Cornell University

Law Library

Annual Report

July 2008-June 2009

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“Thanks for flagging this. I had heard about

[it] but had not seen it.”

~ Dean Stewart Schwab

"This is wonderful news! Thank you so much for

bringing this to fruition. I really am grateful.

Thank you, thank you."

~ Prof. Annelise Riles

“Thanks. I couldn‟t get by without you.”

~ Prof. John Blume

Joe Doherty, UCLA; Valerie Hans, Cornell; Matt Morrison, Cornell; and

Mirya Holman, Duke, at Empirical Legal Studies conference.

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FACULTY SERVICES

Liaisons

Faculty service is a top priority of the Law Library and is provided by each member of the staff.

Focused work with faculty comes from the library liaisons who work with tenured, tenure-track,

and visiting faculty on their information and research needs for scholarship and teaching.

Research Attorneys Jean Callihan, Amy Emerson, Charlie Finger, Julie Jones, Thomas Mills,

Matt Morrison, and Pat Court are the liaisons who work directly with faculty members. This

year they trained numerous research assistants, presented research workshops for classes,

located hard-to-find resources, provided current awareness updates, and conducted in-depth

research for faculty. The liaison librarians serve a role at Cornell Law School as an information

hub, bringing together the faculty member, research assistants, administrative assistants, and

library resources to collaborate toward the successful completion of faculty research projects.

Faculty Services Report

To document the wide variety of work that librarians do with faculty, Julie Jones and Pat Court

prepared a Faculty Services Report that detailed the assistance offered for scholarship, teaching,

and current awareness. Case studies of several faculty showed specific services provided by

liaison librarians, and a cost analysis showed the true benefits of these services. Increasingly

complex research projects are handled each year.

Faculty Services Brochure

To market the array of liaison services available to faculty, Julie Jones created an informative

brochure on Resources for Faculty Scholarship and Training, which was distributed at the start

of the academic year. With the tag line Resources for Your Success, the brochure

communicates succinctly the array of services offered by the library including liaisons, journal

routing, student research fellows, and the scholarship repository.

Empirical Legal Studies

Empirical Legal Studies (ELS) is a major field of inquiry at Cornell Law School. Matt

Morrison is the librarian who works most closely with faculty researching in that field. Law

librarians attended the ELS conference here in the fall, and Matt coordinated an exhibit on

faculty ELS publications for the conference.

Research Assistance The research attorneys continue to provide a high level of research service to faculty

members. Examples of projects we assisted with this year include gathering scores of cases to

help find a specific fact pattern; retrieving cases, articles, and books on corruption; retrieving

extensive court documents to develop a class project; training research assistants to update

several casebooks; tracking down difficult-to-find articles and facts from Chicago in the 1970s

for a book; consulting on research about small law firms; providing materials on lay jury

systems in East Asia; preparing documentation for Senate testimony; and creating a valid

methodology for finding jokes about juries for a scholarly paper.

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INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS

Rwanda Genocide Archive

Claire Germain, the Edward Cornell Law Librarian and Professor of Law, Research Attorney

Thomas Mills, and Reference Librarian at ILR Stuart Basefsky were invited as consultants to

the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UNICTR), Arusha, Tanzania, in June

2009, to provide advice on how to archive and preserve fourteen years of material from the

genocide trials. They also discussed ways to promote the legacy of the UNICTR. The Tribunal

had requested assistance based on the Law Library's experience with the Donovan Nuremberg

Trials archive. The Donovan collection itself was donated by Henry and Ellen Korn in 1998. It

is currently being digitized thanks to generous funding provided by the Lapkin Foundation. As

a result of this visit, judges and prosecutors from UNICTR will be invited to speak to Cornell

alumni, students, and faculty.

China

Professor Germain spoke at the China-U.S. Conference on Legal Information and Law

Libraries held in Beijing on May 28-30. Her topic was "Digitizing the World's Laws," and

included collaborative projects on worldwide access to law through the Internet, such as the

World Legal Information Institute, the Global Legal Information Network, and digitization of

print materials at Cornell. She also examined digital law issues such as long term access,

preservation, and authenticity of official sources.

Pat Court spoke at the forum on University Law Library and Legal Education Reform in the

Age of Globalization in Shanghai on June 3. Her topics were "Teaching Legal Research in U.S.

