Yale Law School

lillian goldman law libraryin memory of Sol Goldman

biennial report 2007–2009

design Yale YPPSphotography Robert Lisak, William K. Sacco, Harold Shapiro

It’s my pleasure to present the biennial report of the Lillian Gold-man Law Library covering the two year period 2007-2009. As with our earlier annual reports covering the previous two years, this docu-ment is intended to present an overview of the library’s major activi-ties and provide a point of comparison for the future. This combined two-year report is meant to bring the series current and will be fol-lowed by regular annual reports beginning in 2010.

As we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st Century and are well into the digital age, those of us involved in the daily life of the Yale Law Library have no doubt about its relevance in fulfill-ing the central mission of the Law School. Our library has played a central role at the Yale Law School from the time of its founding, and this continues to be the case now, where our lovely renovated space provides a place for students to conduct independent study and research, access the ever more complex web of legal informa-tion resources in a wide array of digital and print formats and benefit from expert guidance of law librarian specialists on how to most ef-fectively devise a research plan and mine our resources.

Library use by Yale law students continues to increase: a survey of students last year indicates students spend more time in the library than the classroom, and by all measures, the use of the Yale Law Library continues to increase every year. The library provides what architects often refer to as a third place, separate and distinct in na-ture from the home or classroom: it’s a social place similar to a café or a lounge, but one that speaks the language of independent study and research. Enter the Yale Law Library on any evening, and you are likely to find the Reading Room full with students, surrounded by mounds of books and computer print-outs, working away on a note-book computer.

While challenged by current budget realities, we are committed to maintaining the historically strong research collections of the library, including its impressive rare book and foreign and interna-tional collections. At the same time, we pride ourselves in providing

our faculty and students with access to the richest array of online legal information possible, supported by cutting edge technologies and the help of expert librarians.

In order to better showcase our extensive collection of rare books, we opened a new rare book exhibit area outside the Paskus-Dan-ziger Rare Book Room, in the summer of 2008. The two large exhibit cases in this area are used for series of themed exhibits, such as the inaugural exhibit in 2008: The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library, in honor of former dean Guido Calabresi’s 50th class reunion. These exhibits have been popular with library users, but they can also be viewed online via the library’s Rare Book blog, linked from the library’s website at http://blogs.law.yale.edu/blogs/rarebooks/ .

In the current era, it’s no longer necessary to enter the library physi-cal space to access many of its information resources. An ever grow-ing portion of our collection is now available in digital formats, which can be accessed by members of the Yale community from a computer on their desktops. But this shift has made research more complex, as print resources are dropped in favor of an ever expand-ing array of online sources, each with a different user interface. This more complex information world is counterintuitive to those ac-customed to limiting their research to one box searching, such as Google, and it has led our librarians to seize opportunities for offer-ing effective legal research instruction and building information dis-covery tools and guides supporting the best use of our rich resources.

In sum, the digital era is an exciting period for the Yale Law Library, and we are especially enthusiastic about the new challenges and opportunities the ever evolving information landscape allows us for improving our collections and services. We hope some of this excite-ment is conveyed in this report.

S. Blair Kauffman Law Librarian and Professor of Law

message from the director

technical services: adaptability and innovation

Despite weathering a year of significant budget and staffing reductions, technical services has demonstrated an admirable resiliency. As leaders in the field, the staff collaborated in the development and testing of information services systems to improve research processes and was heavily involved in the reprioritizing of the library’s collection goals.

The serials department began planning the Library’s transition from print journals to online resources, in response to increased user preference for the convenience of electronic research and also the need to trim expenses. The serials team cancelled 210 print titles in the 2008 fiscal year and 471 print titles in 2009. Spanning two fiscal years, the serials unit checked in numerous items, including 10,095 bound volumes, 26,362 volume equivalents in microfilm and microfiche formats. A total of 11,292 volumes were prepared for commercial binding.

