osall newsletter feb 2015 · 2020-02-11 · page 3 of 10 osall newsletter, feb 2015 the fact that...

ORGANISASIE VAN SUID-AFRIKAANSE REGSBIBWEMIT APO YEZINCWADI ZOMTHETHO • MOGK

ASEMZANTSI • INHLANGANO YEMALAYIBRALI YNHLANGANO WA TILAYIBURARI TA NAWU TA AFRIK

MULAYO DZA AFURIKA

NEWSLETTERVol. 26 No. 1

February 2015

This newsletter is publishedfour times a year

OSALLP.O. Box 783779Sandton, 2146

http://www.osall.org.za

OSALL Committee members

Lydia Craemer(Chair)

Tel: (011) 292 6917Email: [email protected]

Charmaine Bertram(Vice-chair)

Tel: (011) 685 [email protected]

Marina Rubidge(Secretary)

Tel : (087) 311 [email protected]

Karabo Moleya(PR & Liaison)


Hesma van Tonder(Treasurer)


Mary Bruce(Listserv administrator)

Tel: (033) 345-1304Email: [email protected]

Danielle Botha(Website administrator)

Tel: (011) 535-8000Email: [email protected]

Amanda Franken(co-opted)


For all newsletter contributions:

Tanya Hubbard(Newsletter Editor)

Tel: (021) 405 1222Email:

[email protected]

Happy New Year!!! (For the moment we are going to forget it’s already Marchand think back on the joy and excitement of starting the New Year – keepingup with your New Year’s Resolutions?”)

The newsletter is a little light this first quarter; primarily because we’re stilltrying to find a replacement for Nico Ferreira’s “Publications Noted” column;again if any of you think you’d like to take a stab at it; just drop me a line.

It may be light but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a scintillating read…

I freely admit I laughed out loud (literally LOL’d) reading Gail Dendy’s article– I am sure many of us will be nodding along and remembering our “I think ithas a red cover” moments; by all means send those into me and we couldstart a regular column, wouldn’t that be fun!

Charmaine Bertram’s account of her trip to the American Association of LawLibraries 107

thAnnual Meeting & Conference in San Antonio; Texas had me

50 Shades of Green (I’m sorry; I had to do it). What a privilege to be able toattend these events; not only for the knowledge gained but also to spread theword regarding what we do here.

I am sure you will all find Shirley Gilmore’s article on how law librarians canassist academics with National Research Foundation applications incrediblyuseful; I know I did.

Lastly; I came across this link during my meander through the web one day -http://mentalfloss.com/article/55344/which-country-reads-most and do youknow we’re ranked 15

thin the world; I reckon that is something to be

particularly proud of and it ties in nicely with it being National LibraryWeek from 14 – 21 March.

Happy Reading.

Regards

Tanya

LIOTEKE • ORGANIZATION OF SOUTH AFRICAN LAW LIBRARIES • UMKHANDLU WASE NINGIZIMU AFRIKAATLO WA LAEBORARI TSA MOLAO WA AFRIKA BORWA • UMBUTHO WAMATHALA EENCWADI ZOMTHETHOEMTSETFO YENINGIZIMU NE-AFRIKA • MOKGATLO WA DI LAEBORARI TSA MOLAO TSA AFRIKA BORWA •A DZONGA • MOKGATLO WA MAKGOBAPUKU A MOLAO A AFRIKA BORWA • NDANGULO YA LAYIBURARI DZA• IHLANGANO YAMABULUNGELO WEENCWADI ZOMTHETHO YESEWULA AFRICA

http://mentalfloss.com/article/55344/which-country-reads-most

http://www.liasa.org.za/salw_events

http://www.liasa.org.za/salw_events

of 10 Osall Newsletter, Feb 2015

The Lot of the Librarian:Queries and Questions

by Gail Dendy

Osallites are used to dealing with odd or even impossiblequestions. I recall how, many years ago when I worked inthe Wits University Law Library, I was stationed (happilyor haplessly – you can decide) at the Help Desk, when incame a student. He rushed up to the Help Desk with thespeed of an Olympic sprinter.

