The Ginger (Law) Librarian

After recent events at the University of California - Davis, there's been an uproar surrounding college librarians and academic freedom . The uproar was created after a librarian in the UC system used a title for her presentation that an administrator colleague thought might be offensive: "Copy cataloging gets some respect from administrators." Inspired in part by [the librarian's] cautionary tale, the [UC-Davis] union sought to include a provision in the new contract clarifying that librarians have academic freedom. Union representatives proposed in late April a guarantee of academic freedom to all librarians so that they could fulfill responsibilities for teaching, scholarship, and research.  The union says negotiators for the system rejected the proposal . . . .  Claire Doan, a spokeswoman, said UC policies on academic freedom "do not extend to nonfaculty academic personnel, including librarians . . . . "  UC negotiators said in July that academic f...

Discussions surrounding algorithmic bias are fairly common . We've even seen discussion of algorithmic bias in  library discovery tools.  Most of this discussion, though, has been theoretical. In what is purportedly the first empirical study to analyze algorithmic bias in library discovery systems, Matthew Reidsma  put ProQuest's Topic Explorer to the test to review potential biases affecting results. More and more academic libraries have invested in discovery layers, the centralized “Google-like” search tool that returns results from different services and providers by searching a centralized index. The move to discovery has been driven by the ascendence of Google as well as libraries' increasing focus on user experience. Unlike the vendor-specific search tools or federated searches of the previous decade, discovery presents a simplified picture of the library research process. It has the familiar single search box, and the results are not broken out by provider or f...

As we consider an innovative law library of the 21st Century, a few things are self evident: Law libraries are less about physical materials Libraries, in general, are much more focused on creating inviting spaces for collaboration and study Academic law libraries tend to have at least some hand in supporting experiential learning   Couple these fairly universal truths with a recent article in Inside Higher Ed about an academic library creating an artificial intelligence lab , and there seems to be something there for law libraries, as well. The 600-square-foot AI lab will be located on the library’s first floor and will offer beginner- to advanced-level tutorials in areas such as robotics, natural language processing, smart cities, smart homes, the internet of things, and big data. The lab will also provide a space for faculty members, students and the local community to discuss the social and ethical implications of these technology developments. Faculty may also u...

As we continue to talk about the ABA's watering down of law library standards , as well as the impending squeeze from artificial intelligence , Law Librarian Dan Odenwald reminds us to focus on the fundamental service tenet of our profession.  In a recent AALL Spectrum article titled "Transforming Customer Service in the Post-Digital Law Library," Odenwald notes that [w]e may be a long way from the day when artificial intelligence discerns legislative intent for us, or drones drop deskbooks at our doors, but we ought to contemplate that future and the critical role that customer service will continue to occupy in it.  He further articulates rules for law library customer service in the post-digital age:  1. Stop Selling Yesterday's Fish: Next-generation legal research platforms, linked data and Watson long ago replaced the perfunctory, will-you-pull-a-statute-for-me duties of law librarians. 2. Anticipate Needs Before They Arise:   As the practi...

As this study indicates , the legal profession is nearly a decade into fundamental, structural change. And perhaps no single role has seen greater impact than the law firm librarian. Budget pressures, shrinking law library footprints, a decreasing reliance on print, a greater push for online resources, and the advent of new job responsibilities are just a few of the factors that have combined to push law librarians into new territory. So how much change, exactly, have law firm librarians endured?  According to the survey’s 123 respondents from a combination of large and medium law firms, more than half of respondents said their role had undergone substantial change within the past three years, with 15 percent reporting “extreme change.” Forty-eight percent of respondents reported spending more than three-quarters of their time on activities that were not part of their job descriptions three years ago.  A few of the most-identified changes include: Conducting resear...

Normally, I am a staunch advocate for open-access (OA) publishing. See previous blog posts on OA here , here , here , here , and here . But with a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (sub. req'd.), it became clear that advocating for OA publishing without mentioning the possible pitfalls is irresponsible. The CHE article follows the recent demise of Beall's List -- the list created by a librarian to warn researchers about predatory publishers. CHE provides the following possible causes for the demise: [Beall's] fellow university librarians, whom Mr. Beall faults for overpromoting open-access publishing models. A well-financed Swiss publisher, angry that Mr. Beall had had the temerity to put its journals on his list. His own university, perhaps fatigued by complaints from the publisher, the librarians, or others. The broader academic community — universities, funders of research, publishers, and fellow researchers, many of whom long understood the ...

Image from AALL Twitter During Bryan Stevenson 's keynote at AALL in Austin  (login req'd), he noted and expounded on 4 things that will improve justice: Get proximate to injustice Change the narratives that sustain injustice Stay hopeful Do uncomfortable things His message is an important one, and law librarians certainly have a role to play in improving access to justice.  Throughout his keynote, I couldn't help but connect these 4 things to the issues facing law librarianship, in general. Like improving justice, law librarians need to work to improve the state of our profession to ensure that we can continue to assist with access to justice issues, among other things, for years to come.  In that regard, we can do similar things to improve law librarianship:       1. Get proximate to the issues facing law librarianship There is a myriad of issues facing law librarianship : budgets , staffing , librarian support ,...

