Save the date for the LLNE Spring Meeting!

Dear LLNE friends and colleagues, 

The spring LLNE meeting is going to be at Boston College Law School—this is a “save the date” announcement.   

The conference will be on Tuesday, April 28, 2020, and the theme is Well-being and Mindfulness in the Legal Profession.  We will have speakers from the Mindfulness in Law Society, from the SJC Well-Being Committee, from Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, Boston firms, schools, etc.  Some listening, some practicing–a day to learn and recharge your spirits.  Details about registration to follow.  

Thank you and enjoy the week. 

Peace, Filippa and the BC Law Library Team

LLNE Fall Meeting (in conjunction with ABLL) Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms in Law Libraries and Legal Practice) registration

Just a reminder that the registration form for the Fall Meeting (in conjunction with ABLL) is open and linked on the website for the event.

Some information (including deadlines) to highlight:

Registration: The fee is $60 and credit cards are accepted via the registration form. The deadline for registering is November 1, 2019.

Hotels:  A list of hotels with negotiated rates/blocks is available on the meeting website. Please note that the rooms that have been blocked would have to be reserved by October 7, 2019.

Scholarships: Interested in applying for a scholarship for the Fall Meeting? Applications are available at https://llne.org/committees/scholarships/scholarshipinfo/ . The deadline for submission is October 18, 2019.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me Michelle Pearse at mpearse@law.harvard.edu or 617-496-2102 if you have any questions, concerns or problems registering.

Hope to see many of you there!

Call for submissions: Fall 2018 Meeting, Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018

Call for submissions: Fall 2018 Meeting, Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018

We are taking things online this fall, and hosting our fall meeting as a webinar, titled: “Failures to Fixes: How you took an L, and turned it into a W”

Thank you for your interest in submitting a proposal for the fall 2018 LLNE meeting. The LLNE Education Directors, Danitta Wong and Shira Megerman, are looking for speakers from all libraries in all departments.  Libraries today move at a fast pace, and trying to keep current does not always work.  Let us know about your experience in failure, and how you worked to not fall into a pattern of repeat mistakes.  We welcome educational and informative proposals that will help others learn from what worked and did not work for you, and we are especially interested in proposals that developed expanded and innovative current practices out of your failed attempts.  The overall program will result in a diverse array of presenters and perspectives, from firm, court, and academic libraries, and all departments therein (collection services, access services, and research services), submissions permitting.

Presentations should be 40 minutes long, with 10 minutes for Q&A from the online forum.

Proposals must be submitted to both Danitta and Shira by 5:00pm, Oct. 26, 2018.  Presenters will be notified on Nov. 2, 2018 of their selection.

Your submission must include the following:

  • Submission title
  • Names, affiliations, and email addresses  of presenters
  • Description of session, or abstract (250-500 words max): Please include two or three takeaways, learning objectives, or questions for attendees.
  • Brief summary (1-2 sentences) to be used in the program agenda
  • Please indicate if you have presented on the topic previously, and at what conference
  • Please select an AALL Body of Knowledge Domain that applies to your proposal. For more information: https://www.aallnet.org/education-training/bok/:
    • Professionalism + leadership at every level
    • Research + analysis
    • Information Management
    • Teaching  + Training
    • Marketing + Outreach
    • Management + Business Acumen

Danitta Wong: dwong@nutter.com               Shira Megerman: megerman@bu.edu

LLNE /SNELLA Fall Meeting: Hysteria, Hyperbole and Witch Hunts: 1697 & 2017 Report

By Anne McDonald

This was a very interesting meeting that tied together the above themes and shed light on many common assumptions.  Here are some highlights.

Salem, Massachusetts is indelibly associated with witchcraft, but it was not the first place to hold witchcraft trials in the colonies or even in Massachusetts.  Witchcraft trials started in Europe and were then carried over to the colonies.  The earliest witchcraft accusations in the English colonies took place in Virginia: the trial of midwife Joan Wright. Her neighbors testified that she caused the death of a newborn. She was acquitted despite admitting that she had some knowledge of witchcraft.   Mark Podiva of West Virginia University College of Law gave the keynote speech, saying we need to focus on implicit and explicit bias in sources, both historical and current.

Anne Rajotte of the UConn Law Library discussed Connecticut witch trials, which were lesser known than the Salem witch trials because the trials were spread out over many years and information was scattered.  Salem’s witch trials, while not the earliest, are the best known, perhaps because of the high number of deaths in a short period of time. Between June and September 1692, nineteen men and women were hanged for witchcraft in Salem.

Amazingly, there was a time when the courts allowed “spectral evidence”; if a witness said the accused came to him in a dream, that could be admissible as proof of the devil’s work.   The witchcraft laws all had biblical language.  Rhode Island had a statute forbidding witchcraft from 1647 until it was abolished in 1767. There was never a prosecution for witchcraft in Rhode Island.

Witch trials serve as an early example of fake news, the first Salem trial was started by bored teenagers spreading lies. They listened to a servant’s stories, after being told they were not supposed to, then said she cast spells on them.  There are still witch hunts going on in parts of the world, most frequently in developing countries. When people get sick, witchcraft is suspected.