‘Quick! Quick! I need a book for my nextassignment!’ he spluttered, clearly out of breath.

‘Certainly,’ I replied. ‘What book do you want?’

‘Oh …’ he looked somewhat bewildered. ‘It’ssomething to do with Procedure.’

‘Civil or Criminal?’ I asked.

‘What?’ he responded. ‘How should I know?’

‘Well,’ I answered, ‘if you don’t know, then it’s hardfor me to know what you want.’

He looked at me, and blinked. ‘Now you’ve goneand asked me all these questions and got me allpsyched out!’

‘Well, can you tell me anything about the book?’ Iasked.

‘Yes!’ he said emphatically. ‘I think it has a redcover.’

This is a true story, one that’s probably not unique in theannals of librarianship. Also true, by the way, is that whenstudents were asked to write the name of their subject onthe outer cover of their exam papers, many of themwould write: ‘Sivals’ or ‘Sevals’, not appearing to knowthat it was ‘Civil Procedure’ they were studying. But, tomisquote Alice in Wonderland, there’s no telling whencurious will turn into curiouser.

And so, one sunny day, one of my Partners asked if Icould handle a quick research query as a favour forsomeone who remained unidentified. The query dealtwith divorce law in Florida. No, not Florida on the WestRand, but Miami, Florida, USA. I needed to findsomething dealing with the nuts and bolts of divorce andcustody arrangements where one party was in Miami andthe other in Johannesburg. Ideally, I was looking for apractical DIY guide which could be used even by alayperson. Well, since our office doesn’t deal with Familylaw, I knew that we didn’t have anything handy. ‘Noproblem’, I thought, ‘let me see what’s in our GlobalWhite & Case catalogue.’ I did a search and came upwith a few titles, but nothing that was at all suitable. Wedo have an office in Miami and so I sent off an e-mail tomy colleague but, given the time difference, I knew that I

might very well not receive an answer before I left theoffice.

So what would any canny Osallite do? Ask the questionon the Listserv. Which I did. It was only a matter ofminutes before I received a phone call from anotherOsallite. ‘I’ve just read your query,’ she said, ‘and I thinkwe’re working on exactly the same query.’ And we were!One of her Partners had asked her to find precisely thesame information, also as a courtesy to a client, dealingwith a cross-jurisdictional divorce matter forFlorida/Johannesburg. Needless to say, neither of ourfirms had been told that the original requester was ‘doingthe rounds’ of various law firms, hoping to get free legalassistance.

What to do now? I did inform my requesting Partner, whoraised an eyebrow, but told me that if I could locateanything at all, that would be fine. I left the office for theday, and returned the next morning. On opening my e-mail, I found a response from my Miami colleague whohad found one or two references, but in resources gearedtoward the practitioner. She did have a book that couldbe useful, but it was only in hard copy and wasn’t themost recent edition. Did I want her to courier it across?When I gave our Partner the cost estimate of the courierservice, he blanched and said to hold off on this for themoment.

Enter the power of Friendship. It just so happens that Iknow someone – an expat – who lives in Miami, who is alawyer (something he turned to later in life, after obtaininga PhD from Oxford in International Relations) and whohas some knowledge about the law of Divorce in Florida.I hastily sent off an e-mail and waited. No response. Ilooked at the clock. Our time zones by now overlapped,so he should have received my query. Was he onholiday? Was he taking a break on the beach? I left theoffice fearing that I would have to admit defeat.

The next day – Hurrah! – A reply from my friend, givingsome useful references and handy advice, which I dulypassed on. Mission accomplished, as far as I could takethe query. I have no idea if the original requester wasable to use the information, did use the information, orhad any notion of how much time both I and my fellowOsallite had taken over the request. What I do know isthat Librarians are the sort of people who, like sleuths,follow every lead; like archaeologists, dig ever deeper;like athletes, take everything in their stride; and, like trueprofessionals, somehow, somewhere, come up with thegoods.