Law Schools" and "Traditional Services and Challenges in the Digital Age." She addressed

authentication of legal sources on the web and the wide array of courses and workshops taught

by Cornell law librarians. Deans and librarians from the top thirteen law schools in China came

together to discuss legal education reform. An important outcome of the meetings was the

signing of an agreement to institute sharing of legal materials between their law libraries for

enhanced scholarship and study by law faculty and law students.

Mongolia In December, the Law Library hosted visitors from the National University of Mongolia.

Professor Chimed Ganzorig, Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Sodnomtseren

Altantsetseg, Head of the Office for International Affairs, toured the library and learned about

the many resources and services provided to faculty and students. Pat Court led the impromptu

tour of the Law Library, and Claire Germain guided them through the Law School.

Caribbean International visitor Michael Theodore, Executive Secretariat of the Council of Legal Education

for the Caribbean, came to the library in November to see how Cornell has adapted its

information resources to the new dynamics of the information technology age. Claire Germain

and Julie Jones shared with him how they foresee library and information services changing in

the future, and he toured our facilities for an overview of the technology and services provided

to faculty and students.

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Summer Research Survey

“Jean Callihan was one of three nominees for

the Anne Lukingbeal Award. All our

congratulations to Jean for this honor which

shows great appreciation by the students and

recognizes her work for the law school in a

meaningful way. We are very proud of you.”

~ Prof. Claire Germain

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STUDENT SERVICES

Student Summer Research Survey The annual Student Summer Research Survey, and how it compares with previous years,

enables the librarians to see trends for planning curricula for classes and building the collection

with needed sources. Legal topics researched in summer jobs this year ran the gamut from

antitrust to workers’ compensation, with significant numbers of respondents working in

criminal law, employment, and securities. Only three respondents said that they did no research

for their job, while 40% spent more than half of their time researching. The numbers also show

that both online and print materials were used, with print materials being used to a larger extent

this summer. Interestingly, a very significant use of print sources was for primary law.

Research Consultations

Research Attorneys conducted over thirty Research Consultations this spring with law students

preparing for research in their summer jobs. These consultations are an important way for

students to receive personal instruction from a librarian on any topic they need. In customized

sessions of one hour, law students learn specifically what will help them succeed in their

summer positions. Sessions may focus on learning more about securities or immigration, areas

in which they will be working; or in-depth review of Lexis or Westlaw searching; or the special

resources and strategies for a certain state, federal circuit, or specialized court. This spring,

topics included Jordanian law, patent law, First Circuit, international sustainable development,

and New York criminal appeals.

LL.M. Orientation and Open House

The library presented seven and a half hours of research instruction to an enthusiastic group of

sixty-three LL.M. students during their first week on campus. Through lectures by Thomas

Mills and Pat Court, hands-on Reading Room sessions with librarians, and Lexis and Westlaw

trainings, students who had already earned a law degree in another country were introduced to

the basics of U.S. legal research sources and strategies. On August 25, the Library Open House

and Tour of the Rare Book Room drew a large crowd of curious graduate law students to see

our rare treasures and be welcomed by the library staff.

Current Awareness

The Library offers numerous ways for law students to keep current on our services and

information resources. Through The Primary Source, our monthly newsletter available on our

home page and targeted to students, they learn about research training sessions, new electronic

resources, new books in our collection, global outreach activities at the library, and more. We

invite them to subscribe to InSITE, our current awareness service and searchable database of

annotated law-related web sites. Research Consultations are available to law students year

round. Students may get an hour of a customized, one-on-one research training session with a

Research Attorney on any topic of their choice, often in preparation for a summer job or a

major seminar paper. And they can stay up-to-date on the latest books added to the collection

by subscribing to an RSS feed of our New Books list, posted twice each month with links to the

catalog and to amazon.com.

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“I really think legal research is one of the most

important courses at law school. As an LL.M. student,

there are a lot of subjects that we are not able to learn

at law school. I have to learn it myself in the near

future. With this legal-research weapon, it will be much

easier for me to get everything under control.”