Gary Smith of the Berkshire Law Library, who is both a librarian and art historian, showed and discussed a painting by a 19th century artist named T.H. Matteson of the “Witchcraft Trial of George Jacobs.”  It was painted in 1855.  He showed how art can help us remember things.

John Barden and Mike Hughes gave interesting, edgy, humorous presentations that kept us awake following lunch.

The last speaker, Ron Wheeler, put us in a deep, reflective mood when he read from his  article about his lifelong journey towards empathy, which sums up the theme and main takeaway of the entire program.  As Tanya Johnson notes in the SNELLA newsletter, misunderstanding and lack of empathy can lead to horrific consequences.

I would like to thank Ellen Phillips of LLNE and Jordan Jefferson of SNELLA for their joint efforts in putting together this program.  I would like to thank LLNE for arranging for the services of professional CART reporters Stephanie Farrell and Kathleen Dwyer, who worked hard all day to make the program accessible to me.

Here is a link to SNELLA’s January 2018 newsletter with two items related to the Salem meeting: Anne Rajotte’s article: Witch Trials in Connecticut on pages 3-4, followed by Tanya Johnson’s report titled “10 Things I learned at the LLNE/SNELLA meeting in Salem.”

LLNE/SNELLA wants you!

LLNE and SNELLA are looking for presenters for the upcoming fall meeting on Friday, November 17, 2017, at the Salem Waterfront Hotel in Salem, MA. The topic of the conference is Hysteria, Hyperbole, and Witch Hunts: 1697 & 2017. Please see the conference LibGuide for more details.

The conference will be focused on historical legal research in the context of the Salem witch trials and related to themes of teaching information literacy, information bias, and differentiating between salacious sources and authoritative ones.

We are looking for people who are interested in doing short, fifteen minute “lightening round” presentations either with or without visuals on this theme. Potential topics could include: Fake News, Bias, Information Literacy, Online Civic Reasoning/Discourse, Groupthink, Fact Checking, Filter Bubbles, Data Archiving, Access to Authority, Digitization/Preservation of Historical Materials, teaching with (or using) rare/historical materials, Authentication of Legal Sources, Archival Research. Other topics will be considered as well, so please feel free to suggest another angle.

If you have any questions, or would like to submit a proposal, please contact Ellen Phillips. Proposals should be one to two short paragraphs explaining the topic of your presentation and how it relates to the theme of the conference.

The deadline to make a proposal is September 30th.

We look forward to receiving your great ideas!

Jordan Jefferson

Tanya Johnson

Elliott Hibbler

Ellen Phillips

Barbara Schneider

~ LLNE/SNELLA Fall 2017 Conference Program and Local Arrangements Committee ~

Save the Date!

The fall conference will be Friday, November 17, 2017 at the Salem Waterfront Hotel, 225 Derby Street, Salem, MA 01970.

The topic of the conference is Hysteria, Hyperbole, and Witch Hunts: 1697 & 2017.

This year LLNE will be partnering with SNELLA for an interesting and informative day dedicated to historical legal research in the context of the Salem witch trials, teaching information literacy in an era of fake news, online civic reasoning, detecting bias in research sources, fact checking, and more.

Check out the libguide for preliminary information! More details to follow in the coming weeks!

SolutionsWear: Service Committee Project for the LLNE Spring Meeting

By the LLNE Service Committee

Because the theme for the spring meeting (register here!) is professional development, the service committee asks you to consider donating professional clothing, toiletries, or money to SolutionsWear. SolutionsWear provides interview-appropriate clothing and accessories to homeless and low-income men and women. Check out the list of especially needed items, as well as a complete list of the kind of donations SolutionsWear accepts. We will be collecting clothing and toiletry donations at the meeting. If you would like to make a monetary donation directly to SolutionsWear, you can do so here.

Register for the Spring LLNE/ABLL Meeting!

LLNE/ABLL Spring Meeting Registration is LIVE!

Join us on Friday, June 9th at the Boston University School of Law to discuss professional development and career paths.  Please register as early as possible. For more information and a schedule for the day please go here.

IMPORTANT: If you need a parking permit, you must let us know by May 19th to ensure that you receive your permit.

Fall 2016 LLNE Meeting

By The Numbers—Law Library Assessment

In this era where libraries MUST prove their worth and value to the institutions they serve, data collection and library assessment has become an essential duty we must all undertake.  Data collection and analysis will allow librarians to better understand and quantify the library’s strengths and weaknesses, determine the drivers of demand on the library’s resources, along with changes in those demands, and to properly allocate resources.  Improved understanding of the data generated will allow librarians to justify resources needed, motivate staff, and better plan for the future.

At the fall LLNE meeting, attendees will be introduced to tools used for law library data collection and assessment for all segments of law librarianship.  We will also be celebrating LLNE’s 70th Anniversary with a program highlighting LLNE’s history and accomplishments.  Please be on the lookout for more details as they develop.

The meeting will be held at the Westin Portland Haborview Hotel in Portland Maine (http://www.westinportlandharborview.com/) on October 28, 2016.  We look forward to seeing you there!