In 2008, the cataloging team completed cataloging canon law materials acquired from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York in 2006 by Yale Law Library, where it is on permanent loan from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. The cataloging team cataloged 7096 other print titles and purchased records for 12,667 electronic titles available in a variety of collections and aggregator services. These records were downloaded into MORRIS and include hyperlinks to the electronic resource. In 2009, the cataloging team began work on the German law collection acquired from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. The project was suspended after cataloging 207 titles due to budget constraints resulting from the shrinking value of the University’s endowment. The plan is to finish cataloging the collection when the financial situation improves. During the fiscal years 2007-2009, the cataloging team cataloged 14,215 other print titles and in FY09 purchased 2454 shelf ready titles. The Morris catalog now contains records for 32,000 electronic titles available in a variety of collections and aggregator services including Lexis and Westlaw. These records were downloaded into MORRIS and include hyperlinks to the electronic resource.

In 2008, the acquisitions team continued the effective use of technology to streamline the purchase of 7476 new book titles in print, and 271 DVD titles with 491 discs. In FY09, the library acquired 11,046 book titles in print and also acquired 146 DVD titles with 316 discs. The collection grew by a little over 21,000 print volumes.

We were once again invited by our library system vendor, Innovative Interfaces, to beta test the newest release of the software running behind MORRIS. Some of the enhancements include the option to maintain reading history

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and save a list of titles for future reading. Yale affiliates with network IDs are now able to rate books or add their book reviews to MORRIS. Development of a new faceted interface called Encore continued as version 2.0 launched publicly. Encore now features a new search tool called Research Pro. With this tool, patrons may send their keyword search to several selected databases simultaneously without rekeying their Encore search.

University mandated cutbacks in personnel at the end of the 2009 fiscal year were felt heavily in technical services and have warranted a reassessment of priorities and a staffing reorganization. Three clerical positions, two in cataloging and two in serials as well as one part time professional position, were identified for elimination.

Technical services librarians remained professionally engaged serving on a number of Law Library and University Library committees, attending continuing education programs and were active nationally in professional organizations.

Mary Jane Kelsey prepared a presentation for Innovative Users Group in Washington D.C. in Spring 2008 (delivered by Anne Myers). She also delivered two presentations at the 2008 AALL conference in Portland, Oregon: “Encore, Enterprise, Primo and WorldCat Local: Explore the Evolving Discovery Tools for Your Catalog” and “Energize Your Catalog! Get Electronic Titles Out of Their Silos and into Your OPAC.”

Jo-Anne Giammattei served on the University Libraries Collection Development Council.

Anne Myers completed a term on the AALL Executive Board and served as a member of the AALL Continuing Professional Education Committee.

Susan Karpuk was a reader for the Descriptive Cataloging for Rare Materials (Serials) DCRM(S) commenting on the draft before its publication in 2008. Susan has also been a member of AALL Technical Services Interest Section’s Descriptive Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group since 2007.

Michelle Sullivan served on AALL’s Technical Services Special Interest Section on Cataloging and Classification as well as the Descriptive Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group.

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the evolving collection: new challenges and opportunities

Recent budgetary reductions have opened up opportunities to reassess the library’s collecting goals. While the demand for electronic collections has grown exponentially, the library is still committed to the acquisition and maintenance of a first rate collection of scholarly monographs and foreign and legal history materials in print to support the research interests of our faculty and students.

In the area of print and online library collections, the primary challenge in FY 08 and FY 09 was to continue to serve the ambitious research needs of Yale Law School faculty and students in the face of mounting budgetary restrictions. Our Associate Librarian for Collections and Access Services, Fred Shapiro, devoted considerable time in identifying cancellations that made sense in terms of cost-savings while preserving the research mission of our library. He consulted extensively with reference librarians at our library, Yale Law School faculty, law students from foreign countries who shared their knowledge of legal publications from their home countries, and librarians from other libraries. Our Serials Librarian, Anne Myers, was indispensable to the cancellation process. Her considerable knowledge and skills enabled us to implement cuts in a way that was quick, efficient, and responsive to the intricacies of faculty and student needs.

Fortunately, our library has been preparing for a more restrictive budgetary climate for several years and was well positioned to respond efficiently and with minimum impact on our patrons. Our principal approach was to cut subscriptions to underutilized print serials, such as looseleaf services, journals, reporters, and treatises. In most cases we would still have access to the same publications in electronic formats. We hope that, by greatly reducing print serials, we have preserved our ability to ambitiously collect monographs, foreign legal publications, legal history materials, and electronic resources. In these areas we are among the handful of unique and rich law library collections, and will continue to strive to maintain that status.

