Target Audience: Technical services librarians, electronic resources librarians, library directors
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of various ERM systems in order to select a system that best meets their institution's needs.
2. Participants will be able to list workflow and implementation tips from different ERM systems users and to plan a smooth and positive installation of a new ERM system.
As libraries add more electronic resources to their collections, there will be a greater need to manage and maintain these resources effectively and efficiently. By viewing what ERM systems are available in the market place and identifying special features of each system, librarians responsible for electronic resources will be better equipped to select an ERM system that best fits their institution's needs. Librarians with limited resources will benefit from the demonstration of a locally developed, or an open source, ERM system. Insights into the pros and cons of using different ERM systems will also be shared.
Target Audience: Librarians interested in U.S. copyright law and the complex issues resulting from the technological changes of the past three decades
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will assess changes to copyright law over the past 35 years.
2. Participants will evaluate the need for additional changes to U.S. copyright laws related to digital technologies.
Join a substantive discussion about U.S. copyright law with two preeminent experts. Marybeth Peters, current Register of Copyrights with the U.S. Copyright Office, has announced plans to step down from this post at the end of 2010-a position she has held since 1994. AALL’s own copyright expert, Laura (Lolly) Gasaway, has written and spoken extensively about copyright issues impacting libraries. Gasaway co-chaired the Section 108 Study Group, which examined the exceptions and limitations applicable to libraries and archives under the Copyright Act and made recommendations. Copyright Committee Chair Roger Skalbeck will moderate a discussion of copyright reform in the United States with a particular focus on library issues. Drawing on decades of experience, Gasaway and Peters will provide insights into major developments in copyright, including the 1976 Copyright Act, Fair Use, the TEACH Act, the DMCA, Section 108, distance education, and database protection. In examining touch points for copyright events relevant to libraries, these experts will talk about pending or possible copyright reform, including relevant legislative activities and court developments.
Target Audience: Library directors, managers, and supervisors
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to discuss integration issues such as collection, contracts, staffing, and ILS with an emphasis on the international component.
2. Participants will be able to explain how other firms have managed expansion through opening international offices and their firms' mergers.
Law firms are merging with each other without any slowdown, while others are expanding by opening international offices. Globalization and consolidation are closely tied to a firm's survival, growth, and strategic plan. When large firms merge, the combined firm can boast 3,000+ lawyers with a multitude of time zones, currencies, languages, and cultures. Law firm international expansion can also be a way for smaller firms to establish a regional presence. Regardless, whether the growth involves law firms in the United States and/or those with an international footprint, there are challenges to face since firms have traditionally relied on different fiscal years, accounting systems, management structures, and compensation practices. These are obstacles to overcome before two can be melded into one entity. The program panelists are from firms that have merged or expanded regionally, nationally, and globally. In a panel presentation, they will discuss the challenges they faced when their firms announced the expansion. Participants will learn what worked, what didn't, and what to do differently the next time the "M-word" comes up.
Target Audience: Law librarians interested in gaining a further understanding of THOMAS
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to articulate a user-centered design business model.
2. Participants will be able to name several ways that THOMAS can be improved in the near future.
THOMAS.gov, the legislative information database from the Law Library of Congress, was created in 1995. It is regarded as the "go to" place for bills, laws, Congressional Record, etc. This program will focus on the recent changes to THOMAS, many of which stem from user-generated feedback such as permanent links and integrated social media. The program will also cover how these changes better the user experience and make reference transactions using THOMAS easier. A member of the Library of Congress Information Technology Services Division will explain the challenges and requirements of revamping THOMAS around a user-centered design. The Law Library of Congress would like feedback and input from the participants on the next generation of THOMAS.
Target Audience: All librarians
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will learn the rationale and learning theory for embedding librarians in support of clinical teaching in law schools.
2. Participants will be able to analyze the tools and techniques needed for starting an embedded librarian project at their law schools.
This program describes the Mason Law Library's experience of embedding librarians in clinics at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, rated second highest in the nation for clinical teaching. The project's rationale is based on adult learning theory, teaching at the point of need, and recommendations from Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (2008) for teaching legal research as a part of lawyers' "expert performance." Embedding librarians in a practice environment enables users to learn and integrate advanced legal research skills, professional judgment, and ethics through modeling, practice, coaching, and feedback. The panelists include the embedded librarians and clinic directors, who will discuss the effectiveness of this experiment.
Target Audience: Librarians who understand the basics of leading or actively participating in meetings can benefit from advanced facilitation techniques
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will analyze techniques for maximizing involvement from all meeting participants.
2. Participants will compare methods for managing unproductive meeting behaviors, such as negativity, indecisiveness, and unresponsiveness.