Beyond Boundaries – American Association of LawLibraries 107

thAnnual Meeting & Conference

San Antonio, Texasby Charmaine Bertram

Norton Rose Fulbright South Africa

On 9 July 2014 I boarded a plane for a 26 hour flight toSan Antonio, home of The Alamo. Unfortunately due to


the fact that San Antonio does not have an InternationalAirport, I was faced with a few very long flights and a fewstopovers in some very nice Airports. If it wasn’t for myFirms very efficient (and very patient) travel department Iwould probably have been a nervous wreck. The trip tothe conference was via London, Dallas and then SanAntonio. Coming back to RSA I flew via Houston,London and then home. Of course I was lucky enough tofly a few weeks after the implementation of the new“please switch on your electronic device” policy. Nowcan I just say it sounds like it is not really such a big dealbut combined with taking off your shoes having to switchon your phone, kindle and iPad and still carry the travelbag you elected to keep with you at the same time, notso much fun. But as long as I looked on it as a massiveadventure, nothing could upset my trip, except maybe thegroup of USA school children who happened to bebooked on all the same flights as I was. At some point Iwas very tempted to miss my next flight on purpose justto get away from them. There are only so many timesyou can listen to the question “So which movie are yougoing to watch next? I don’t know maybe Noah, nah toofull of drama for me”.

Enough about that, as you can imagine a trip like this isvery expensive and for me not possible without the verygenerous sponsorship of my firm, which is why I pickedthis particular conference to attend. Not only did thetheme grab my attention immediately, but we have anoffice right in the heart of San Antonio and our USA headoffice is in Houston Texas. My motivation for attendingcentred around the theme, and the fact that this tripwould make it possible for me to meet some of myAmerican colleagues in person, thus improving ourpersonal relationships which directly affect how well weall work together in future. One or two other smallersponsorships, including a financial contribution from Osallhelped with the motivation as well.

I flew in the day before the conference started, initially tohave some sightseeing time in San Antonio, and endedup being invited to join the Dallas and San Antoniocolleagues in the office for lunch and to then join up withthe rest of the USA colleagues for a Video Conferencemeeting. What an incredible experience, not only did Iget some insights into how and why they do things but Iwas also able to demo some of our RSA research toolsto them and tell them a bit about us. The evening wasspent at the house of my San Antonio colleague Kathy,together with her husband and my Dallas colleagueKevin. We then ended up at Kathy’s favourite restaurantfor dinner, and no it wasn’t Mexican or Texan but Italian.

On Saturday 12 July I attended my first officialConference event. The PLL Summit. PLL is the PrivateLaw Libraries chapter of AALL. As you can imagineAALL represents all Law Libraries and affiliates in the

USA and due to the size and diverse interests of such abig group it has become necessary for them to havedifferent chapters to focus on the specific needs of somegroups. If you are ever able to attend AALL, the PLLSummit is hands down the best part of the wholeconference. It is a day devoted to the needs of thePrivate Law Library. The speakers are on point andbased on the comments around me at the end of the day,each year is better than the previous year. The theme forthe day was The Voice of the Client, with client referringto external clients of the firm, not necessarily the internalusers of the library. The Keynote Address, “Re-engineering Law Firm Librarians” was delivered by SusanHackett, Founder, Legal Executive Leadership(www.legalexecutiveleadership.com), the content ofwhich is a whole article on its own. There were alsosome other speakers for the day all with the same themeand goal and at the end of the day the main take awaywas that the Librarian must be the bridge between teams,internal and external, business service and professional.If we don't put value on our services, the lawyer will notput a value on it either. Librarians tend to make what wedo look easy, which is why lawyers don't understandwhat we do and how we do it, and therefore don’t reallyunderstand the value that we bring to the table.

The evening was quite a busy one, what am I saying, allmy evenings was extremely busy and fun. I first met upwith my American Colleagues, including a few ones that Ihad not met in person before, for dinner at a restauranton what is called the Riverwalk.