We continue to aspire to have one of the best collections of legal electronic resources from around the world. New electronic subscriptions initiated in 2007-2009 included: Audio Case Files, CCH Tax Network, Hague Academy Collected Courses Online, Halsbury’s Laws Direct, HeinOnline Israel Law Reports, HeinOnline National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, HeinOnline Selden Society Publications and the History of Early English Law, HeinOnline Tax and Economic Reform in the United States, HeinOnline United Nations Law Collection, Human Rights Documents Online, International Investment Claims, Justis International Law Reports, Justis State Trials, and Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law.

The dollar was stronger for much of the 2008-2009 year, and there were funds available to acquire virtually all the books suitable for selection in the foreign and international law area in English. Many monographs were ordered in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. In addition, there was a major acquisition of over

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100 Croatian law books, Croatia being one of Yale’s VCR’s (vigorous collecting responsibilities in the parlance of the Northeast Foreign Law Librarians Cooperative Group NEFLLCG). Yale hosted the spring NEFLLCG meeting in May attended by librarians from Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell. Current issues and challenges facing selection and collecting in the area of foreign and international law were discussed. Dan Wade, Associate Law Librarian for Foreign and International Law, chaired the Foreign Law Selectors Interest Group of the American Association of Law Libraries in 2008-2009. He also assisted Professor Brilmayer in teaching Contemporary Legal Issues in Africa and participated in Research Methods in International Law.

Under the leadership of our Acquisitions Librarian, Jo-Anne Giammattei, we have made great strides in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our collection development and related acquisitions processes. Selectors now use Yankee Book Peddler’s online GOBI system extensively for English-language book selections. In the foreign-law area, we use the OttoEd system from Harrassowitz (German-language countries) and electronic slips from Casalini (Italy, France, and Spain), and we are exploring new relationships with other vendors, such as EastView for some Slavic-language countries. These new tools have allowed us coordinate collection development more closely and streamline workflow in many ways. The efficacy and sophistication of our collecting have also improved because our Foreign and International Law Librarian, Teresa Miguel, and Evelyn Ma, our Asia Law Specialist, have connected with foreign vendors important to their areas of selection.

Fred Shapiro, our prolific Associate Librarian for Collections and Access, published numerous articles about quotations, including a regular column in the Yale Alumni Magazine and an “On Language” column in The New York Times Magazine. His book, The Yale Book of Quotations, was reviewed or covered in many media such as the New Yorker and the Today Show, and it received a number of awards. The Wall Street Journal named it the number two most essential reference book. He is the Contributing Editor to Black’s Law Dictionary responsible for adding historical information to their entries, and he received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for research, using online databases, into the origins of English-language words and phrases. In addition, he is the consultant to the Gale company for the Making of Modern Law digital legal history projects and the consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary on legal terms.

library publicationsAfter several years of preparation, Yale University Press and the Yale Law Library have revived the long-dormant Yale Law Library publication series. In its new incarnation the series has the name Yale Law Library Series in Legal History and Reference. As noted in the last annual report, the plan for this series is “to publish about two books per year on legal history or legal reference. We hope that the series will further scholarship in legal history and legal reference, enhance ties between our library and the research of Yale Law School faculty, exploit the riches of the Law Library collection, and promote the visibility of our library and its collection in the law library profession and among legal scholars.”

Fred Shapiro, our Associate Librarian for Collections and Access Services, is the series editor. The first book in the series was published in 2007, Yale Law School professor James Q. Whitman’s acclaimed work, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial. The second book, published in 2009, was The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law, edited by Roger K. Newman. The latter is the first full-fledged scholarly biographical dictionary of law.

We continued to work with the Gale Company to digitize our books in the Making of Modern Law product, probably the most ambitious digital legal history project in the world. In 2009, we agreed to participate in the fourth module of Making of Modern Law and began planning for it. This fourth module will be largely drawn from the Yale Law Library collection, and our library is playing the lead role in conceiving, planning, and implementing the module. Legal history researchers, as well as those in other areas of history, will greatly benefit from the online availability of the materials.

