HEARSAY news from KU’s Wheat Law Library
Volume 6, Issue 4
Fall-Winter 2011
IN THIS
ISSUE
New Supreme Court Research Clinic By Chris Steadham
Extreme Makeover: Library Edition All about electronic databases By W. Blake Wilson
Wheat Law Library successfully hosts regional conference By Pamela Crawford
2011 Bluebook Relays recap
By Chris Steadham
A Day in the Life By Ashly LoBurgio Basgall
Visit Us! In Person: Green Hall 1535 W. 15th Street Lawrence, KS 66045 Online: http://www.law. ku.edu/library
DIRECTOR’S CORNER How many of us make a“to do list” to stay organized and keep us reminded of the many things we want to accomplish in a day, week, month or semester? I know I do, and the Wheat Law Library’s semester list was extensive. And as we marked items off the list, I could hear the loud sighs and the sounds of “whew” from the library staff. As I reflect upon the fall semester, which was one of the most eventful ones I can recall, I note that we checked off most of our items, but a few may merge on to the spring semester list. One of the items on the list was to redesign our newsletter format. We have Sarah Shebek to thank for helping us out with that task; kudos to you Sarah! This newsletter will highlight the most important activities in the library; some are old traditions, and others are new big-ticket items. We finally, after many months of planning, pulled off a hugely successful joint MAALL/SWALL conference. New staff member Ashly LoBurgio Basgall settled in, and we also hired a new catalog librarian, Allison Reeve. Allison will join us in late December. We will include more action shots and pictures in the new format; that is one of the benefits of an electronic newsletter. The remodel of the circulation and reference area was completed just in time for the joint conference. It is now a beautiful, open, inviting space that has lifted the spirits of students who work there and staff serving patrons and performing various library tasks. Patrons have complimented us on the combined reference and circulation area, its functionality and clean lines. Read on to see the before and after pictures of the project. By the time you glance at this newsletter, finals will be over, the library will be quieter, and less populated. Professors will be grading exams and final assignment papers. In the library, we will observe shorter intersession hours, and in January we will close for an in-service work day. Turn the electronic pages of the newsletter and read about the fall semester in review and learn about intersession hours and schedules, an upcoming spring legal research clinic course and other people, spaces and places in the library. From all of us in the Wheat Law Library, we wish you a safe, restful and happy holiday season. See you in the library! Joyce McCray Pearson, Library Director.
Season’s Greetings
from all of us at Wheat Law Library
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Before: The old circulation desk
During: New carpet installed
During: The makeover gets started as the desks move out
After: Jeff at the new desk
After: The finished product, with signage!
Extreme Makeover: second-floor remodel project The circulation and reference desk remodel project went into full swing in late August. It began with the demolition of the old circulation desk and the dismantling of the reference desk. The second phase involved installing carpet and the creation of a temporary reference/circulation service desk on the third floor of the library. The final phase was a new coat of paint on the walls, including a bright KU blue accent wall complete with official signage that reads “KU Wheat Law Library.” Enjoy these before, during and after pictures of the remodel project.
New Supreme Court Research Clinic offers unique opportunity A select group of KU Law 2Ls and 3Ls will enjoy a unique opportunity to conduct research in support of the Kansas Supreme Court and the Office of Judicial Administration during the Spring 2012 semester. Under the supervision of the Wheat Law Library teaching faculty, students enrolled in the Kansas Supreme Court Research Clinic will employ a variety of methodologies to conduct thorough research and concisely convey their findings to the Kansas Supreme Court, culminating with a presentation to the court at the end of the semester. This clinic serves the dual goals of providing students with practical research experience and assisting the Kansas
Supreme Court by providing needed research support. The principal activity of the clinic is the preparation of reports on particular topics of interest to the Kansas Supreme Court and the Office of Judicial Administration. To assist students in the preparation of reports and to provide additional training in research methodologies, there will be a series of class sessions and assigned readings scheduled during the semester. Contact Associate Director Chris Steadham, or any member of the Wheat Law Library teaching faculty, for more information about this exciting new addition to the KU Law curriculum! Chris Steadham, Associate Director
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Electronic databases easy, but not always efficient for students Electronic databases: Convenient, yes, but they come at a cost. I’m not talking about price, although the most popular databases we have access to do come with a financial cost. Westlaw, LexisNexis, HeinOnline, and BNA, for example, are a huge part of our budget and will end up being a large cost to practitioners. The cost I’m talking about is what we all pay for the convenience of having one-stop shops for all of our legal news and materials. What price must we pay? Quite simply this: timeliness. Let’s take a look at how a journal article makes its way onto a proprietary database.
