Roy Sturgeon will discuss at the Asian Law Interest Group meeting his almost-completed article on historical free-speech episodes from China’s long and rich history. Additionally, he will discuss contemporary free-speech developments, including writer Liu Xiaobo’s 2010 Nobel peace prize and the April 2011 “disappearance” of artist Ai Weiwei.
In 2003 at Chicago-Kent, part of the law school’s faculty support staff began reporting to the library director, which created an unusually rich opportunity for collaboration. Now the librarians and faculty support work together to expand library and educational technology services. This program will discuss how the librarians trained and collaborated with the faculty administrative assistants and how both groups have worked together on everything from course websites, to posting articles to SSRN and ExpressO, to creating a Library Virtual Tour (seen here: http://bit.ly/dtclibrarytour), a production that would not have been possible without extensive expertise of both librarians and faculty administrative assistants, and a collaborative attitude from all involved.
Libraries and open source communities share a lot of similarities, making it a logical decision for libraries to both use and participate in open source development. Nicole C. Engard, Director of Open Source Education at ByWater Solutions and author of Practical Open Source Software for Libraries, will explain how libraries can get involved in open source development and take advantage of the power of applications that have been developed by active communities.
Librarians are known to wax eloquently about the virtues of a strong relationship between the public and technical service operations within the library. On a day-to-day basis in our libraries, however, library staff may do little to build and foster these relationships. In worst case scenarios these units may actually work against each other much to the detriment of community members. For those librarians who want to create a great experience for their community members, they will need to do much more than just give lip service to a productive connection between the public, technical and system units in their organizations.
In this talk, Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian for Research& Instructional Services at Temple University, will explore what it means to design and implement a holistic user experience in a library setting. Doing so requires the delivery of a consistently great user experience at all library touchpoints, and that only happens when the entire organization works together to create an environment of totality. Steven will introduce the Experiential Brand Statement concept as a framework for bringing staff together to discuss and design the library user experience.
Fordham Law Library hired a reference librarian/empirical research specialist and other academic law libraries are including knowledge of empirical research methods into their reference librarian job descriptions. At the Harvard Law School Library, there are two empirical research positions: empirical research fellow and empirical research consultant. Duke University School of Law has an empirical research associate position, as well as a reference librarian who coordinates the library’s Empirical Legal Research Program. These are a few examples of how law libraries are responding to faculty’s increasing demand for empirical legal research support. While other sessions have focused on resources for doing empirical work, this program focuses on how academic law libraries are meeting the needs of faculty members by creating empirical positions within or in conjunction with the library. It will address the factors that led these institutions to create the empirical legal research programs and the structures of these programs. Panelists will discuss how the programs were implemented, and will evaluate the programs’ strengths and weaknesses.
Missed the PLL Change as Action Summit? No problem – this recap will review the highlights of speakers’ presentations and breakout groups, and touch back on the related webinars and presentations held throughout the previous winter and spring.