Another important library initiative is the creation of a Digital Commons open-access online repository of Yale Law School faculty, student, and other publications. If successful, this can serve as an institutional repository of the Yale Law School, capturing the intellectual output of the Law School and preserving its institutional history. In 2009, we were at the point of setting up a repository using the Digital Commons platform of Berkeley Electronic Press. There were 159 papers in the initial site, and our next step is to work with faculty to solicit many more current and future papers from them.

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rare books and special collections: showcasing the library’s illustrious

collections to the yale community and beyond

Our rare books area now has state of the art rare book exhibition showcases, to display the library’s illustrious collections. Exhibits can also be enjoyed around the world, courtesy of the rare books blog which premiered in April 2008.

The Pakus-Danziger Rare book room continues to serve as an integral part of the intellectual life in the Yale Law School and beyond. A new, state-of-the-art rare book exhibition gallery was launched in the Rare Book Collection, under the energetic and imaginative management of Rare Books Librarian Mike Widener. The two 8-foot-wide exhibit cases enable the library to showcase its rare books in a safe and secure environment.

The inaugural exhibit, “The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library,” highlighted the library’s outstanding collection of early Italian statutes. The exhibit opened during the October 2008 Alumni Weekend and was dedicated to the Hon. Guido Calabresi (Law ’58), Dean Emeritus. “Landmarks in Law Reporting” followed in March 2009, coinciding with Professor John Langbein’s “History of the Common Law” course. Items on display included a medieval Year Book manuscript, first editions of the case reports of Coke and Plowden, and the first published American case reports.

Both exhibits can be enjoyed from computers around the world thanks to the Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog, which launched in April 2008. Postings on the blog included acquisitions, gifts, events, interesting discoveries, links to legal history resources, bibliographies, and images and descriptive text from the exhibits.

The Rare Book Collection supported teaching in several classes in the Law School and elsewhere on campus. The Paskus-Danziger Rare Book Reading Room served as the classroom for Professor Anders Winroth’s graduate history seminar in “Medieval Law” in Fall 2007. Professor James Whitman invited Rare Book Librarian Mike Widener to present several early canon law works in his “Western Legal Traditions” class, Spring 2008. Widener also taught sessions on biographical and archival research in Professor Morris Cohen’s seminar on “Research Methods in American Legal History,” in Spring 2008 and Spring 2009. Entering first-year law students and graduate students received a brief introduction to the Rare Book Collection in their Fall 2008 library orientation tours.

The Rare Book Librarian prepared special displays and presentations for several group tours: about twenty staff from Manuscripts & Archives, Sterling Memorial Library (Aug. 2007); new interns at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (August 2008); about twenty Latin American law students in the Linkages program (February 2009); and twenty eight students from the Scuola S. Anna, Pisa (March 2009). In addition, Widener gave a presentation entitled “Race on the Stand: African American History in the Law Library’s American Trials Collection” in the Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall on February 20, 2008, as part of Black History Month activities.

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Mike Widener published Part 1 of “Remembering Roy Mersky” in Legal Miscellanea, the newsletter of the Jacob Burns Law Library, George Washington University School of Law. He was named to the Board of Advisers for the Green Bag Almanac & Reader, an annual compilation of outstanding legal writing. He was appointed to the Special Collections Committee of the Yale University Libraries.

The Rare Book Collection hosted two unpaid internships. Sabrina Sondhi, the new Special Collections Librarian at Columbia Law School Library, completed a three-week internship in February 2009. Benjamin Yousey-Hindes, a Ph.D. candidate in medieval history from Stanford University, co-curated the “Early Italian City Statutes” exhibit.

