Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Group Business Meeting
Sunday May 16, 2004, 9:00 - 10.15 am
CALL/ACBD Annual Meeting, 2004
Loews Le Concorde Hotel, Quebec City

Chair: Elizabeth Bruton, University of Western Ontario
Recorder:Marianne Welch, University of Western Ontario

Present:

Serena Ableson, Priestly Law Library, University of Victoria; Céline Amnotte, Université de Montréal; Margie Artmann, University of St Thomas, Minneapolis; Barb Burrows, University of Alberta; Anne Crocker, University of New Brunswick; John Davis, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University; Robin Dewe, LexisNexis Canada; Debbie Grey, University of Western Ontario; Richard Harkin, Université d'Ottawa; Mary Hemmings, University of Calgary; John Hobbins, McGill University Anna Holeton, University of British Columbia; Denis LeMay, Université Laval; Nathalie Léonard, Université d'Ottawa; Mark Lewis, Dalhousie University; Sarah Matheson, Carswell; Luc Meloche, LexisNexis Canada; James Milles, SUNY, Buffalo; Mary Mitchell, University of British Columbia; Janet Moss, University of New Brunswick; John Papadopoulos, University of Toronto; Bonnie Preece, Carswell; Lenore Rapkin, McGill University (Retired); Melinda Renner, University of New Brunswick; Louise Robertson, McGill University; John Sadler, University of Western Ontario; Michael Storozuk, University of Alberta; Ted Tjaden, University of Toronto; Elim Wong, University of British Columbia.

1. Approval of Minutes: Elizabeth Bruton reported that the minutes of the 2003 meeting, consisting of round table reports, had been posted to the CALL website and members could access them there.

2. Round-Table Reports: The meeting began with a series of round-table reports from the various law libraries represented.

University of Western Ontario.

Elizabeth Bruton reported:

  • The Faculty of Law is planning a building extension. The library will lose some space in the current periodical room but is gaining a rare book room/meeting room. The extension will consolidate Law school administrative offices in one location; at present, they are scattered across the entire law school.

  • The Faculty of Law is introducing a graduate (Master's) programme, to begin in September 2004.

  • Librarians at Western have certified. They will be represented by the UWO Faculty Association but will form a separate bargaining unit.

    University of New Brunswick.

    Melinda Renner reported:

  • The library's wireless pilot project was a huge success. In 2004/05, the library will acquire more laptops and the remainder of the law building will go wireless.

  • The G.V. La Forest papers from the Nova Scotia and Newfoundland/Labrador Boundary Arbitration are on deposit in the library. Plans are to digitize them and make them publicly accessible this year, subject to approval for digitization.

  • UNB's new Dean of Law, Phil Dryden, presently at UBC, will join UNB on August 1, 2004.

  • The second annual e-fair, held during the third week of school in September, was a rousing success with over 85% of law students attending, plus many faculty.

  • The Library intends to add a significant number of new site-licensed e-resources in 2004/05, making them accessible campus-wide via main UNB library system servers.

  • In early 2004/05, the library will receive a significant cash share of the "Indirect Costs of Research" portion of UNB's CFI grants. They hope to continue to receive similar shares in the future, though this is not certain.

  • Janet Moss has completed A Guide to KF Classification Modified for Use in Canadian Law Libraries. It is being published as CALL Working Paper No. 3.

  • The Library acquired and installed a new 3M Tattle Tape Security System.

  • Exploring digitizing of past law exams and making them accessible to authorized students and faculty via a secure proxy server, subject to faculty approvals.

    • Waiting to hear about status of grant from Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission to construct two new conference rooms from existing space in library.

    University of Alberta

    Barb Burrows reported:

  • Chat reference: the library provided service locally and also contributed to 24/7 coverage with a U.S. consortium. Under the agreement, Alberta provided coverage to U.S. institutions for 5 hours a week. Evident that it is difficult for US libraries to answer Canadian law questions.

  • E-Reference: the Library is taking part in a province-wide e-mail reference project.

  • Implementation of SIRSI: This began last year and the library is still working out the kinks. Also instituted authentication this spring.

