Committee (http://llne.org/committees/service/#members). We have big plans and always have room for more volunteers!

Finally, the Service Committee co-wrote an article for a forthcoming issue of AALL’s Spectrum and we invite you to read about our project in even more detail.