There were several significant gifts to the Rare Book Collection. Professor Morris Cohen donated his unique and outstanding collection of over 200 law-related children’s books spanning the 18th to 21st centuries. The library is actively collecting additional titles for the Juvenile Jurisprudence Collection. Charles J. Tanenbaum (Law ’37) donated a significant letter from Chief Justice John Marshall. Written in April 1835, not long before he died. Marshall describes a meeting with George Washington that led to his career in public service. Beverly Manne of Houston, Texas, donated Thomas Mortimer’s Every Man His Own Broker (London, 1765) in honor of her brother-in-law Henry Manne (LL.M. ’53, S.J.D. ’66), one of the founders of the Law & Economics movement. Mordecai Rosenfeld (Law ’54) gave a fine copy of the 1830 London edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries. Before his death in May 2009 at the age of 102, the late Harold I. Boucher of San Francisco funded the acquisition of Essex’s Innocency and Honour Vindicated (London, 1690) and John Brydall’s Jura Coronae: His Majesties Royal Rights and Prerogatives Asserted (London, 1680).

There were two major acquisitions from the library of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. A collection of early German law (826 volumes) was acquired in September 2007, made possible with the generous support of the Oscar M. Reubhausen Fund. A collection of foreign law (163 titles) arrived in October 2008.

The Rare Book Collection continued to actively acquire titles for its William Blackstone Collection (already the most comprehensive in the world), its collection of early Italian statutes (possibly the largest outside of Italy), and its collections of American trials and law books with illustrations. Other acquisitions strengthened its holdings in Anglo-American common law.

manuscripts and archivesDuring the 2007-2009 fiscal years, the library’s Archivist Barbara Heck completed revisions to the finding aid for the White Brothers/Clark, Hall & Peck Collection. The collection contains over 1200 linear feet of materials, primarily consisting of title examination documents, surveys, and real estate closing documents. White Brothers and Clark, Hall & Peck were two of the largest New Haven law firms from the mid 1850s to the 1990s and their records document over a century of development of real property in New Haven and New Haven County. In addition to continuing reference by surveyors and attorneys for title research, the collection is also regularly used by two Yale architecture classes to study the evolution of different New Haven neighborhoods during the twentieth century.

Manuscripts and Archives also acquired 350 bound volumes of legal materials from New York attorney and Yale alumnus Peter Megargee Brown. The volumes primarily document his professional practice at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and his subsequent writings and speeches relating to legal ethics.

Nancy Lyon, Archivist at the Sterling Library and Barbara Heck traveled to Philadelphia to appraise and acquire the personal papers of Judge Edward R. Becker. Becker, a 1954 YLS graduate, was best known for his long and dedicated service on the bench, first as a United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (1970-1982), then as a judge on the United States Courts of Appeals for the Third Circuit until his death in 2006. His papers document his lifelong involvement in the civic affairs of his hometown of Philadelphia as well as his most well-known opinions about the reliability of scientific evidence, class action suits, and complex litigation.

Our archivist also completed a preliminary inventory of the 135 boxes of materials donated by the family of Lawrence Z. Freedman. Freedman’s primary appointment in the Psychiatry Department at Yale Medical School was complemented by his work in the legal field with Harold Lasswell. Freedman and Lasswell collaborated extensively in studying the intersections of law and psychiatry in the 1950s. Much of the collection pertains to Lasswell’s subsequent work at the University of Chicago where he became an expert in the personality development of political assassins and serial killers.

Another notable acquisition consisted of 30 boxes of materials by donation from the family of Stanton Wheeler. Wheeler taught at Yale Law School from 1968 until his death in 2007, primarily in the fields of sociology and the law. In addition to his classes at Yale Law School, Wheeler’s papers document his work as a sociologist with the Russell Sage Foundation, and his membership and chairmanship of the Yale Faculty Committee on Athletics.

Due to ongoing budgetary constraints, the library regrettably has to suspend its manuscript and archives program. We hope to reinstate this invaluable service in the near future when the budget situation improves.

access services: the library’s hub of activity

The increase in and accessibility of electronic materials has not diminished the level of circulation activity. Our students and faculty continue to request and check out print materials. The library as a whole remains probably the most preferred and comfortable space in the law school for study and group interaction.