  • Databases: LawSource is available campus wide.

  • Collections:

  • Document Delivery: This function was absorbed into the main library's ILL; Law gained .9 FTE.

  • Staffing: The library is losing

    Université Laval

    Denis LeMay reported:

  • The Library is participating in Virtual Reference Canada, a project of the National Library of Canada. This is a slow traffic service providing reference assistance to librarians, not to end users, and the questions that reach this service are very challenging. Participating libraries can decide what types of questions they will handle, how many questions a week they are willing to accept, as well as the time of the day or week when they will make themselves available. A member library can also choose to just submit questions, not answer them.

    University of Calgary

    Mary Hemmings reported:

    Has provided a full report to the CALL Academic Library Directors. Highlights of the past year include:

  • Don Sanders is away on sabbatical for the calendar year, 2004. His plans include developing a core list of legal materials in support of environmental and natural resources law.

  • Mary Hemmings is Acting Head during this time. Had been previously at the Law Library, 1989-1995 as Head of Technical Services.

  • The Law Faculty has implemented differential fees for students

  • The Law Faculty is preparing to unveil a five-year Strategic Plan. The Plan includes significant upgrades to the Law Library facilities which include new study space on the lower level and meeting rooms

  • The process of digitizing Alberta Gazettes continues, will cover 1904/05 to 1970. Also digitizing Alberta Hansard, 1970 onwards.

  • Acquisitions: the library has adopted YBP as an approval plan vendor for some monographic materials

  • Interlibrary loans: the Library is considering the Relais system for interlibrary loans. The main University Library is currently conducting a trial of the system. If successful, the Law Library will likely adopt the system too.

    University of Toronto

    Ted Tjaden reported:

  • Anne Rae will retire June 30, 2004, after 20 years as Law Librarian at Bora Laskin and in total nearly 35 years of service to Canadian law libraries. A hiring committee is in place to look for a new Law Librarian.

  • The Law Library continues to face budget cuts and this, together with the government-imposed tuition freeze, will force the library to retrench over the next few years.

  • A new combined J.D./M.I.S. degree has been approved, with Ted Tjaden as its director.

  • Staff changes: Marylin Raisch left to take up a position at Georgetown University Law Library. Her position is being left vacant pending appointment of a new Chief Law Librarian.

  • Ann Rae was successful in arguing for funding to support an ongoing .8 FTE position in Information Services, bringing the total complement to 14.4.

  • The Law Library has installed a new Honeywell door alarm system. Thefts of software and laptops have occurred in the staff area, suggesting professional thieves are at work. The use of video surveillance has been considered but cost remains an issue.

  • Law had a larger than usual enrolment this year: 596 undergraduates and 141 graduate students. John Papadopoulos, Information Services Librarian, Esmé Saulig, Access Services Coordinator, and Sooin Kim, Centre for Innovation Law and Policy Librarian, "hit the ground running" to serve the needs of the increased numbers.

  • Ted taught a three-credit course, Legal Research and Writing for International Law Students, for the second time, and Ted and John conducted "boot camp" training for students going to work in law firms.

  • The library's participation in the campus wireless Internet access program is very successful and the library will be upgrading its antennas for higher speeds and newer wireless standards. In addition, the library has implemented a "computer service agreement /waiver" it will be asking students to sign when they come to library staff to have their laptops configured for wireless access or to have viruses removed.

  • The Listing of Electronic Journals on the library website has been recreated as a database. Over the summer, the library intends to expand the listing to include its hardcopy subscriptions as well as titles available electronically.

  • The University of Toronto Libraries has approval for construction, in modules designed to house a million volumes each, of a long-term storage facility. The project is in the design-phase now with an aggressive timetable of completion by spring of 2005. The Facility will be built on U of T land in Downsview and will be available to all campus libraries. Law Library staff will likely begin planning this summer with a view to having some materials ready to send when the warehouse opens.

  • The Law Library is working with the law school's Information Committee on technology issues, including the possible implementation of courseware in law school teaching.