It is a river that runs down the middle of the City withrestaurants, shops and hotels on both sides. There areregular riverboat tours on it as well as some smallergondola type boats to ferry passengers from one end tothe other, both of which is only recommended in the lateafternoon when it cools down. 36 degrees Celsius withhumidity of 89%, which is a lot higher than Durban, is notfun for someone from the dry Highveld of Gauteng. Thedinner was followed by a quick pop in to two suppliercocktail functions also on the Riverwalk.

http://www.legalexecutiveleadership.com/


On Sunday 13 July we had the official opening of theConference and the Keynote address by Andrew Keen.1274 attendees in the room and it was 100% divideddown the middle with attendees loving and hating theKeynote address. I will put my head on the block andsay I loved it. It was thought provoking and a wake-upcall which is exactly why I think he was chosen as thespeaker. His main question was how we are going torespond to the traditional and new boundaries that arebeing placed on our profession. Traditional referring tothe physical walls of our Libraries which is suddenlydisappearing. As well as the clear line between us theexperts and our incompetent audience, ie our users. Ithink you can see why some members of the audiencewere a bit resentful of the speaker; they did notparticularly like to be called elitist. But if you are reallyhonest, we do sometimes stand around and discuss ourusers with a bit of a disdainful attitude. Keen warns thatthere is a revolution happening and that if we don’treinvent our expertise and the way we deliver it, if wedon’t become more entrepreneurial and think outside thebox, then the revolution will see the end of ourprofession.

Next on my schedule was Deep Dive: Inventing the NewClassroom. It focused on new ways to present training tousers like trainees. The Flipped classroom and use ofsocial media and the tools that all students have at theirdisposal these days, ie smart phones, has becomeimperative to keep the attention of these new generationstudents. I myself implemented some of their techniquesin my training this year by trying out Poll Everywhere toask the trainees simple questions. The reaction wasphenomenal.

Next still on the Sunday schedule, (yup I was busy andgetting fit at the same time since the conference was splitover a conference centre bigger than the SandtonConvention centre and two additional hotels, with just 15minutes to get from one venue to the next) I attended theLibguide Guidance: Innovative Uses for Libguides. If youhave been on some of the Wits and UJ web pages thenyou have seen Libguides in action. It is an innovativeand easy way for a Library to present its own websitewith easy ways to deliver training manuals and linkpages. Definitely something to look into if you feel theneed. (http://springshare.com/libguides ).

Still on Sunday I then attended the OneLog(http://www.onelog.com/ ) user group meeting since wehad just implemented the product globally in our firmwith. It was fantastic to meet with the actual developersand to get to ask them questions over a glass of wine. Iwas also lucky enough to win a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4in the lucky draw and was ecstatic until I realised I nowhave one more electronic device that I needed to switchon when I pass through Airport security, Yipeeee!!!

The day was rounded off with a dash back to the Hotel tochange into a cocktail dress before attending the PrivateCocktail reception hosted by Bloomberg BNA to which Iwas lucky enough to receive an invite because myAmerican Colleagues were attending the function. Theview of San Antonio from the 21

stfloor of the Frost Bank

Tower building at sunset is something that cannot bedescribed and no camera could do it justice.

On Monday 14 July we started the day of with a moredetailed tour of the Exhibit Hall followed by a tour of theLibrary of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas whichis situated inside the grounds to the Alamo Plaza.

It is a private library that is not generally open to thepublic but researchers can make an appointment to visitthe Library. We were lucky enough to be given a tour bythe resident Librarian as well as Historian, and were evenallowed inside the vault.

One of the papers that I attended on Monday was“Finding Common Ground: Linking Law Student Learningwith Law Firm Research needs”. It was a lightbulbmoment to realise that we are not the only ones whostruggle with this problem. Again probably a paper all on

http://springshare.com/libguides

http://www.onelog.com/


its own. During the afternoon session I attended theAALL General Business Meeting and Members Forum,similar to our AGM. As a Foreign Representative I wasinvited to address the Meeting for two minutes to tellthem about OSALL and the SA Library community. Twominutes does not sound like a long time but it isincredibly long if you have to address 1200 delegateswith no voice. Yes I am afraid the fact that I left SA onthe coldest day of the year and landed in Dallas on thehottest day of the year after being in an airplane for 26hours gave me flu. Combine that with my tendency totalk a lot and by the Monday my voice was gone. But Ipersevered, drank a lot of Vitamin C and some other stuffthat is not even available in SA, and apparently theycould hear me. Whether they could understand me wasa different question. Although I was very happy to hearafterwards that my accent was apparently much easier tounderstand than that of our Australian colleagues. Theevening was rounded off by the International Attendeejoint Reception which ended at 19:00 and gave me theopportunity to get to bed a bit earlier than 23:30 for thefirst time since I left SA on 9 July. By this time my bodyand the time zone difference was in complete war witheach other.