Final paragraph

Access Services, ably supervised by Information Access Manager Martha Clark, continues to be a center of activity. Even in this era of electronic access to materials, access services staff spend significant time at the circulation desk assisting patrons with charging, renewing and recalling books and answering a variety of questions. Materials are circulated from the library’s collection, and also from other Yale campus libraries through the intra-campus delivery service Eli Express; Interlibrary Loan; and ShareLaw, which is a consortium of law libraries used for quick turnaround lending and borrowing. Due to budgetary constraints and low borrowing statistics, the library ceased to participate in the interlibrary loan portion of ShareLaw as of May 2009. In FY 08, the library loaned 285 items and borrowed 67 while in FY 2009 the library loaned 243 items and borrowed 87. Although we have discontinued the interlibrary loan portion of ShareLaw, the library has elected to continue with ShareLaw’s expanded union catalog.

Eli Express, our intra-campus delivery service, has increased by almost 1,000 transactions during the most recent fiscal year. These figures represent the number of books from other Yale campus libraries delivered to the Law Library and checked out to patrons from the Law Library Circulation Desk.

Also, effective March 2009, the Law Library is now able to lend and deliver Law Library books to other libraries on the Yale campus. The service is gaining in momentum and we anticipate that it will pick up significantly at the start of school year in September 2009. Interlibrary Loan lending and borrowing have both increased in the last two years.

Our statistics for circulation of Law Library books has decreased only slightly during the past two years despite the increase of electronic information. Our DVD collection and our New Books Collection remain very popular parts of the Law Library collection. About 10% of all circulations during the 2008-2009 fiscal year were for DVD’s.

Access Services actively collaborated with other departments in working toward the

“ Yale Law School’s tremendous movie collection has made Blockbuster a thing of the past (well, at least a trivial thing until graduation). It’s one of the many under-discussed treasures of Yale Law School. Located smack in the middle of the Federal Practice Digest Series and Almanacs, it offers a wide variety of film and television shows available for free to all Yale Law Students.”

K.S., 3L

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The following are comparative circulation figures for this year as compared to the last two years:

2005–06 academic year> 29,499 checkouts > 89,070 total transactions

2006–07 academic year> 33,770 checkouts > 100,137 total transactions

2007–08 academic year> 32,327 checkouts > 96,793 total transactions

2008–09 academic year> 31,397 checkouts > 91,449 total transactions

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goal of having a readily accessible collection that responds to the needs of our users. Approximately 15,000 items per year have been processed for storage at the environmentally controlled and secure Library Shelving Facility. Currently about 266,000 bound volumes, 1067 archival materials and over 6,000 microfilm documents are housed in the facility. This figure represents titles that have been cancelled due to our serials cancellation initiative as well as titles that are no longer in heavy use. As a result, space in the stacks has been freed up for incoming and high use materials which are immediately accessible to our users. A comprehensive and thorough inventory of two levels of stacks was completed in spring 2009. This process ensures the accuracy of information in the online catalog and the availability of library materials to our users.

Our Collections and Access Coordinator, Cesar Zapata is playing an important role in managing the library’s online repository for working papers and other content generated by Yale Law School faculty and students. As chair of our Task Force on the Digital Repository, he has also, worked on developing the design of the repository and preparing for its launch in Fall 2009.

Our librarians in access services have been professionally engaged both locally and nationally. Martha Clark serves on the University Library’s Document Delivery Coordinating Committee and the Managerial Performance Appraisal Committee. In addition she is a member of the Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library (Project AMEEL) which is a web-based portal for the study of the Middle East. Her involvement relates to Interlibrary Loan implications for this growing digital collection.

Cesar Zapata served as chair of the Latino Caucus of the American Association of Law Libraries and was a member of AALL’s Diversity Committee. He was also chair of the Library Disability Services Committee and a member of the Law Library’s Website Launch Committee and Preservation Committee.

reference and instructional services: innovation and creative approaches

to research and teaching

Our reference librarians have kept a pulse on the research needs of our students and faculty. While traditional walk up reference still exists, the complexity of the questions have risen and the corresponding need for individual counseling sessions. Librarians have also tapped into social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogs to reach a fast growing segment of our patrons on social networks.

The Reference and Instructional Services Department has made great advances in providing services in new and innovative ways. Members of the department also remained extremely active professionally and also took on new responsibilities within the university libraries and at the law library.

