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SNELLA’S OBITER DICTA! OCTOBER 29, 2015

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Obiter Dicta

CONTENTS... Welcome Letter from the President.................................p2AALLl - Annual Conference Report ............................p3-4Report from the LLNE Fall Meeting...............................p5Depository Library Council Meeting..............................p6Fall Brown Bag Event - Marketing ..................................p7 Transcription of the 2015 Legislative Session Delayed..p8

Vol. 29 no. 2

Reminder!SNELLA’s Brown Bag Lunch

noon - 1:00 p.m. November 18thYale Law School

see page 7

SNELLA’S OBITER DICTA OCTOBER 29, 2015

Welcome from the President:

Fall is already in full swing and I’m happy to report that the SNELLA Board is hard at work planning a year full of programming and expanded scholarship offerings. We have educational sessions in development for the fall and spring, including a brown bag panel on marketing, hosted by Yale, on Wednesday, November 18. Check your email for more details. We’re also narrowing down our options for the winter dinner, which will be held in Middletown in January.

As always, SNELLA relies on the generosity if its members to donate a few hours of their time to help us continue to develop law librarianship in Southern New England. We are currently seeking volunteers to chair the Education Committee, Government Relations Committee, and Scholarship Committee. Please contact me or any member of the Board to get involved or to learn more about volunteering.

I wanted to send a special thanks to Catherine Dunn, who served as President last year before moving to Philadelphia. She was a great mentor throughout my vice presidency and continues to answer my questions from afar. I’m also grateful for Chris Graesser’s willingness to remain as Past President an extra year to fill in for Catherine. Chris’s many years of service to SNELLA provides the Board with invaluable guidance.

I look forward to a successful year ahead and hope to see many of you at the November marketing talk.

Cate Kellett

SNELLA President 2015-2016Catalog and Government Documents LibrarianBibliographer for Latin America and IberiaLillian Goldman Law LibraryYale Law [email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]



AALL - ANNUAL CONFERENCE IN PHILADELPHIA

by Lusiella FazzinoIn typical AALL style, the Annual Conference in Philadelphia this year was 9illed with many interesting sessions and roundtables.

Like last year, I attended the pre-‐conference Hackathon. This year there were more programmers in attendance and there was an even distribution among the groups of librarians and programmers. My group of 9ive participants had four librarians who had experience coding, ranging from novice to the intermediate level.

Our project was called “USC Plugin” which was the brainchild of Eliot Hibbler, from Northeastern School of Law. Eliot noticed that when a user pulls a case in Google Scholar and the United State Code is cited, there is no indication whether that law may have been amended since the case decision.

It was agreed that when a user pulls a U.S. Supreme Court or Federal Court Case and the U.S.C. within the case has been amended, the case could certainly be 9lagged. Using a Google Chrome plugin, a reader could be alerted.

Our team member Karen Kronenberg from Florida Coastal Law, looked at samples

of Google Scholar Supreme Court and Federal Court decisions and dates. She surveyed a sampling of the District and Federal Circuit Courts.

Karen gathered examples of cases within the Supreme Court and Federal Courts where the US Code has been cited and copied the caption and date of the decision. She created a spreadsheet and added their URLs. She also checked the many different ways the United States Code is cited within GS cases to ensure that they would all be captured.

Artie Berns from the Jenner Law Library at the University of Illinois set to writing python code that would search uscode.house.gov to 9ind amendments of the statutes. It would parse the opinion date and all the references to the U.S.C. in that opinion and send that info to a server.

At that server, the python code would compare the dates, checking to see if the code was amended since the date of case decision. If there had been a change, a link would be returned with where the amended code was located on uscode.house.gov.

Sean Chen of Duke Law and Elliott worked on a piece of javascript code for a Google Chrome extension. This extension would take the

information that the python code generated and apply it to the case decision. The reader would be alerted by using a colored font, or another signal that the cited Unites States Code had been amended.

I documented our project through a wiki and set up accounts so that the code could be shared and developed on Github. Although our project was not fully realized, it is a viable and useful concept which will prove bene9icial to those who use Google Scholar to 9ind U.S. and Federal Court decisions.

The Cool Tools session was held in a conference room with about a dozen kiosks where attendees could move from station to station every ten minutes and learn about a different product.

I especially enjoyed the free project management applications, Asana and Trello. I have since started using Asana for personal and work projects. Within a project, one can assign tasks and report when they have been completed. The members of that project are alerted as to the status and eventual completion of a task. It is an excellent tool for managing the progress of a project.

