Energize, Explore, Evolve…and Eat!

AALL 2008 opened with a spectacular dessert event at the Oregon Convention Center sponsored by LexisNexis.

This dessert extravaganza was the perfect way to start off the 101st AALL Annual Meeting and Conference. With a live dance band, great food and drinks to be enjoyed, and a large crowd of conference attendees ready to kick things off, this event gave AALL conference-goers a chance to relax, catch up with old friends, and do some networking.

From fruit cobblers, to cakes, to ice-cream concoctions, if you had a sweet tooth, you found the perfect dessert to top off your evening. Included were local flavors such as Marionberries, Moonstruck artisan chocolates, and Portland’s famous Voodoo Doughnuts. For those who weren’t feeling like sweets, there was a delicious array of cheeses and fruits to be enjoyed.

Being in Portland on a Saturday (or Sunday) means at least a quick visit to the Portand Saturday Market. The Market is open every Saturday and Sunday from March to December 24th. It’s easy to get to by riding the MAX train and getting off at the Skidmore Fountain stop.

The marketplace is crowded and lively on Saturday afternoon. There are hundreds of artisans showcasing their arts and crafts and you can find everything from soap to stained glass as you wander past the booths. Music fills the air from street musicans and musicians on the Main Stage.

And if you are hungry, there are food stands to answer any culinary craving. I was tempted by the Kathmandu Cafe’s authentic Himalayan menu but in the end I opted for a crepe.

* Also posted on the Government Info Pro.

The second meeting for the China – U.S. Conference on Legal Information and Law Libraries scheduled for Sunday, July 13th from 12:00 to 1:00 pm has been cancelled.

Indiana University School of Library and Information Science along with the School of Law-Bloomington, and School of Law Library will host an alumni reception on Monday evening, 6-7:30pm in the Broadway 3 room of the Portland Hilton. All SLIS and IUB Law grads are invited to attend. You may bring a guest.  See you there.    Sarah

We’ve created a Flickr group on AALL for members to sign up and add their pictures: http://flickr.com/groups/842314@N22/

Photos must be added manually to the group for them to appear. But you can also tag your photos with aall2008 so they will appear on the photo page of the website: http://lawlib.lclark.edu/blog/aall/?page_id=6.

At most of the library and technology conferences I’ve attended lately, an interesting phenomenon called the “backchannel” has developed.  Attendees–as well as those who had to stay home–participate in chat about the conference using tools such as Twitter or Meebo Chat rooms.  Look for both of these to be taking place over the next several days.  I’ve set up a Meebo Chat Room called AALL08.  If you’re already a Meebo user, just log in to meebo.com and search for the “AALL08″ chat room.  Alternative, go to the Law Libraries and Librarians Ning group (http://lawlibraries.ning.com) and join in the chat room there.

If you’re using Twitter, remember to use the #aall2008 hashtag in your tweets to make them easier to follow and to filter.

Speaking of tags: if you’re posting photos on Flickr, blog entries on your own blogs, videos on YouTube, or whatever, use the tag “aall2008″ to bring them all together.

See you online!

The Micrographics/Audiovisual Special Interest Section Business Meeting will be Sunday, July 13th, 12noon-1:30pm, in the Convention Center. Check the final program for exact location. Light refreshments will be provided. We will discuss M/AV SIS organizational issues and program proposals for the 2009 AALL Annual Meeting. Looking forward to seeing many of our members there!

The Legal History & Rare Books Special Interest Section has programming every day at this year’s Annual Meeting. On Saturday, July 12th, we are co-sponsoring, with the Technical Services SIS, the full-day workshop “Yikes! What’s In This Box? Managing Archive Collections.” Speakers will include Janice Anderson, Associate Director of Collection Services, Georgetown University Law Library; Heather Bourk, Archivist, Georgetown University Law Center; Anne Mar, National Equal Justice Library Project Archivist, Georgetown University Law Library; and Michael Widener, Rare Book Librarian, Yale University Law Library. This workshop will explain the principles of organizing archival collections and creating finding aids, as well as walk participants through the creation of a finding aid with Encoded Archival Description tags. On Sunday, July 13th, 1:30pm-2:45pm, several former Law Library Journal editors will present “Law Library Journal at 100: the Evolution of a Publication.” This informal panel discussion will intersperse serious information about the Journal and its contribution to the literature with fun and interesting anecdotes. Also on Sunday, 3pm-4pm, Program B-6 will be “Beer and the Law: A Legal History of Beer, Brewing and Government Regulation from the German Purity Law to the Microbrew Movement.” Speakers will be a Full Sail Brewing Company Brewmaster and Mark Podvia, Associate Law Librarian, Legal Research Professor, and Archivist, Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law. This program will describe and explain the history of beer and brewing, the brewing process, and brewing regulations. On Monday, July 14th, 10:45am-11:45am, Program F-6 will be “Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act (DWDA): A Legal History.” The moderators will be Etheldra Scoggin, Associate Professor and Reference Librarian, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, and Stacy Etheredge, Reference and Special Collections Librarian, University of South Carolina Coleman Karesh Law Library. This program will trace the legislative history of the DWDA, subsequent legal challenges to it, and Oregon’s experiences under it. Also on Monday, 12noon-1:15pm, will be the LHRB Roundtable “Evolution of a Research and Legal History Web Site: From Funding Through Implementation.” The speaker will be Joel Fishman, Assistant Director for Lawyer Services, Duquesne University Center for Legal Information / Allegheny County Law Library, and he will review how to plan and design a web site as part of a legal history or legal research project, as well as discuss how to write a grant to obtain funding for a digitization project. This program does not conflict with any AALL program, and light refreshments will be provided. Finally, on Tuesday, July 15th, 3:30pm-4pm, Program K-5 will be “Explore the New World of Legal History Research – Be Prepared to Wiki!” The moderator will be Darcy Kirk, Director, University of Connecticut School of Law Library (UCSLL), and the speaker will be Andrea Joseph, Reference/ILL Librarian, UCSLL. This program will review how to create a dynamic changeable wiki to display a library’s research assets, focusing on traditional and non-traditional legal history research tools. So there you have it. From the intense to the light-hearted, the LHRB SIS has programming for one and all!