Tuesday 15 July was again a busy one. Not only was itthe last day, and last opportunity to visit the exhibits butalso had a lot of interesting papers and sometimes it wasvery difficult to choose which to attend. I ended upattending a paper on E-books and its development,Copyright issues in the USA which concentrated a lot onthe Fair Use Google cases and the last paper for the daywas Librarians in the Digital Library which looked atamongst other things Competitive intelligence and itstrends.

On 16 July I spent the day working in our San Antoniooffice and had lunch with some of the Professional staffto get their take on how they see the role of the Library intheir day. It is truly an experience to see and experiencethe mutual respect and relationship that these membersof our Firm have with their Researchers. That evening Iflew to Houston for an early night in the Hyatt Hotel, rightin the heart of Downtown Houston. In SA slang thatwould be City Centre.

I spent the next two days in our Houston office, inmeetings with the Library staff there to do best practicecomparisons and learn as much from them as possible.It is great to report that we are all on the same level asfar as skills and ways of doing things are. It would benice if we could all have the 51

stfloor view that my

American colleagues have every day, and maybe I am abit envious of the gorgeous library that they have to workin everyday, but under no circumstances do I think thatwe are less just because we are smaller.

(the view from the 51st

floor)

(the library)

My trip was rounded off by a visit to and tour of the SouthTexas College of Law Library, complete with built in MootCourt rooms. And the weekend before I flew back homeI was treated to a theatre show and some incrediblemuseum and art gallery visits.

All in all it was an extremely full and busy 10 days. Wasit overwhelming – absolutely. Don’t think for any momentthat attending the AALL is anything like attending theSAOIM or even BIALL conference. If you are not anoutgoing person or if you do not have the benefit ofalready knowing or having contact with AmericanLibrarians like I was lucky enough to have, then it canvery easily be a very lonely conference. People arealways rushing to be able to get to the next venue ontime. Will it still be a very rewarding experience even ifyou find it lonely, absolutely yes. If there is any chanceof attending this conference just once in your life, it isdefinitely worth it, and I recommend that you go look onthe website at all the bursaries and sponsorshipopportunities to attend next year’s conferenceimmediately. AALL even provides you with guidancedocuments to help you with your motivations to youremployer on why you should attend. Which internationalconference will you be attending next? I am already


working on my next proposal, just don’t tell my boss. Ilike to surprise him with these things every few years

Law librarians can assist academicswith NRF applications

by Shirley Gilmore

The NRF (National Research Foundation) website states"NRF ratings are allocated based on a researcher’srecent research outputs and impact as perceived byinternational peer reviewers. The rating systemencourages researchers to publish high quality outputs inhigh impact journals/outlets." The word impact in thequote has been underlined because this is where ourwork, as law librarians, can play a most helpful role.There are a number of ways to measure this impact orcitation rates, for academic's publications.

It is important to point out that the Law academics inSouth Africa do not have much international exposurebecause so much of what they publish is really onlylocally applicable. Publications are generally in localjournals and are about South African legal issues.

However, we suggest that to start with, one uses the h-index methods used by other academic librarians. Theseone can obtain from Web of Science and Scopus. AnAuthor search in Web of Science creates the opportunityto "Create citation report" for that author. The reportincludes the h-index information. In Scopus an authorsearch will give an h-index and numbers of citations.Academics can use this information to satisfy the impactquestion in their application to NRF.In addition to this one can supply more information oncitations by searching more databases for the author'sname. In our library we would use the following:

Juta's law reports

LexisNexis Butterworths law reports

General searches in the online material in theJuta and LexisNexis databases

Sabinet's "SA ePublications" allows one tosearch for the author's name in the full- text ofthe articles.