The department’s educational efforts have expanded and in addition to an increase in individual instructional sessions, we have also added a fall semester section of Advanced Legal Research as well as specialized courses offered throughout the school year. These courses have covered a variety of topics, ranging from use of bibliographic database programs to recent developments with ebooks.

The first semester legal research sessions have continued to raise the awareness of the students about the issues and methods of legal research. Students are introduced to the issues of legal research, to important sources, and to research strategies. The first semester sessions are an excellent lead in to the larger slate of classes offered in the spring. There were twelve sections of first year students taught in the first semester. Each section had roughly 17 students. Exclusive of Lexis and Westlaw training, each section met for about 4 classroom hours.

Trends in reference have included a rise in the complexity of questions and a rise in requests for individual research counseling sessions. There also has still remained a need to maintain a presence at the reference desk as a significant point of contact with our patron base. Over the past two years, we have experimented with various coverage configurations and have found that during the school year, it is important to have a reference librarian at the reference desk for most of the day.

We have also made it easier for patrons to reach us. Most reference librarians have individual web pages that contain their schedule as well as contact information including: location, phone number, email address, IM handle, and an IM widget. The reference department also has an IM handle, with a widget embedded on the reference web page, that is monitored by the librarian on duty. IM has become an important means of communicating with our patrons. IM is currently the third most favored means to reach us (walk-up is first, and email is second). Telephone reference has declined dramatically: most phone queries are from the general public and not from members of the Yale community.

The Reference Department has also worked with social media to serve our patrons. We have developed a Facebook page that provides access to our most important services and serves as a point of contact. While we have not been especially aggressive with Twitter, we are among the most “followed” library. Also, members of

the Department have been active bloggers, both at the blogs maintained at the law library and at other professional blogs.

Throughout the year, the Department offered many library tours for a variety of groups, including: new and visiting faculty, visiting scholars, other Yale librarians, Chinese scholars, regular tours for Law School employees, and tours for other special groups. The Department also offers library orientations to new members of the faculty, visitors, fellows, research assistants, and incoming students.

The department’s liaison program with the faculty has witnessed a steady increase in the number of requests fielded with almost 4,000 requests in the past two years. The number of faculty members who have used reference services has also increased and we were able to identify almost 75% of the faculty who used reference services.

The past two years have seen a drop in microform subscriptions, helping us resolve space issues. However, there has not been a reduction in microform use. The material that is available solely in microform is still important and there is still a fairly large support need with microforms. Due to university mandated budget cuts, we faced a situation where this vital function, microforms, was not being supported. We have worked collaboratively with other departments to fill this need and beginning Fall 2009 school year, the Technical Services Department will assist with microform filing.

The judicial nominations database in order to grow and remain relevant, had to be completely redeveloped and our Emerging Technologies Librarian, Jason Eiseman has completed this project. We now have a new database that is more complete, searchable, and expandable. Also, the department has taken on responsibility for the maintenance and the future direction of Avalon: the most popular web-site at Yale.

The department has had some changes in personnel during the past two years. Mark Engsberg, Head of Reference, left to become the Director of the Law Library at Emory Law School. The department has been further strengthened by the addition of Ryan Harrington as a Reference Librarian in 2008 and Jason Eiseman as the Librarian for Emerging Technologies at the beginning of 2009.

Members of the department remain active in professional endeavors. In 2008, John Nann spoke at the Joint Study Institute (a conference sponsored by several domestic and foreign law library organizations and with attendees from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), the Conference on Computer Aided Legal Instruction, and at the American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting, and has served as the Education

Committee Chair of the Law Librarians of New England since 2008. Margaret Chisholm served on the library’s communications committee. Teresa Miguel is Vice Chair/Chair elect , AALL Latino Caucus. Teresa was most recently, Panel Coordinator, Moderator, Speaker: Thinking about Treaties: Interpretation, in Force at AALL 2009 in Washington, D.C.

Evelyn Ma presented an overview of noteworthy China-related electronic resources at the Asian Law Interest Group, Foreign and Comparative Law Special Interest Section, AALL, Portland Oregon in July 2008. She also served on Publications and Translation Committee, 1st China-United States Conference on Legal Information and Law Libraries, Beijing, China, May 2009.

