Category: Meetings & Events

Announcing the LLNE Listening Tour! Robert DeFabrizio wants to hear from you!

An announcement from our Vice-President/President-Elect…

The legal profession, including firms, libraries, and schools are in the midst of change. Technological advances, such as AI and data analytics, new processes, such as knowledge management, coupled with client demands are bringing unprecedented changes to how lawyers, librarians, paralegals, and staff do their jobs. These changes have forced professional membership organizations to reimagine their missions and reassess how to provide value to members.

An important first step in the self-evaluation process is gathering feedback from our members. Although online surveys provide a quick method of polling members, it is equally important to engage members and I believe to do so requires face-to-face conversations. In-person meetings allow for a more dynamic discussion and free exchange of opinions and ideas, not constrained by a survey. One important aspect of any conversation is listening. As Pat Wagner pointed out in “Reaching the Invisible Customer,” a program at the 2018 AALL Annual Meeting, “Listening puts the other person first. … Listening requires a willingness to accept one’s own ignorance. … Listening requires a willingness to learn.”

LLNE is a great organization and is doing great things. However, we must take the time to reflect and ask can we be doing anything differently? The answer may be no – stay the course. If so, great, but we should not take anything for granted.

Beginning in Portland, Maine, on October 12th I will be conducting a “listening tour.” The tour will make its way through the entire LLNE territory. Currently, meetings have also been scheduled in Augusta, Maine (Oct. 12), Concord, NH (Oct. 16) and South Royalton, Vermont (Nov. 8). All members are encouraged to attend and give LLNE your feedback. See LLNE Listening Tour for a running list of dates and locations. Member engagement and involvement is vitally important to any professional organization.
I look forward to meeting you.

Robert DeFabrizio, LLNE Vice-President/President-Elect

 

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 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!

Service Committee Drive for Project Smile: Wrap-Up

“Thank you so much- those stuffed animals were beautiful! Thank you for your efforts in collecting them for us.” – Catherine Piscane, Director of Project Smile

As part of the Fall Meeting, the Service Committee set a goal of collecting 70 stuffed animals for Project Smile to celebrate LLNE’s 70th anniversary.  With Bear leading the way and armed with the hashtag, #LLNE70forSmile, members took to social media to show their support and post photos of the stuffed animals in route to Maine.  With your help, the LLNE Service Committee was able to surpass their goal and donate over 150 stuffed animals to Project Smile.  Now, due to your hard work and generosity, a lot of children will receive comfort when they need it most.

Thank you to the members of the LLNE Service Committee for organizing the Project Smile Drive.  The Service Committee is always looking for more volunteers!  If interested, go to http://llne.org/committees/service/.

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!

LLNE & ABLL Spring 2016: Access to Government Information

Registration for the LLNE / ABLL Spring 2016 meeting is now open! The theme of the meeting is “Access to Government Information.” We will be spending the day discussing the role of law libraries and the government in providing access to this information, and why it is so critically important.

Registration is $50 for LLNE members, and $40 for ABLL members.

Space is Limited! Register today at http://lawlibraryguides.neu.edu/LLNE2016.

We’d like to hear from you!

At the Fall Meeting at Roger Williams on October 2, current LLNE prez Diane D’Angelo conducted a quick poll of the attendees. Inspired by our keynote speaker Margaret Hagan of Stanford, and her fascinating presentation on how to use design to make information more engaging for users, I’ve sketched our (very unscientific) results here:

Fall meeting quick poll results. Details in the later linked document

Poll questions and results.

Bonus question: What year LLNE was founded?

We’d love to hear what you think too-please leave your ideas and answers in the comment section!