~LL.M. Student Oct. 2008

In the event that you have not received any desperate

emails from alumni reinforcing the significance of your

advanced research class, I'll say that it has proven

absolutely invaluable. Israeli law openly incorporates all

kinds of foreign law into its jurisprudence, so I regularly

access the resources you presented to us in the volunteer

work I've been doing for the human rights association here.

~Law Alumna

“„How come the librarians are lawyers?‟ This was my initial thought when I was introduced to

the librarians at Cornell Law School during the LL.M. orientation; however, after taking U.S.

Legal Research for LL.M. Students, I learned that legal research in the U.S. is much more

complicated and substantial…jurisdiction… authority… research techniques… interpretive

skills…. Yes, I understand now why librarians need to have substantial background in law. I

hope I can use research and interpretive skills when I take a seminar course which requires

writing a 30 page paper next semester. Thank you so much for your lovely instruction!”

~LL.M Student

A great teacher with a helpful and

friendly attitude (and good sense of

humor to boot).

--1L Student

The professor is great at taking us

through the research process and

explaining carefully so we

understand. I feel very prepared to

research in the future.

--1L Student

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TEACHING LEGAL RESEARCH

Lawyering

The centerpiece of legal research instruction continues to be the required Lawyering course, a

two-semester class for all first year law students. Each of the Research Attorneys partners with

a Lawyering Program Faculty to teach the research portion of the course, which covers case

law, statutes, secondary sources, regulations, web research, Lexis, and Westlaw. In conjunction

with writing assignments, students learn research sources and strategies through lectures,

readings, computer labs, and hands-on exercises in the Reading Room with a Research

Attorney.

Advanced Legal Research Seminar

Upper level law students who select the Advanced Legal Research Seminar have the

opportunity to learn in-depth research in a legal field of their choice. This year, the instructors

were Matt Morrison, Julie Jones, and Charlie Finger. Topics ranged from advanced internet

searching and federal legislative history, to foreign law research and business research.

Specialty Research Courses With major programs at the law school focused on global legal studies, the course in

International and Foreign Law Research has been very popular. Students learn materials and

techniques that are often new and invaluable to them through the creative teaching of Thomas

Mills. The course in Advanced Legal Research in Business Law was taught by Jean Callihan,

experienced attorney and librarian on our professional staff, who guides students through the

many web resources of the business world. U.S. Legal Research for LL.M. Students was taught

in two sections by Pat Court and Matt Morrison. This one-credit course in the fall brings

students who need to do research in U.S. legal materials up to speed quickly.

Information Competency CUL continues its focus on information competency with special training for Cornell faculty

who incorporate its concepts into redesigned courses. Thomas Mills serves as co-chair of the

campus initiative. This year, he co-taught the course Culture, Law and Politics of the Internet

for undergraduates, a course designed on the information competency principles.

Reunion CLE Amy Emerson and Charlie Finger taught a well-received program for Continuing Legal

Education credit during Cornell Reunion in June. The very timely program was on “Weathering

the Stormy Economic Climate: Strategies for Conducting Online Legal Research Using Free

and Low Cost Sources.” Alumni attorneys had many probing questions on this invaluable topic.

“Great! Learned things I never knew.”

“Loved being back in the classroom and delighted I wasn‟t called on in class.”

“Gave me just what I was hoping for.”

“Very informative.”

“Marvelous.” ~ Alumni CLE Participants

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COLLECTIONS

Stewardship of the Collection From 2007 to 2009, annual print expenditures decreased by 5%. During the same time period,

however, digital expenditures increased by almost 50%. In 2009, digital expenditures were

close to 20% of acquisitions expenditures. The library now collects digital equivalents

whenever available. For critical areas, we continue to get both print and electronic, until the

issue of digital law authentication is resolved. This past year saw the cancellation of $115,000

of print materials after a thorough review of expensive serials. The library cancelled duplicate

copies of materials and switched subscriptions to their digital equivalent, as was done for

extensive materials from BNA. The library has been using duplicate collections to the

advantage of the law school. For example, in 2009 American law duplicate copies were

shipped to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Durham Statement: Open Access for Law Reviews

We worked closely with law library directors at Harvard, Yale, and Duke, among others, on a

statement calling for all law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely

instead on electronic publication coupled with a commitment to keep the electronic versions

available in open, stable, digital formats. This would result in major cost savings at both the

publishing and storage ends, while providing improved access to these journals.