Jason Eiseman spoke at the 2009 CALI Conference in Colorado and was elected to the Executive Board of the Computer Services Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries. Jason also co-cordinated the 2009 Un-Conference at AALL 2009 in Washington.

Camilla Tubbs was appointed to a three year term on the Government Printing Office’s Depository Library Council, she is also Chair of the AALL Government Relations Committee.

The past two years have been challenging with budgetary constraints and reduced staffing. The adaptable staff in reference and instructional services have tapped into their collective skills and abilities to face these challenges and create new opportunities. The demand for the products, services, and skills offered by the Reference and Instructional Services Department continues to grow, and we are now more than ever central to the mission of the law library and the law school as a whole.

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faculty services: reliability and efficiencyYale Law School faculty have always relied on the creativity, speed, and efficiency of our faculty services department and over 8,500 items were retrieved in the past two years. This resourcefulness has become even more crucial in an era of constrained budgets. At the end of 2008, our Faculty Services Assistant, Theresa Cullen, retired and was replaced by Dick Hasbany. Dick has quickly and easily transitioned into this position continuing the tradition of excellence in the delivery of materials to our faculty. However, due to the budget reduction our attempt to fill a second vacant faculty services position was halted. Fortunately, other library departments have stepped in and enabled us to continue to provide our faculty with the superb service that they expect. Kathy Eow, from Collections and Access, assists our Faculty Services Assistant, Dick Hasbany on a daily basis and has proved to be an invaluable member of the faculty services team.

programs

Movie night continued the expansion of the library’s outreach to graduate students outside a conventional library setting. An interesting array of films ranging from the “Monsoon Wedding” (India) and “Yella” (Germany) selected by international graduate students showcased their home countries and were viewed by lively audiences from within and outside of the law school.

Librarians lunches and staff spotlight series provided continuing education and learning opportunities for librarians and support staff. Discussions included an overview of China Law by Evelyn Ma, two serials discussions by Anne Myers, and an overview of the Harvard Law Library’s faculty services program by Janet Katz, Faculty Services Librarian at the Harvard Law Library. Various spotlight series programs featured a taped interview of Morris Cohen (who was also present and provided personal commentary), Femi Cadmus’ “Cybersleuthing”, Kathy Eow and Heather Bryant’s “Librarian Travels in Kenya and Vermont” amongst others. Mary Jane Kelsey convened and presented at a spring 2008 meeting of the New England Innovative Users Group held at the Yale Law School focusing on succession planning in libraries.

professional appointments Femi Cadmus Associate Law Librarian for AdministrationJason Eiseman Emerging Technologies Librarian Ryan Harrington Reference LibrarianAnne Myers Librarian for Serials Services

new support staff Drew Adan Library Assistant (Collections and Access)Kathy Eow Library Assistant (Collections and Access)Jonathan Lasky Library Assistant (Cataloging)

retirementsBonnie Collier Associate Librarian for Administration, retired in June 2008 (35 years of service)Alexandra Karyshev Cataloging Assistant, retired in July 2007 (16 years of service)Barbara Renckowski Cataloging Assistant, retired in March 2008 (41 years of service)Theresa Cullen Faculty Services Assistant, retired in January 2009 (9 years of service)

transitions

The library continued its active engagement in the law school community by hosting a wide array of exciting programs geared toward the law school audience and the general public. In continuing a tradition of showcasing the scholarship of the law school faculty, the library played host to several faculty scholarship series, book discussions, and also for the first time hosted a law student book discussion.

Among the well attended and lively book discussions hosted by the library at Labyrinth Bookstore in New Haven were Paul Kahn’s exposition of his book “Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror, and Sovereignty” in October 2008 and Robert Post’s talk in April 2009 on his well received book “For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom.”

The library hosted its very first student book talk in April 2009 with Zachary Kaufman’s (09) discussion of his book with Philip Clark - “After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond.” This enlightening discussion was well attended by students, faculty and staff, and particularly struck a chord with librarians because profits from the book will be donated to Kigali Public Library, Rwanda’s first public library.

yale law schoollillian goldman law library

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