According to Dictionary.com, Palimpsest is defined as: noun 1. a parchment or the like from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make room for another text In the case of most law libraries, the "other text" is now electronic. As late as 2015, I was still in denial about the transition . Many of my blog posts have centered around the benefits of print ( here , here , here , here ). I still love print, and I still believe that there is a beauty in the serendipity of exploring the stacks. But even physically exploring the stacks is less relevant today. For example, our catalog now shows a preview of the books on the shelf near a book that we are interested in. When performing a search for Divergent Paths by Richard Posner, the following virtual browse display shows the books nearby: Budget constraints coupled with patron preference for electronic access means that our print collections are dwindling. There's no use romanticizing print while...

As law school budgets continue to shrink, it's not unreasonable to presume that many law libraries are coming under increased scrutiny. Law school administrators cannot touch faculty salaries or law student financial aid. When a dean looks at a law school budget , the biggest expenditure after faculty salaries is the library, and many must now wonder "what are all those people doing with all that money?" Accordingly, one of the budget-cutting measures may be to consider  combining the law library with the university library . Historically, as the heart of the law school, law school libraries have functioned apart from the greater university library community. In a 1957 study, forty of the forty-one responding law libraries did not want to be considered part of the university library system or be a part of its administrative structure, even if they currently were. This position was codified through section 602(a) of the ABA standards, which requires law schools to “hav...

Happy Fair Use Week 2017! Fair Use Week is an annual celebration of the important doctrines of fair use and fair dealing. The week is designed to highlight and promote opportunities presented by fair use and fair dealing, to celebrate successful stories, and to explain these doctrines. For law libraries, AALL has created a wonderful resource called Guidelines on the Use of Copyrighted Works by Law Libraries . This guide discusses, among other things: The Copyright Act Fair Use The Library Exemption The TEACH Act And the various rules that govern reproduction of copyrighted material The area of copyright law is constantly in flux as we learn more about what fair use means through case precedent, particularly for libraries and archives.  We've seen the ongoing Google Books litigation, with post on the progression of the case  here  (District Court), here  (Court of Appeals), and here (SCOTUS).  The Georgia State case that involves libr...

Barbara Fister over at InsideHigherEd recently discussed practices for designing learning spaces in libraries . Her post was informed by a new report published by  Project Information Literacy  called Planning and Designing Academic Library Learning Spaces. The report involved interviewing 49 librarians, architects, and consultants involved in 22 library construction projects that were completed between 2011 and 2016. The research probes how these three parties negotiate their values and incorporate them into designs, what kinds of learning are these new and renovated spaces meant to support, and what best practices (and worst practices) might inform libraries embarking on a renovation.  Fister noted a surprising finding that [s]tudents weren’t part of the discussion, or at least not in any depth, in a majority of these projects. Apart from gate counts and a focus group or survey here and there, studying student needs or asking their opinion wasn’t part of the plann...

To go along with a recent blog post on practical considerations for a career is law librarianship , I thought I would highlight a type of librarian that is needed now more than ever. Newsworks profiled a young librarian working as a digital archivist to highlight the librarian of the future. As mentioned in the article, several years ago, Forbes Magazine listed the advanced degrees with the worst job prospects—and a master's in library sciences was No. 1 on the list. Despite that gloomy prediction and some staid image problems, young librarians say their work is relevant in the 21st Century and is as needed now as it has ever been. Jarrett Drake learned librarianship at the University of Michigan School of Information. He's Princeton University's first-ever digital archivist, which is a librarian who preserves things created on computing devices. His job is to figure out how to safeguard ones and zeros, and to do that, he gets help from a $10,000 machine called ...

During information-literacy instruction, librarians generally count on the .gov domain suffix to lead to reputable information.  For example, this site on evaluating internet information plainly states: .gov Government. If you come across a site with this domain, then you're viewing a federal government site. All branches of the United States federal government use this domain. Information such as Census statistics, Congressional hearings, and Supreme Court rulings would be included in sites with this domain. The information is considered to be from a credible source . And another site also states:  You can trust sites with “.gov” addresses . You can also trust sites with “.edu” addresses if they’re produced by the educational institution. Personal pages of individuals at an educational institution may not be trustworthy, even though they have “.edu” addresses. The presence of “.org” in an address doesn’t guarantee that a site is reputable; there have been ins...