Preservation of Trial Pamphlets One of our special print collections is 18th and 19th century trial materials. This year, three

bound volumes composed of 56 pamphlets underwent preservation treatment by the experts at

CUL, funded by the generous gift of Sidney Meisel. The pamphlets, which were torn, dog-

eared, dirty, and brittle, were disbound and resewn into individual pamphlets, then placed in

custom-built, archival-quality boxes.

Donovan Collection

One of the premier collections at Cornell Law

Library is the Donovan Collection of

Nuremberg trial transcripts and documents,

from the personal archives of General William

J. Donovan. Detailed indexing and searching

are available on the web for 70 volumes of this

special collection on Nazi war trials.

Cornell Legal Scholarship Repository

Our Repository provides open, global

access to the scholarship of Cornell

Law School faculty, students, and

visiting scholars.

I need to express my admiration how this

[Donovan] collection is organized, described

and made accessible. The many digitized

documents are already a treasure trove.

–Professor of Modern German History,

Emory University

Number of new articles added 44

Total number of items in repository 246

Total number of downloads this year 28,561

Total number of downloads for all items 135,855

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STAFF ACTIVITIES

Gary Bogart was honored for forty years of service to Cornell University.

Jean Callihan was elected to the Board of Directors for the Association of Law Libraries of Upstate New

York (ALLUNY) and was co-editor and columnist for the ALLUNY newsletter. She is also a member of the

CUL Business Information Group. Jean received a one-month leave to write her article on “Judicial Opinions

Citing the Web: Eroding the Common Law One URL at a Time?”

Carol Clune joined the staff as the new Evening Supervisor. She also provides technical and creative support

for print and online publications of the library.

Pat Court served as a People to People Citizen Ambassador on a two-week trip to China in the fall with the

legal research/law librarian delegation of ten U.S. librarians, for which she received a $500 continuing

education grant from AALL. She was named as consulting librarian at Shanghai Jiao Tong University Koguan

Law School by its law library director, Professor Xu Xiaobing. She continues to serve on the CUL Public

Services Executive Committee and is the PSEC liaison to the Instruction Committee.

Brian Eden retired from his position of Collections Manager after fifteen years at the Law Library. Faculty,

students, staff, and researchers will miss the expertise and dedicated support that Brian brought to his work

with the Bennett statute collection, rare books, digital projects, and at the Circulation Desk.

Amy Emerson joined the Law Library staff in November in a new Research Attorney position to extend the

research, liaison, and teaching work of the library. Amy is a local attorney specializing in real estate law, with

a graduate degree from Syracuse University School of Information Studies. She was elected to the CUL

Academic Assembly Steering Committee for 2009-10.

Charles Finger was elected Treasurer of the Association of Law Libraries of Upstate New York. He is also a

member of the CUL Collection Development Executive Committee.

Claire Germain co-taught the Introduction to French Law course with Professor Xavier Blanc Jouvan during

the Paris Summer Institute in July. In August, she spoke on digital preservation in Québec City at the meeting

of the International Federation of Library Associations, for which she serves as Secretary of the Section on

Law Libraries. Professor Germain attended a meeting of experts on worldwide access to foreign law at The

Hague in October, at the invitation of The Hague Conference on Private International Law, where the topic

was working toward free access to law worldwide. She taught a short course on U.S. and transnational legal

research at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in March 2009.

Kathy Hartman was honored for thirty years of service to Cornell University.

Gail Howser is the new law school Information Technology staff member dedicated to the library. She reports

through the IT Department and works on computer and technology issues with the library.

Julie Jones was promoted to Associate Librarian through the CUL peer-review process. She presented her

paper on “Librarian as Author,” winner of the LexisNexis Call for Papers, at the AALL Annual Meeting in

July, and published an article entitled “What Did You Say? Planning for Tomorrow’s PR with a

Communications Audit Today,” in AALL Spectrum. She is a contributing editor to the Law Librarian Blog and

has two articles ready for publication in legal information journals this year. Julie left Cornell in May for the

position of Associate Director for Public Services at the University of Connecticut Law Library.