Heinonline - full-text search

Westlaw - full-text search

any other full-text database that you haveavailable in your library.

It is important to search for all the forms of the name thatcould possibly be used, e.g. Frans Viljoen; F Viljoen; F HViljoen and so on.

These searches are time consuming, but often reveal alot of citation information which is very valuable to theacademic in his/her NRF application.

The searches produce lists of citation records that mustbe checked for duplications and so on. However, it is wellworth the effort and time put in.

The theme for this year’s National Library Week is:“Connect @ your library”


Sabinet’s Provincial NetLaw - The most comprehensiveSouth African Provincial Legislation product offering just

got better.

Sabinet is reintroducing the Provincial NetLaw product with its latest features.

CENTURION Pretoria, South Africa, 17 February 2015 — in 2010, Sabinet embarked on a project to create aProvincial Legislation product for our clients. After extensive research, sourcing and compilation ofdocumentation, Sabinet launched its Provincial Legislation product (Provincial NetLaw) in December 2012.

At the time of its launch, Provincial NetLaw consisted of all Acts and Ordinances in force and in the last quarterof 2014 this product was completed by adding all Regulations in terms of Acts and Ordinances currently still inforce, making it the most up-to-date, reliable and comprehensive collection of Provincial Legislation. For theenhancement of this product, Sabinet’s in-house digitisation team had to source, scan and OCR (opticalcharacter recognition) all of the Retrospective Provincial Gazettes. Additionally, the in-house systemsdevelopment team developed an internal system known as Resource Manager where all the metadata of eachdocument could be captured. With the use of Resource Manager the team was also able to create the originaldocument together with all its amendments as it was reflected at a specific point in time.

“Our agility at Sabinet allows us to easily adapt to our clients’ ever changing information needs. As a result, weare continuously setting the standard of information in the legal sector, and with this product we are once againdelivering products with the most comprehensive, up-to-date and accurate information.” Rosalind HattinghManaging Director, Sabinet commented. “We are proud of all the work and effort that went into this product andI am very excited to show it to our clients“, she added further.

Sabinet’s Provincial NetLaw product is the only one of its kind available on the market. It allows you to see theLegislation as it is applicable today but also as it was at a particular point throughout history. Every version of apiece of Legislation across the current 9 provinces is available as well as Legislation for older provinces before1994.

Provincial NetLaw has over time become one of Sabinet’s most successful products and today it is even better.It offers a variety of benefits to you and your organisation and keeps you abreast of new developments in SouthAfrican Legislation. This complete Legislation product now also includes all Regulations in terms of Acts andOrdinances currently still in force and should you need to, you can access an historical view of older versions ofall Acts, Ordinances and Regulations in force from 1910.

In the legal profession it is imperative that you are well informed and up to date with changes in Legislation. Bysubscribing to Sabinet’s Provincial NetLaw you will receive weekly newsletters as well as access to the What'sNew menu option for each province.

About SabinetWith a sound track record of 31 years, Sabinet has firmly established itself as a leader in facilitating access to awide spectrum of high quality and credible information sources. Over the course of the last three decades,Sabinet has managed to build a strong local and international reputation for providing Africa's information to theworld and the world's information to Africa.Sabinet's mission to support library technical process, promote resource sharing and enable access toinformation sources is underpinned by its dedication to the values of commitment, partnerships, understandingand support.

Sabinet's roots are in library support services, where it is recognised for providing central platforms forcollaboration and resource sharing among libraries. For more information, visit the Sabinet website.

For more information contactRefilwe MasemolaCorporate Marketing [email protected]

http://www.sabinet.co.za/

mailto:[email protected]


Please note:

Proof of payment must be submitted prior to publishing and or posting of adverts.

Adverts must be submitted in JPEG format.

osall newsletter feb 2015 · 2020-02-11 · page 3 of 10 osall newsletter, feb 2015 the fact that...

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