On two separate social occasions, while speaking with colleagues, the topic of the

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3Mindfulness Caucus came up. One colleague was male and the other female. The male colleague had been a member of the caucus since its inception in 2013. The female was going to attend this year because she had heard there would be a meditation.

I was intrigued that two areas of interest to me would intersect. I attended the Mindfulness in Law Librarianship Caucus and was surprised to see at least twenty likeminded law librarians there. We meditated together for about twenty-‐9ive minutes.

Various librarians shared their experiences within their schools. One school offered a daily meditation sit in a designated room and found that it was so popular that they had to order additional cushions. Another librarian talked about the interest that attorneys at her 9irm were having in the nonviolent communication movement, as a tool in their mediation practices.

Alexandria Delgado continues to serve as chair of the Mindfulness in Law Librarianship Caucus and it was decided that in the spirit of simplicity, there would be no bylaws at this time.

This year’s AALL Annual Conference continued the

organization’s tradition of excellence and contribution to the 9ield of law librarianship. AALL’s commitment to providing law librarians with new knowledge and skills, which can be integrated into their professional lives, is the main reason that I return year after year.

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Report from the LLNE Fall Meeting

The Law Librarians of New England (LLNE) Fall Meeting took place at Roger Williams University (RWU) on Friday, October 2. The weather outside may have been cold and rainy, but inside an enthusiastic group of librarians, lawyers, vendors, and professors met to discuss how libraries can support innovation. A recurring theme throughout all the sessions involved the need for the infusion of new or radical ideas to really spark change in any field. Change is difficult, but we shouldn’t be afraid to try (and fail) at new endeavors. Quite the opposite, as librarians we need to reinvent ourselves constantly to remain relevant. A highlight of the conference was the plenary speaker, Margaret Hagan, Fellow at the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford Law School and Lecturer at the Stanford Institute of Design. Ms. Hagan described the unique way she combines her talent for design with her law training, which began in law school when she created visual representations of legal concepts to aid her in her own studies. She then created an app for other students to download to help explain the law in new and creative ways. While her career path so far has been unique, one lesson I learned from Ms. Hagan’s presentation is that taking an old idea and infusing it with your own unique perspective can benefit others who struggle with the status quo.

The last session was a series of eight unconference topics. I led a group on the topic of Innovative Staffing Models. All the participants at my table spoke of how many positions at their libraries have evolved over time, especially during the economic downturn. As staff leave, they aren’t always replaced, and others absorb some of those duties. For example, where once there was a sharp division between technical services and public services, there now are many combined positions working in both areas, especially in smaller libraries. Even at my library, with a larger staff, we also have librarians in technical services who teach or man the reference desk a few hours a week. My group agreed that working across departments has led to better communication, and an influx of new ideas to improve services to our patrons.

The LLNE Fall Meeting was a great day of networking and learning about potential innovation in law libraries. Often the discussion turned to changes due to budget constraints, but there was an overall excitement to take advantage of the situation and influx our profession with new ideas and services to our patrons. If you’re interested in checking out a future LLNE education event, the Spring Meeting will take place on April 8 at Northeastern.

Cate Kellett

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Depository Library Council Mee4ngOctober 19-‐21 Arlington, VA

by Sco? Matheson

Head of Technical Services -‐ Yale Law, and FDLP Council member

The Depository Library Council mee4ng and FDLP conference was October 19-‐21 in Arlington, VA. Over 300 people were registered to a?end in person and an addi4onal 300+ registered to a?end on line. Some educa4onal sessions will also be repeated as a webinar in the coming months.

Poster sessions detailed how librarians care for and use documents collec4ons in many ways -‐ from history and humani4es research to sta4s4cs and science. SNELLA's Cate Kelle? presented a poster about how she integrated Yale Law Library's documents collec4on into the main stacks and benefits of doing so.

Council discussed several topics important to law libraries, including GPO's long-‐term Na4onal Plan for the depository library program, the nascent Federal Informa4on Preserva4on Network (FIPNet) , and a change that will allow regional depositories to seek permission from GPO to discard certain materials under specific circumstances.

The Na4onal Plan includes -‐ as of this wri4ng -‐ 43 dis4nct items that will help move the FDLP into the future. GPO iden4fied these items with the help of the documents community and has categorized them into three categories: In

process (22), under considera4on (18), and those that need regulatory or statutory change (3).

The FIPNet discussion included an announcement of the first preserva4on partner, the University of North Texas, who will take responsibility for preserving certain online-‐only publica4ons. There was discussion of how exis4ng preserva4on programs, for example, NELLCO and LIPA's PalmPrint archive of primary legal sources, might fit into the program and become partners. These arrangements are and exci4ng possibility for law libraries who want to ensure permanent public access to authen4c legal informa4on.