SPRING 2012 HOURS
1. The article is written and submitted. Different journals naturally have different procedures for having this done and this process alone can take months. 2. All of the articles are pooled together and submitted to a publisher by the journal. This is where the pagination takes place and, as we all know, citations are always better if you can give a page number. 3. The publisher accepts the journal in its form and they begin printing. In theory, at this point, everything is a go and each article has its full citation including journal volume and page number. Makes sense that at this point, the articles are ready for electronic posting on your favorite database, right? Well, not quite. 4. Journal is sent out to subscribers. This always happens before anything is allowed to be published on the major databases. Why? When it comes down to it, the journals are able to maintain themselves based on the sales of the journal hard copies. There’s not much money to be made licensing out the material to proprietary databases. 5. The article becomes available on the journal’s web
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site or database, if there is one. Again, this comes down to financial reasons. A journal wants to pull in as much traffic as possible. 6. And we wait. This is especially true for the big, popular journals. I’ve known journals to keep a volume in their hands until the next one has reached #3 in my timeline. This can be six months or a year. Now it’s not necessarily the rule, but you do need to keep in mind that this happens. 7. Finally, it’s available! So what does this mean? Basically, you should always expect some type of lag between when print materials are put out and when they are available online. Of course, the above example, the journal, is one of the most extreme. So what can you get and when can you get it? 1. Government published material is the fastest since everything is automatically in the public domain. Usually the lag comes from adding annotations and lasts a couple of days to a week. 2. Self-authored material has a small lag. For example, BNA, who authors much of their own material, will usually put up material on their website within a week of publishing. However, there is material that is available only on their website which is not available to those who subscribe to the print. It is really no loss to them to put the print materials on their websites. 3. Journals and secondary sources. See the above timeline. Might be a year behind. So if you are looking for something and are baffled as to why you are not finding it online, perhaps this will help explain it. W. Blake Wilson, Head of Instructional and Research Services
Regular Hours* (Jan. 17- March16 & March 25April 26) Monday-Thursday 7:30 am - 11 pm Friday 7:30 am - 5 pm Saturday 9 am - 5 pm Sunday 10 am - 11 pm
Finals Hours (April 26– May 11) Monday-Thursday 7:30 am - 1 am Friday 7:30 am - 10 pm Saturday 8 am - 10 pm Sunday 10 am - 1 am **Except May 11 7:30 am - 5 pm
Spring Recess Hours ( March 18- March 24) Monday-Friday 8 am - 5 pm Saturday-Sunday CLOSED Interterm Hours (May 12- May 19) Monday-Friday 8 am - 5 pm
Commencement Hours (May 12-13) Saturday 10 am - 5 pm Sunday 9 am - 5 pm
*The library will be closed to the public on Jan.12 for a service day. The staff will work in the library and in the stacks and will not provide public service, reference or circulation assistance. Thank you for allowing us to have a “staff work day” so we can continue providing you with innovative and excellent services.
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Seal Team Six captures 22nd annual Barber Emerson Bluebook Relays Another raucous edition of the Barber Emerson Bluebook Relays enlivened Green Hall over the lunch hour on Oct. 28, 2011. Organized by the library’s own Jeff Montgomery and sponsored by the Lawrence law firm Barber Emerson, L.C., the 22nd annual Bluebook Relays were a smashing success. The 2011 title was ultimately captured by Seal Team Six, who join a long line of proud Bluebook Relays champions. The Bluebook Relays are a special tradition for KU Law that provides 1Ls with a brief respite from memo writing and puts their newly acquired legal citation skills to the test. Each small section competes with a team of 10 members, including one Bluebook “expert.” Usually held around Halloween, the Relays also feature outrageous costumes and spirited but friendly competition. The 2011 Spirit Award was awarded to The Cold Blooded Kellers.
Clockwise left: Seal Team Six salutes their victory, students await their teammates, the first team takes off.