As many librarians learned in last year's AALL presentation on facilitation, a well-facilitated meeting can transform a regular work session into an extraordinarily productive event. Participants learned that a well-crafted agenda, thoughtful ground rules, optimal meeting space, and detailed minutes can all set the stage for a successful meeting. However, meetings can still go awry. A poorly facilitated meeting can make everyone dread meetings even if the meeting has been well-planned. Managing or facilitating behaviors is the final essential ingredient for success. Have you ever been in a meeting that is monopolized by one individual? Or someone offers a suggestion that is way off in left field? Perhaps you have been in a meeting where hostilities have erupted? Using video clips of actual meeting scenarios, the speakers will present advanced techniques for facilitating meeting behaviors.
Target Audience: Academic law librarians and law firm librarians who support international commercial arbitration practice groups
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will identify the characteristics of international commercial arbitration that create challenges to effective research and advocacy, and will master strategies and identify resources necessary to overcome these challenges.
2. Participants will learn how to effectively demonstrate the essential print and multimedia resources necessary for international commercial arbitration research and advocacy.
In the past, most international commercial arbitrators and practitioners came from a few international law firms. With the explosion of international commerce, international commercial arbitration (ICA) has become much more prevalent, and more generalists have become involved. In a field that is qualitatively different than other areas of law, more research and practice instruction is necessary. Law librarians have unique qualifications to assist in this instruction. The program will explore the reasons favoring and disfavoring ICA as a dispute resolution tool. The program will also discuss how the characteristics of ICA create challenges to effective research and advocacy. The program will discuss eight sources of law in international commercial arbitration, how to locate these sources, and the use of these sources in ICA advocacy.
Target Audience: Librarians who work with metadata, metadata frameworks, and controlled vocabularies
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to assess various sources for authority control of elements and vocabularies in the world beyond the MARC format and OCLC authority files.
2. Participants will be able to judge which vocabularies fit their library's needs for metadata organization.
Barbara Tillett and John Mark Ockerbloom will explore the real potential behind linked library data by providing an informative overview of acronyms like RDF, LCSH/SKOS , VIAF and the RDA Registry and by highlighting how the linked data from id.loc.gov is being used to power searches in the Online Books Page and the main library catalog, Franklin, at the University of Pennsylvania.
Target Audience: All librarians concerned with network neutrality and internet pricing
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to describe the FCC's ability to create regulations for the Internet, and explain why the FCC's rule on network neutrality was overturned.
2. Participants will be able to assess tiers of Internet service and pricing.
In 2009, AALL sponsored a well-attended panel on network neutrality. In the interim, three significant events have occurred: the FCC released an order dealing with network neutrality, and that rule was overturned by an appeals court, based on the reasoning that the FCC does not have the congressional authority to create such a rule. Finally, in December 2010, the FCC released a set of rules on network neutrality .
The speakers will explain the new rules and how the rules will affect our profession. Particular attention will be paid to the impact the court decision should have on the rules that were released in December.
Target Audience: Law firm librarians on the front lines in dealing with online contract negotiations and the cost recovery issues and trends surrounding those contracts and negotiations
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to identify trends in cost recovery for electronic legal research in law firms.
2. Participants will be able to identify solutions for successful contract negotiations, as well as alternatives to the dominant online research vendors in the market.
To recover costs or not to recover costs-that is often the question asked when it comes to online research these days. While the costs for online research keep rising, there are clients who refuse to pay, lawyers who hesitate to charge them, and firms that are skittish about taking on costs that, for some, are in the millions. During this session, panelists will identify the major trends in cost recovery for electronic research, alternatives to the major vendors for online research, and discuss best practices for negotiating online research contracts. Adequate time for questions from the audience will be provided.
This program will be webcast live here.
Target Audience: Librarians who support students, faculty, and attorneys working in the areas of international law or humanitarian law specifically
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will list the key features of the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect.
2. Participants will create a research plan in International Humanitarian Law.
The purpose of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine is to prevent mass atrocities by placing a duty upon state actors to protect their citizens. When individual states fail in this duty, it is the collective responsibility of the international community to respond. This response may include, in an exceptional case, military intervention. Gareth Evans, a former Foreign Minister of Australia, and the former President of the International Crisis Group, has promoted this development in International Humanitarian Law. The Responsibility to Protect is an emerging norm with an uncertain future. Its status has been a subject of debate in the United Nations General Assembly. This program will discuss its development, its application or misapplication, and its future as a mechanism to prevent mass atrocities. The program will also provide a strategy for researching a cutting-edge topic in International Humanitarian Law.
Target Audience: All librarians who have a role in vendor contract negotiations
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to analyze contract terms to better understand how those terms affect the end results of their negotiations.
2. Participants will acquire the tools to negotiate a favorable contract with a services vendor.
Vendor contracts are getting more complex, with finer print. Many librarians are involved in the contract negotiation process and need to be able to read and comprehend often complex contracts in order to get the most favorable terms for their libraries and institutions. Two attorneys who are involved in their large firms' vendor contract negotiations, along with their library directors, will discuss contract best practices, what elements to look for in a contract, and which clauses or provisions will render a contract unworkable. They will offer practical tips on negotiation skills, and on reaching a workable agreement with service vendors.