    Dalhousie University

    Mark Lewis reported:

  • Renovations at Dalhousie required shifting of the entire journal collection and British & Commonwealth collections. This is a massive undertaking. Anne Morrison and Linda Aiken did not come to CALL this year because they were needed at home to oversee the move.

  • The Novanet Consortium, of which Dalhousie is a part, put out a request for bids for a new catalogue.

  • The Law Library is getting a new web page, uniform with the central library's. Dalhousie will also be integrating it resources into a new university portal. The portal is currently progressing through the various stages of development.

  • Wireless access has been introduced

  • Labour conditions: a new contract is being negotiated.

    York University

    John Davis reported.

    Staff Changes:

  • Marianne Rogers returned from sabbatical in July 2003. Louise Tsang resigned in June 2003 to take up a position at Georgetown University Law Library. We hope to advertise for a new librarian soon after the Law Library's affirmative action plan has been completed and approved.

  • Michael McGuire worked with us as a part-time reference librarian from July 2002 until April 2003, when he moved back to British Columbia. We replaced him in August 2003 with Mary Aspioti, who has an M.L.I.S from McGill, and LL.B. degrees from Laval and U.W.O.

    New Dean, Budget Measures, and Strategic Planning

  • Peter Hogg completed his term as Dean in June 2003. He will retire at the end of a one-year sabbatical. Patrick Monahan is the new Dean.

  • For financial reasons, the law school laid off nine people in early 2004. Fortunately, none of those was in the Law Library.

  • The Law Library has embarked upon a strategic planning exercise. As part of that process, Roger Jacobs and Ann Rae will visit in late May 2004 to do an external review.

    Equipment, Building, and Systems

  • We are in the midst of replacing our public computers in the library. Osgoode's IT department will now assume responsibility for these, and is working on an appropriate configuration in conjunction with the York University Libraries' IT department, which formerly had responsibility for them.

  • A new computer classroom in the Law Library was completed in February 2004. It will primarily be used for sections of the first year legal research and writing course, the upper year Intensive LRW course taught by John Davis, and library and CALR training sessions.

  • There are plans to replace Informix with Oracle as the database management system component of the shared SIRSI integrated library system. The hope is to complete that before September.

  • The Law Library began using the RACER interlibrary loans system operated by the Ontario Council for University Libraries in October 2003. The York University Libraries are not using RACER yet, but plan to at some point.

  • We plan to redesign and update the Law Library website in summer 2004.

    McGill University

    John Hobbins reported:

  • He became the Law Library director at McGill, starting in September 2003, although he had held the position in an Acting capacity since January 2000.

  • A new website has been developed. The library chose to use the university template rather than using existing staff skills (quite limited) or outsourcing (expensive and updating problems).

  • The faculty has about 150 graduate students, mostly foreign students with limited exposure to North American law library resources. A compulsory information literacy course has been introduced for all incoming graduate students.

  • Climate control has been installed in the Rare Book Room.

  • Stephen Park left last year to take the director position at University of Ottawa. He was replaced by Louisa Piatti, who returned to the Law Library after ten years in the McLennan library.

  • Computer support to the Law Library had been provided by the Law Information Management Centre (LIMC), a joint faculty-library venture. This experiment has ended. Technical support is now provided centrally by the university and the library has taken over things, such as electronic reserves, previously handled by LIMC. The Faculty is also considering getting technical support from the University.

    University of British Columbia

    Mary Mitchell reported:

  • The Faculty has a new Dean.

  • Faculty retirements have led to the hiring of new faculty, with new research interests. This has implications for library collections.

  • New staff: Elim Wong and Anna Holeton have joined the reference staff.

  • Compact shelves have been installed. This will free up space, as lower use materials will be moved to storage area.