The "regional discard" policy was a hot topic at the mee4ng. This watershed event in the history of the FDLP marks the first 4me that regional depository libraries (established in 1962) will be allowed to weed their collec4ons. This should help prevent some regionals with severe space problems remain in the program and serving their selec4ve and patrons.

The parameters are quite narrow -‐ only those materials that libraries have held longer than 7 years and are included in FDSys in complete, authen4cated versions will be eligible. Regionals must ask for permission from GPO and coordinate with the selec4ve depositories they serve before discarding. GPO will be tes4ng the discard procedure and how they implement the guidelines this winter and expects to have a regular process in place during

2016. In gran4ng this adjustment to GPO policy, the Joint Commi?ee on Prin4ng required the GPO maintain at least 4 copies across the country; GPO plans to keep at least 10 copies. There are many details about the policy and more will come from the tes4ng period -‐ the session was recorded and will be available for viewing on FDLP.gov in the FDLP Academy sec4on.

Many law librarians are concerned about the effect this change will have on the availability of print copies of these materials. While the change does not require libraries to weed their collec4ons, it is possible that many will want to. This makes coordina4on among law libraries -‐ both FDLP and not -‐ more important than ever to ensure our patrons will retain access to the materials they need. A key goal of the Na4onal Plan is to increase flexibility in the depository program and that will require more coordina4on and collabora4on across all libraries to ensure patron needs are met.

GPO hosted a very produc4ve and informa4ve mee4ng. If you're able to a?end this (free) mee4ng next year, you're sure to learn a lot from your colleagues and will have an opportunity to contribute to federal informa4on policy discussion.

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Available to AALL members ath?p://www.aallnet.org/conference/educa4on/2015recordings

Join us for the Fall Brown Bag Event about Marketing in Law Libraries!

The SNELLA Education Committee would like to invite all of you to this discussion about marketing efforts in law libraries. When: November 18, 2015 from 12:00pm – 1:00 p.m.

Where: Yale Law School, Room 122, 127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT 06511 Parking: Metered parking ($1.50/hr) is available on Grove Street & other surrounding streets (but not on Wall St.). Public parking is available on Broadway (two blocks from Yale Law School). Presenters: Christine L. Graesser, Information Resources Manager at Robinson & Cole LLP

Jordan Jefferson, Coordinating Librarian for Reference Services and Chair of their Exhibits and Signs Committee at Yale Law School Astoria Ridley, Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Librarian II and Co-Chair of the Law Library Services Unit Marketing Committee

http://www.aallnet.org/conference/education/2015recordings

http://www.aallnet.org/conference/education/2015recordings

http://www.law.yale.edu/

http://www.law.yale.edu/

SUBMISSIONS FOR NEXT OBITER DICTA DUE 1/10/16Articles, comments or questions about this publication should be

submitted to Editor: Jeffrey Dowd/CT Judicial Branch Law Libraries 90 Washington Street/Hartford, CT 06106

Phone: 860 706-5144/Fax 860 706-5086, [email protected] All material submitted for publication is subject to editorial

revision. Electronic submission is encouraged.

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Interested in this issue? Get involved in SNELLA’s Government Rela4ons Commi?ee and advocate for the public’s access to legisla4ve informa4on and other issues important to our profession.

Contact Cate Kelle?

at [email protected] for more informa4on.

Transcription of the 2015 Legislative Session Delayed

Librarians used to calling the State Library for legisla4ve transcripts may have already learned that transcripts for public hearings and floor debates occurring aoer late April are not available. The company that transcribed these proceedings, United Reporters, went out of business in the middle of the legisla4ve session, resul4ng in about two months of untranscribed legisla4ve proceedings.

The good news is that a contract has been awarded to a new company, Transcrip4on Plus, to finish transcrip4on for the 2015 legisla4ve session and to transcribe the 2016 legisla4ve session. However, because of the backlog, it is not known when the transcripts will be available.

For now, the only way to access the public hearings and House and Senate debates are through the audio recordings. CT-‐N records the House and Senate sessions, and some public hearings. Addi4onally, audio recordings can be obtained by contac4ng the State Library Bill Room at 860-‐757-‐6550.

Although transcripts for the 2015 and 2016 session will be produced, because of the state budget situa4on, it is possible that the future of transcrip4on, especially for public hearings, is in jeopardy.

Submi?ed by Ann Rajo?e





SNELLAL’S OBITER DICTA! OCTOBER 29, 2015

Jeffrey Dowd - Editor

Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Libraries90 Washington Street Hartford, CT 06457

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