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Patricia Jones retired from her position as Senior Accounts Assistant after twenty-seven years. Although her

work is behind the scenes, she was known for providing stellar service to faculty, acquiring books that were

needed instantly or virtually impossible to find. For the eighth consecutive year, she led the Law Library’s

annual Salvation Army “Adopt-a-Family” project.

Thomas Mills was promoted to Associate Librarian through the CUL peer-review process. He was a

presenter in November 2008 at the special conference on “The Law Librarian's Role in the Scholarly

Enterprise” at the University of South Carolina, where he spoke on the perspective of newer librarians. He

was on the PSEC Instruction Committee panel on teaching for-credit courses and made a presentation at the

Research and Outreach Committee forum on “Outreach beyond Cornell.” He continued to co-chair the Cornell

Undergraduate Information Competency Initiative, which hosted their second week-long workshop on

information literacy for Cornell faculty. Thomas also serves as the book reviews editor for International

Journal of Legal Information, for which he has tripled the number of reviews in each issue.

Nancy Moore retired from her position as Document Delivery Coordinator after twenty-five years at Cornell.

She has long been the face of the Law Library to many users because she could locate materials they needed at

the law school, across campus, and around the world. Most recently, she served on the CUL Access Services

Committee.

Matt Morrison was promoted to Associate Librarian through the CUL peer-review process. He served on the

AALL Awards Committee and completed his term as ALLUNY Treasurer. He also served on the CUL

Reference & Outreach Committee.

Jean Pajerek completed a two-year term as chair of the AALL Technical Services Special Interest Section’s

Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee, which includes service on the TS-SIS Education

Committee and the TS-SIS Executive Board, and taught in the AALL legal cataloging workshop in Portland.

She served on the CUL Technical Services WorldCat Local Implementation Team and on the CUL Promotion

to Librarian Review Committee.

Sasha Skenderija spoke on the “Authentication of Digital Law in the United States and Europe” at the

International Federation of Library Associations in Québec City in August 2008. He was cited in Stuart

Basefsky’s article “The End of Institutional Repositories and the Beginning of Social Academic Research

Service: An Enhanced Role For Libraries.” Sasha was invited to join the prestigious Bosnian-Herzegovinian

American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a full member and was appointed as the Chief Editor’s Advisor

and the Production and Methodology Coordinator for the emerging Bosnian-American Scientific

Bibliographical Lexicon. He also gave two readings of his newly translated book of poetry, Why the Dwarf

Had To Be Shot, which was translated into English by Cornell Linguistics Professor Wayles Browne.

Elizabeth Teskey chaired the CUL campaign for the United Way for the ninth year. She also continued to

serve as editor of the CUL staff newsletter, Kaleidoscope.

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Gifts & Endowments

Jack Clarke ’52 Comparative Law Book Fund Foreign, Comparative, & International Law

Sheppard A. Guryan ’67 Law Library Endowment History of Jurisprudence & American Legal Thought

Arthur H. Rosenbloom ’59 Law Library Endowment Israeli Law

Earl J. Bennett 1901 Collection Statutory Material

Judge Alfred J. Loew Memorial Fund Education & Other Acquisitions

Harry Bitner Research Fund Research Fellows

Lapkin Foundation Donovan Project

Sheppard A. Guryan ’67 Law Librarian’s Endowment

Courses Taught by Research Attorneys

Advanced Legal Research 3 credits

Lawyering, team taught with writing faculty 4 credits

U.S. Legal Research for LL.M. Students 1 credit

International and Foreign Legal Research 2 credits

Business Law Research 1 credit

Introduction to Legal Research and Writing 4 credits

Culture, Law, and Politics of the Internet 3 credits

Research Workshops in Seminar Courses

Immigration and Refugee Law

Legal Narratives

Contemporary American Jury

Corporate Governance

Feminist Jurisprudence

Researching Indian Law for Human Rights Clinic

Principles of American Legal Writing

Law and Social Change

Public Services

Reference questions answered 8,680

Materials checked out 21,791

1-hour instruction sessions 231

Tours conducted 13

Items borrowed for faculty & students 1,328

Items loaned to other libraries 1,782

Acquisitions & Cataloging

Titles cataloged 6,677

Volumes added 8,164

Total print serial titles 6,191

Total print volumes 562,266

Total volumes & volume equivalents 762,606