  • A professional experience student from the library school completed several mini-projects, including:
    a) creation of a webpage of English-language sites for Chinese law, http://www.library.ubc.ca/law/chineselaw.html
    b) comparison of UBC's print holdings of Chinese legal journals with those included in the commercial database "Chinese Academic Journals" in an effort to determine whether any electronic CAJ titles duplicate the current print journal subscriptions
    c) creation of a map of the locations of law graduates class composite photographs (so we can quickly answer reference questions)

    Diana M. Priestly Law Library, University of Victoria

    Serena Ableson reported:

    Staff:

  • The Law Librarian taught Advanced Legal Research and Writing, as well as a first year course, Law, Legislation & Policy. He also co-supervised the student journal Appeal, edited the 5th ed. of McEllven's Legal Research Handbook and attended the Rare Book School at University of Virginia. He finished his three-year involvement with the CLE Society's "Online Education for Lawyers" project and the website for the legal research project is now on the law library server.

  • Caron Rollins coordinated library instruction in first year LRW and team-taught ALRW. She also served as coxswain for the medal-winning law school Corporate Challenge rowing team.

  • Serena Ableson was the successful candidate for the Assistant Law Librarian position which she commenced in January. She continues to be liaison librarian for the Akitsiraq law programme, she attended the Northern Exposure to Leadership Institute as the CALL nominee, and she is involved in the WILU conference on library instruction to be held at UVic in June.

    Budget:

  • Priestly Law Library received an increase in its acquisitions budget for FY 2003/04, including a $30K increase to baseline funding for the new graduate programme which begins September 2004. The library will receive a further $50K in FY 2004/05 from the "Indirect Costs of Research" and increased tuition fees.

    Collections:

  • Emphasis has been on the acquisition of serial backruns, scholarly monographs and databases. Databases added this year were CHRR Online, InConference, AGIS plus text, and Kluwer Arbitration.

  • Work was done on a new draft general collections policy and collections manual. Caron Rollins prepared a policy on Islamic law. Work is continuing on reconverting all holdings.

    Instruction:

  • All three law librarians were involved in instructional support and/or teaching. There was also an increase in requests for course-based instruction. The increased teaching workload required the hiring of a sessional reference librarian, Liz Hansen.

    Facilities:

  • Funding was received and plans finalized to add graduate carrels, a small work room, and a small seminar room which will be designed for videoconferencing – to support the LLM/PhD programme starting in Fall 2004. Preliminary discussions are under way to construct a new server room. A joint faculty/library initiative is under way to review the law library's photograph collection.

    Computing and Systems:

  • Caron Rollins and Rich McCue redesigned the law library website. Serena Ableson created a website for instructors in the Akitsiraq programme in Nunavut.

  • University computing services made a commitment to upgrade the law library wireless network for next year.

  • A videoconferencing workstation with a dedicated ISDN line was set up in the Moot Court Room in addition to the portable videoconferencing equipment already owned by the library.

    3. Panel Session:

    Melinda Renner gave an update on the panel session hosted by the Academic Law Libraries SIG. It takes place on Monday May 17, 2004, at 4.30 pm and is entitled: Great Expectations: Are We Delivering What They Need? Speakers representing all backgrounds will examine whether law students are acquiring the research skills they need to work effectively in a law firm. Melinda encouraged members to attend this panel session.

    4. CALL 2005:

    Chair for the 2005 meeting: Eizabeth Bruton called for nominations and expressions of interest. Elizabeth was confirmed as chair for the 2005 meeting.

    Program suggestions for next year: Barb Burrows conveyed a suggestion originally proposed by Katherine Arbuckle, that next year's programme examine the experience libraries have had with Chat Reference. Presenters could include Tracy Thompson and Katherine Arbuckle.

    4.5. Publishers Reports:

    Bonnie Preece, Carswell: Libraries wanting campus-wide access to Westlaw/eCarswell were encouraged to speak directly with their academic representative. There are many options; IP-validated access to ICLL is available.

    The chair invited comments or questions from other publishers' representatives but there were no further comments.

    5. Report from CALL-D:

    John Davis presented the report from CALL-D. The meeting did not have a quorum: 5 out of 20 schools were represented at the meeting.

    Some of the issues discussed at the meeting:

    6. Academic Law Libraries SIG Dinner:

    Elizabeth Bruton reported that she was looking for a suitable restaurant for the SIG dinner, which would follow the panel session on Monday May 17. Information on the time and place would be posted once these arrangements had been made.

    Updated: November 8, 2004 by eb