Wheat Law Library successfully hosts joint library conference The Wheat Law Library hosted the 2011 joint meeting for the Mid-America Association of Law Libraries (MAALL) and the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries (SWALL). The meeting was held Nov. 3-5 at the Oread Hotel. The Local Arrangements Committee included librarians Kat Greene, Joyce McCray Pearson, Chris Steadham, Pam Crawford, Ashly LoBurgio Basgall and Blake Wilson plus the director of the Douglas County Law Library, Kerry Altenbernd. In addition, every member of the Wheat Law Library staff helped with registration, fee collecting, bill paying, bag stuffing, map folding, maintaining library services, and/or anything else that came up. In all honesty, we rocked! Dean Stephen Mazza welcomed the attendees from 13 states during the opening luncheon, noting that law libraries are an integral part of the law schools, counties, states, courts and law firms they serve. Lots of great programs made for a fun and educational three days. In addition to hosting the conference, several of us presented programs. Chris spoke on the AALL State Legal Inventory Project, and Joyce, Chris, Blake, and Pam
presented an interactive discussion about things we do in the library to stay fresh and engaged. That presentation ended with a short skit written by one of our library RAs. On Thursday evening Marianne Wesson, University of Colorado Law School, gave an interesting and thoughtprovoking talk about the 1892 Supreme Court case, Mutual Life Insurance Company v. Hillmon (with Lawrence connections) and the law of evidence. Keynote speaker Stephen Ramsay, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, gave the Friday lunch address, “What You Don’t Know You Don’t Know: Librarianship and the Robot Uprising.” Tours of KU highlights were enjoyed by many of the attendees before dining in downtown Lawrence restaurants on Friday evening. On Saturday the conference moved to the law school for breakfast, tours of the library, a few more programs, and a boxed lunch for travelers as they made their way home. Many librarians stopped to tell us how much they enjoyed the conference and how nice the library looks after the “Extreme Makeover.” It was a great conference! Pam Crawford, Head of Public Services
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A Day in the Life: Ashly LoBurgio Basgall One of the best things about faculty services research is that each day is different. The broad range of subjects that KU Law faculty members specialize in allows me to explore various areas of law, something I would not have been able to experience had I gone into practice. Some projects take longer than others to complete, but I always know that within a few days I will receive a new and different research request. As a member of the library staff, I also work at the reference desk, design the faculty publications display and assist with other library activities, such as our recent library conference. One thing is certain – I never get bored! In my first few months as the Wheat Law Library Faculty Services Senior Researcher, I have researched various areas of law, including bankruptcy law, employment law, corporate law, personal jurisdiction, property law, British law and international law. However, research requests are not limited to legal questions, but cover interdisciplinary topics, such as transparency in government. I have also explored administrative questions regarding curriculum development and state-specific bar exam requirements. Additionally, under my supervision, research assistants have researched education law, legal ethics, law practice management and appellate court mediation. While I take on the more complex research assignments, I help research assistants develop and employ strategies for tackling simpler research tasks. I am able to use my interdisciplinary and KU Law research background to brainstorm creative ideas for finding requested information. The collaborative environment in the law library also allows me to ask research advice from other library staff members, who may have pursued similar research questions in the past. In addition to casual collaborations, I also work with other Wheat Law Library staff members on various projects. I am a member of the library’s Strategic Planning Committee, I assist in developing and implementing the new Kansas Supreme Court Research Clinic and I regularly hear from other library staff about upcoming faculty research. For example, Law Library Associate Director, Chris Steadham and I are organizing a project for a faculty member regarding the Kansas Open Records Act and Kansas Open Meetings Act. My job entails much more than legal research! These past few months have been an incredible learning experience, as each day brings new opportunities and challenges. I look forward to my next project! Ashly LoBurgio Basgall, Faculty Services Senior Researcher
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NEWS & NOTES u Joyce McCray Pearson served as
the coordinator and moderator of a conference program, “The Real “Philadelphia” Story: From Cain v. Hyatt to 21st Century HIV/AIDS Discrimination Case Law” at the American Association of Law Libraries annual conference in Philadelphia, July 23-26. The program featured a noted scholar on HIV/AIDS issues and consultant on the movie “Philadelphia,” and the executive director of the AIDS Law Project of Philadelphia. They discussed the Cain case and the issues still faced by plaintiffs based on their HIV/AIDS status. u This fall, Blake Wilson taught Topics
in Advanced Legal Research. He will be teaching the same course in the spring. u Want to find out what new books
are available in the library? It’s easy to do online. Just visit: http://guides.law. ku.edu/newbooks. You can also contact Su Johnson at sujohns@ku.edu with questions about additions.
PUTTING THEIR HEADS TOGETHER: New staff member Ashly LoBurgio Basgall, faculty services senior researcher, consults with Chris Steadham, associate director.
Photo of the moment: A packed house at the Oread Hotel takes in a presentation during the 2011 MAALL/SWALL conference, hosted by the Wheat Law Library
As the largest and oldest law library in Kansas, the Wheat Law Library is an integral part of the School of Law. It serves the law school and university community in legal and interdisciplinary scholarly pursuits and provides attorneys, judges, and the general public with access to legal information. Key components of this mission include collecting and preserving Kansas, national, and international legal documents, teaching legal information literacy, and serving as a legal information gateway by providing access to sources beyond the scope of the physical collection.
Wheat Law Library Staff Ashly LoBurgio Basgall - Faculty Services Senior Researcher Pamela Crawford- Head of Public Services Katherine Greene - Automation & Acquisitions Librarian Su Johnson - Circulation Department Manager Joyce A. McCray Pearson - Director & Associate Professor Jeff Montgomery - Serials Department Manager Christopher Steadham - Associate Director Marsha Tiemann - Cataloging Manager Gale Troth - Accounts Manager W. Blake Wilson - Head of Instructional & Research Services CONTACT INFORMATION: Phone: 785/864-3025. Email: lawref@ku.edu.
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