Target Audience: FCIL, academic, and socially responsible law librarians interested in libraries as cultural institutions that must be rebuilt after man-made catastrophes
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to explain U.S. accession to the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and the work of UNESCO as "lead agency for the protection of the world's documentary heritage in libraries and archives."
2. Participants will be able to participate in the rebuilding of national libraries and archives destroyed in the Balkan, Iraqi, and Afghan conflicts.
"Libricide" is a recently coined term for the destruction of a culture's memory by obliterating its historical documentary record. Beginning with the Lieber Code in the U.S. Civil War, libraries were recognized as institutions to be safeguarded during wartime; the hanging of Hitler's chief plunderer in the Nuremberg trials was crucial recognition of destruction of cultural property as a potential war crime. The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two additions completed the process and led to its inclusion in the Serbian war crimes trials. Destruction of the Iraqi national archives, the ongoing plunder of archeological sites and academic libraries, and sales of Sumerian tablets and other pre-Islamic cuneiforms make this a topic of current and urgent interest to librarians and legal researchers. This program will examine 20th century instances of state-sponsored libricide, the development of the Hague Convention with an assessment of its use to date, and the efforts of the international library community to rebuild destroyed libraries and archives.
Target Audience: Academic law librarians, firm librarians, and public law librarians
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will learn the theory, terminology, and importance of assessment.
2. Participants will become familiar with current examples of assessment in law schools and law firms.
The topic of assessment in legal education continues to gather steam and is now at the forefront with the implications of Proposed ABA Standards on Student Learning Outcomes and talk of a legal research component on the bar exam. Additionally, as law firms implement new associate training models, law librarians must be able to assess the learning that occurs, as well as evaluate the training program itself. This program will feature law librarians actively involved in assessment in law schools and in law firms. David Armond, Senior Law Librarian at the BYU Law Library, will address the use of pre-teaching feedback, such as using the results of TWEN quizzes before lectures to shape in-class instruction, and using practicums as effective assessment tools in a first-year legal research course. Molly Brownfield, until recently Head of Reference Services at Duke Law Library, will address assessment in the context of a specialized upper-level research course, including concrete examples of research assignments and corresponding grading sheets. Linda-Jean Schneider, Director of Libraries & Research at Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, will discuss assessment activities she has undertaken in connection with her firm’s associate training program, including the assessment of associates’ legal research skills and the evaluation of the training program itself. Don MacLeod, Manager of Knowledge Management at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, heads his firm’s mandatory three-hour research orientation for first-year and summer associates, and will discuss assessing attorneys’ legal research skills in connection with that orientation. He will also discuss his use of Research Monitor to evaluate the use of electronic subscriptions within his firm.
Missed it the first time?
Target Audience: Librarians who understand the basics of leading or actively participating in meetings can benefit from advanced facilitation techniques
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will analyze techniques for maximizing involvement from all meeting participants.
2. Participants will compare methods for managing unproductive meeting behaviors, such as negativity, indecisiveness, and unresponsiveness.
As many librarians learned in last year's AALL presentation on facilitation, a well-facilitated meeting can transform a regular work session into an extraordinarily productive event. Participants learned that a well-crafted agenda, thoughtful ground rules, optimal meeting space, and detailed minutes can all set the stage for a successful meeting. However, meetings can still go awry. A poorly facilitated meeting can make everyone dread meetings even if the meeting has been well-planned. Managing or facilitating behaviors is the final essential ingredient for success. Have you ever been in a meeting that is monopolized by one individual? Or someone offers a suggestion that is way off in left field? Perhaps you have been in a meeting where hostilities have erupted? Using video clips of actual meeting scenarios, the speakers will present advanced techniques for facilitating meeting behaviors.
Target Audience: Law librarians who support faculty, students, and government and private attorneys who work with civil law jurisdictions and U.S. litigation involving the doctrine of forum non conveniens
Learning Outcomes:
1. Participants will be able to describe the essential principles of the civil law tradition necessary to understand the impact of U.S. transnational litigation in Latin America.
2. Participants will be able to explain forum shopping and the repercussions of the U.S. doctrine of forum non conveniens.
Globalization has brought different legal systems closer together. Legal practitioners, government lawyers, and judges increasingly need to deal with cases that require research and understanding of a foreign legal system or specific aspects of comparative law. People doing business in civil law countries need to understand the fundamentals of civil code-based jurisdictions. This presentation will introduce the main elements that distinguish common law and civil law traditions, especially with respect to Latin American jurisdictions. Additionally, the U.S. bar has been very active on issues of forum shopping involving civil law jurisdictions. For example, there are cases involving U.S. multinational corporations litigating in Latin American and U.S. courts for damages arising from activities related to petroleum exploration and banana plantations, or based on U.S.-manufactured defective products. The presentation will also discuss various responses (judicial decisions and legislation) from Latin American civil law countries to the U.S. forum non conveniens doctrine, and provide participants with a research guide for exploring these issues further.