There's a cool new tool in the Library Extension for Google Chrome . Like many people (and even as a librarian), I often find myself clicking "purchase" on Amazon before checking with my local library for a book that I am interested in. As mentioned on Lifehacker , Amazon may be convenient, but nothing beats free. After you install the Library Extension for Chrome, any searches that you do on Amazon will yield results from your local library, too.  From Library Extension's website : Easily see what titles are available at your local library as you browse for books! As you browse books and e-books, the Library Extension can check your library's online catalog and display the availability of that item on the same page. If the book is available at your library, you'll know instantly – and have a quick, convenient link to reserve the title!  The extension allows you to pick your favorite local libraries and add them to a list. Then, when you shop for books...

In Dublin, Ireland, twenty-three library branches will offer a new Open Library service in 2017, meaning libraries will stay open and operate without staff during the evenings and weekends. This initiative has made the library staff uneasy. And the librarians have come out against the initiative stating “We truly believe that this move is the beginning of the end for our Public Library Service.” This has become a bit of a hot-button political issue as the Dublin City Councillors voted against the initiative to show support for librarians and library staff. However, the Minister of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government Simon Coveney said, “There will be no closure of library branches as a result of the Open Library service. Similarly, there will be no reduction in staffing levels or staffed hours as a result of the service, either in the short or long term." He added that “funding is allocated to libraries on the basis of applications received from local authoritie...

The NYTimes recently highlighted the work of the End of Term Presidential Harvest 2016 -- a volunteer, collaborative effort by a small group of university, government and nonprofit libraries to find and save valuable pages now on federal websites. With the arrival of any new president, vast troves of information on government websites are at risk of vanishing within days. The fragility of digital federal records, reports and research is astounding.  Currently, no law protects much of it, no automated machine records it for history, and the National Archives and Records Administration announced in 2008 that it would not take on the job. “Large portions of dot-gov have no mandate to be taken care of,” said Mark Phillips, a library dean at the University of North Texas, referring to government websites. “Nobody is really responsible for doing this.” Enter the End of Term Presidential Harvest 2016. The project began before the 2008 elections, when George W. Bush was ...

Cornell Law School has started a Legal Research Clinic where 2Ls & 3Ls help local residents, nonprofit organizations, and entrepreneurs with specific questions that do not require full legal representation. The students also assist public-interest lawyers who need legal research assistance, which is a wonderful way to provide greater access to justice. The director of the Legal Research Clinic, Amy Emerson, noted that she was often trying to construct artificial issues for students to research. At the same time, people from the community were coming to the library with legal questions, but librarians are not supposed to give legal advice. As Emerson noted, the Legal Research Clinic was a way to bridge the gap. The Clinic meets the community's needs while giving the students very practical experience. The broad range of topics is what makes this legal clinic unique, said Emerson. Most clinics focus on a defined area of law, forcing them to turn away requests outside of th...

The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a new study out of Stanford that shows that preteens and teens are clueless about evaluating the accuracy and trustworthiness of "news." Some 82% of middle schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labeled “sponsored content” and a real news story on a website, according to a Stanford University study of 7,804 students from middle school through college.  The study, set for release Tuesday, is the biggest so far on how teens evaluate information they find online. Many students judged the credibility of newsy tweets based on how much detail they contained or whether a large photo was attached, rather than on the source. More than two out of three middle-schoolers couldn’t see any valid reason to mistrust a post written by a bank executive arguing that young adults need more financial-planning help. And nearly four in 10 high-school students believed, based on the headline, that a photo of deformed daisies on a photo-sharing sit...

The Verge recently interviewed a librarian about the abundance of fake news. It's a real problem, and concern has escalated since the presidential election. The central focus of the concern is Facebook , which has grown beyond a social platform and is now a key information distributor from which 44 percent of Americans get their news. Google and Facebook both recently announced that they would block fake news sources from using their ad networks. All of this is compounded by the reality that a lot of people don’t know fake news when they see it, sensationalized reports are more likely to go viral on social media than sane ones, and distrust of traditional (and genuinely more reliable) media sources is rising. As Verge points out, librarians are well positioned to tackle the fake news problem. Librarians... we’ve always talked about information literacy. Information literacy is just trying to get people to be savvy consumers of information, and getting them to be able to reall...

In an Instagram video , former Fox News host Greta Van Susteren proclaimed that she is “scandalized” by the cost of education and how college students are saddled with “gigantic student loans.” Law schools are certainly at the forefront of this criticism as nearly  85% of law students graduate with over $100,000 in student debt . Van Susteren went on to post similar comments on Twitter, exclaiming, “Colleges should stop building vanity projects like huge libraries and billing students -- full libraries are on our smartphones!” As noted on InsideHigherEd , those comments ... are destructively misleading to the general public as well as higher education administrators and legislative decision makers about the significant contributions academic libraries make to teaching and learning. Academic librarians play a vital part in the education ecosystem, putting information into context for students by distinguishing information from knowledge and offering direct assistance to consti...