The 21^st century has been witness to an unprecedented explosion in Web-accessible digital information, and, as law librarians are well aware, important legal materials are increasingly digitally born and distributed online, as opposed to published in print.

When it comes to long-term access and preservation, this proliferation of legal information in digital formats has presented the profession with a perplexing new challenge. Digital formats and media are notoriously vulnerable to permanent loss and can descend into obsolescence in as little as five years. Even worse, the average lifespan of a Web page is estimated to be between 44 and 75 days.

To tackle these 21^st century preservation challenges, The Chesapeake Project, a collaborative pilot digital preservation program, is currently underway. Pilot participants include the Georgetown Law Library, the State Law Library of Maryland, and the State Law Library of Virginia. Key participants will be discussing the project at the AALL Annual Meeting on Sunday, July 13, and Monday, July 14.

The Chesapeake Project began actively harvesting legal information from the Web and storing it within a shared digital archive in March 2007. Today, the archive is populated with more than 3,000 items. These archived items are made available through open-access channels and via permanent archive URLs, despite whether or not the original digital files have been altered or removed from the Web.

Research conducted as part of the project’s first-year evaluation revealed that more than 8% of the items archived between March 2007 and March 2008 have already disappeared from their original locations on the Web. Each of these lost items remains accessible thanks to the project’s efforts.

By the conclusion of the project’s two-year pilot phase in 2009, participants aim to lay the foundation for a collaborative and nationwide preservation program for legal resources.

On Sunday, July 13, project participants will share their experiences in digital preservation and interlibrary collaboration as part of the Technical Services Special Interest Section (TS-SIS) programming at the AALL Annual Meeting. The program will be held in Room B114 from 4:15-5:15 p.m.

For a chance to talk to a project participant one-on-one and see the digital archive in action, visit the TS-SIS Activities Table during the no-conflict Exhibit Hall break on Monday, July 14, from 1:00-3:00 p.m.

The Chesapeake Project is being carried out under the auspices of the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA) whose membership includes the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) as well as state and academic libraries throughout the United States.

For more information, visit the LIPA Web site and LegalnfoArchive.org, The Chesapeake Project’s beta archival access Web site.

Sarah Rhodes, Digital Collections Librarian

Don’t miss the innovative Micrographis/Audiovisual Special Interest Section programing at this year’s Annual Meeting. On Sunday, July 13th, 3pm-4pm, Program B-4 is “Mandatory Digital TV and the Evolution of Library DVD Collections.” Speakers will be Laura Ray, Educational Programing Librarian, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library, and Terrence McCormack, AV Librarian & Head of Koren Center, SUNY Buffalo Charles B. Sears Law Library. This program will provide a brief history of the development of the mandatory DTV policy, as well as extensively review features of current HD and Blu-ray DVD formats and equipment. On Monday, July 14th, 8:45am-9:30am, Program D-3 is “Harry Potter and the Law.” The speaker will be Joel Fishman, Assistant Director for Lawyer Services, Duquesne University Center for Legal Information / Allegheny County Law Library. This program will demonstrate the power of film to enhance legal education by using vignettes from the Harry Potter movies in a discussion of numerous administrative law, criminal law, slavery, and banking law issues. On Tuesday, July 15th, 12noon-1:30pm, the M/AV SIS Roundtable will feature “Teaching with Audiovisuals: Enhancing Education without Copyright Worries.” Light refreshments will be provided and this program does not conflict with any AALL Program. The speaker will be Laura Ray, who will briefly discuss audiovisual methods for the enhancement of learning, as well as provide a comprehensive review of fair use guidelines for the use of audio, video, television broadcast, and Web-based materials in teaching. We’re looking forward to seeing you!