What? Wait a minute! It’s October 1? How can that be? I was just sworn in as LLNE President in….JULY? No! That can’t be right. Can it?
I can’t believe it is October already and I am sure many of you are feeling this very same way. I wanted to take some time out of the craziness that is September to fill you all in on what is happening with LLNE.
Snow in October
Amanda Merck, Chair of the LLNE Service Committee has organized a great event, where volunteers from LLNE will participate in Jumpstart’s “Read for the Record” campaign. This year they will be reading “The Snowy Day” to children at The Open Center in Somerville, MA on the morning of Thursday, October 7th. Please note: They were originally scheduled to read in the afternoon, but it has been changed to 10:00 am ‑ 11:30 am! They will be joined by Senator Pat Jehlen and Suzan Bocamazo, the new editor of the Mass Lawyers Weekly! Last year the MLW showcased photos of our event in their newspaper.
In its fifth year, Jumpstart’s “Read for the Record” campaign will bring together hundreds of thousands of people to break the world record for the number of children read to in a single day with a single book, TheSnowy Day. I hope you can join your volunteer‑minded colleagues but if you cannot attend the event please feel free to make a contribution on our book drive website: http://www.readfortherecord.org/site/TR/RFTR/General?team_id=6010&pg=tea
m&fr_id=1130
If you cannot donate or join the volunteers in Somerville there is something else you can do ‑ you can read to a child and then register it on the Jumpstart website, http://www.readfortherecord.org/site/PageServer?pagename=pledge_2010_form. There is great power in reading to a young child! And you can be a World Record Holder!
Thank you, Amanda, for organizing this great event!
Completing the National Inventory
Those of you at the annual meeting in Denver in July heard me speak about the importance of AALL’s current project to complete a national inventory of primary legal materials. It is AALL’s policy that the public have no-fee permanent public access to authentic online legal information on government websites, including the text of all primary legal materials. The state work groups are currently in the process of compiling the primary legal resources of every level of government for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. As you can imagine, this is a huge task and many of LLNE’s members are participating in this project. Below are the state working groups for the states that make up LLNE. If you would like to take part in this project please do not hesitate to contact anyone on this list. I am sure they would gladly take your help. It is my hope that by July 2011, when we are meeting at the AALL Annual Meeting in Pennsylvania, that each state in LLNE will have completed its inventory.
If you want to learn more about this project you can go to the AALL Government Relations Website at http://www.aallnet.org/aallwash/.
Please join me in thanking the following individuals for their participation in this very important project.
Connecticut
Camilla Tubbs, Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Library (coordinator)
Steve Mirsky, Connecticut State Library
Darcy Kirk, University of Connecticut School of Law Library
Ryan Harrington, Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Library
Cesar Zapata, Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Library
Maine
John Barden, Maine State Law & Legislative Reference Library (coordinator)
Christine I. Hepler, Donald L. Garbrecht Law Library, University of Maine School of Law
Louise A. Jensen, Drummond, Woodsum & MacMahon
Ian Bourgoine, MLIS student at University of Pittsburgh Library and Information Science Program and Intern at the Donald L. Garbrecht Law Library, University of Maine School of Law
Massachusetts
Susan Zago, LLNE Immediate Past-President, Northeastern University Law Library (coordinator)
Joan Shear, Boston College Law Library
Michelle Pearse, Harvard Law School Library
David Bachman, Boston University Pappas Law Library
Kevin Coakley-Welch, Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office
New Hampshire
Mary S. Searles, John W. King New Hampshire Law Library (coordinator)
Donna Gilbreth, New Hampshire State Library
Cindy Landau, Franklin Pierce Law Center Law Library
Rhode Island
Anne McDonald, Rhode Island Department of Attorney General (coordinator)
Karen Quinn, Rhode Island State Law Library
Emilie Benoit, Roger Williams University School of Law
Vermont
Paul Donovan, Vermont Department of Libraries (co-coordinator)
Patricia Gabel, Court Improvement and Innovation, Vermont Judiciary (co-coordinator)
Jane Woldow, Vermont Law School Julien and Virginia Cornell Library
The Fall LLNE Meeting
The fall LLNE meeting will be held at Northeastern University School of Law Library in Boston. At this meeting we will be learning how to improve workplace health and worker’s morale. Libraries are being faced with demands for doing more with less and in some cases libraries are being closed or being threatened with closure. Information is coming in from all angles and monumental change happens as we sip our morning coffee. How can you be more efficient and more effective? How can you keep your spirits up as well as your colleagues and customers? Come to the Fall LLNE Meeting and find out!
Jay Hargis, Director of Learning & Development at Tufts Medical Center will give the keynote address on “Catching the Morale Virus” and how to keep an upbeat attitude at work and then spread it around. Hamish Blackman, CEO of Wellness Corporation will talk about individual stressors and examines techniques for managing events, behavior, and attitude. Jason Eiseman, Librarian for Emerging Technologies at Yale Law School will do a presentation on dealing with information overload. Stephen Donweber, Senior Legal Information and Educational Technology Librarian at Pappas Law Library will be our facilitator for our joint brainstorming session on how we can apply these ideas and concepts to our own situations.
I hope to see many of you there on November 19. With the holidays fast approaching by this time, maybe Mr. Blackman will also talk to us about holiday stressors and how to manage those!
I hope you all enjoy the remainder of the fall! I look forward to meeting and working with you this year as your President
Christine I. Hepler
LLNE President 2010-2011
Associate Director
Garbrecht Law Library
University of Maine School of Law