The LLMC-Digital Newsletter
Issue No. : 31
The LLMC-Digital Newsletter
July 30, 2008
Issue 31
Contents:
1– LLMC’s annual members’ meeting –p.1
2– Elections 2008 -p. 1-2
3– Rollout of new LLMC-Digital interface -p.2-3
4– Rollout of Calif. Records & Briefs project -p.3
5– Rollout of joint LLMC/Google project -p.3
6– Current serial count on LLMC-Digital -p.3
7– Tribute to co-founder Georgia Clark –p.3-4
Report on the 2008 Annual LLMC Meeting
LLMC has held annual meetings for libraries participating in its program every year since 1978, with meetings held during the annual AALL conventions. Our 31st annual meeting was at AALL in Portland, OR. The meeting was conducted under the rules adopted at the 2003 meeting, when LLMC's fiche–era libraries voted to transfer control of LLMC’s assets and also their accumulated voting rights to the Charter Members of LLMC-Digital. As usual, the main official business of the meeting was to elect Directors and Councilors for open slots on LLMC’s two governing bodies: our Board of Directors and Advisory Council. (Endnote # 1) Delegates’ ballots reflected each library’s subscription status to LLMC-Digital. Some 62 representatives of the 265 charter libraries attended.
Elections 2008: In the Board of Directors election two full term, four year slots were open due to the completed terms of Judith Gaskel, Librarian to the Supreme Court, and Carol Roehrenbeck, Dir., Rutgers Univ.–Newark L.L. The outgoing Board of Director’s nominees for these positions were Jonathan Franklin, Asso.Dir., U.Washington L.L. and Barbara Garavaglia, Asst.Dir., U.Michigan L.L. Both were elected by acclamation. An additional, two year vacancy resulting from the resignation of Chris Simoni, who is leaving law librarianship for at least a while, was filled with the unanimous election of Julia Wentz, Dir., Loyola Univ. Chicago L.L. to complete that term.
In the election for Councilors, six slots were open due to expired terms for Roger Jacobs, Dir. (Ret.), U.Notre Dame L.L.; Holly Lakatos. Dir.Pub.Serv., Chicago Kent S.L.L.; Gail Partin, Asso.Dir., Dickinson S.L.L.; Kumar Percy, Libn., Georgetown U.L.L.; Steven Weiter, Hd.Tech.Serv., NY 4th App.Div.Lib.; and Maryruth Storer, Dir., Orange Cnty.(CA) L.L. Elected were outgoing Board members Judith Gaskel and Carol Roehrenbeck, and also John Barden, Dir., Maine St. Law & Leg. Ref. Lib.; Darin Fox, Dir., U.Oklahoma L.L.; Marie Newman, Dir., Pace U.L.L.; and Judith Wright, Dir. U.Chicago L.L. The roll call of our leadership in 2007/2008 is listed below. (Endnote # 2)
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In concluding our report on the LLMC 2008 elections, on behalf we feel sure of the whole LLMC community, we would like to express sincere thanks to Judith Gaskel and Carol Roehrenbeck, both for their recent service on the Board, and also for their willingness to put in yet another three years as Councilors. Sincere thanks also to Holly Lakatos, Gail Partin, Kumar Percy, and Steven Weiter for their recent service on the Advisory Council. Finally, a very special thanks to Roger Jacobs and Maryruth Storer, each of whom has given years of service to LLMC in multiple stints on the Advisory Council and in service during crucial years on the Board of Directors.
Rollout of New LLMC-Digital Interface
Perhaps the most anticipated and welcome announcement at our Annual Meeting was that the LLMC Board, at its midsummer meeting the previous Friday, gave final approval to the adoption of a new technical partner and a new interface for LLMC-Digital. Our new partner, who will be providing the OCRing, storage, and delivery of our data online, will be National Business Systems, Inc. (NBS) of Egan, MN. The official launch date for the transition over to the new interface will be 1 October 2008.
The Board feels confident that our subscribers will welcome the new interface as a substantial improvement over our current version in terms of rate of response, features added, intuitive usability, and structural capacity for regular enhancement. (Endnote # 3) We are also happy to report that, despite the substantial improvements, overall our new relationship with NBS will cost us in the neighborhood of 25% less annually than we have been paying to date; freeing up resources that can go into accelerated scanning and other pressing Consortium projects.
Reaching this happy point has been a long slog, a group effort that called on the best talents of the NBS people, our own LLMC staff, our current partners at the University of Michigan, and literally scores of helpful LLMC members. (Endnote # 4) We first started on this course some two years ago, and learned enormously in the process. Mainly we learned that having an interface that serves the needs of the digital generation means never standing still. What looks good today can seem dated or even obsolete the day after tomorrow. Perhaps the greatest single contribution that our new partner, NBS, made to the process was in convincing us that any new interface should be built upon a larger industry wide structure that offers within itself a natural growth mechanism. Thus, while it is not immediate obvious, one of the most important features of the new interface is that it is heavily designed around the features provided through Adobe Reader. Adobe is an already robust, widely adopted application, run by people with deep pockets, that is constantly being enhanced. A rising tide lifts all boats. By steering our little skiff into the Adobe tide, we can expect LLMC-Digital to improve, often for free, along with the Adobe engine. (Endnote # 5)
Because of the importance of making the changeover to the new interface as seamless and trouble free as possible, LLMC will be devoting a special issue of the Newsletter to the transition. That issue is scheduled for late August. This should give plenty of time for carrying out the relatively simple steps that all subscribers will need to implement.
As a final note in the context of our adopting a new interface, it is fitting to take this occasion to focus on, and express thanks for, the role played by the University of Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office and related departments in launching LLMC-Digital and helping it grow to its present state. From the
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start we all knew that Michigan would act as an incubator; to get us started and to nurture us to where we could stand on our own. It was assumed that eventually we would outgrow the Michigan support systems, and now we have done so. However, we should not forget that LLMC-Digital could not have gotten started so quickly, nor have weathered its early years, without Michigan’s instruction and technical assistance. For that we will be eternally grateful. We can only hope that we will continue to develop in such a manner that Michigan will always be proud of having been “present at the creation”.
CA Records & Briefs Project Launched
Past issues of the Newsletter already have broached the news that LLMC and the Los Angeles County Law Library (LA-Law) have been working on organizing a joint project for a full retrospective scanning of the California Records and Briefs. This ambitious project, covering some 77,000 volumes, has been talked about for years and partially implemented in both film and digital formats. The good news presented to the members at their annual meeting is that a full, integrated, retrospective scanning project has now been launched.
The joint announcement was made by LA-Law Director Marcia Koslov and LLMC’s Exec. Dir. Kathleen Richman. They described how the initial equipment is now in place, formatting and digital file standards been worked out, and joint workflow protocols established. The scanning will be done on site at LA-Law, with proofing and post processing tasks being done both at LLMC-Kaneohe and NBS-Eagan. Initial scanning is expected to get underway in late summer. The full project is expected to last from five to seven years, with the general approach being to scan more recent materials first. After scanning and processsing, the data will be provided to users, both on the LA-Law web site in image format, and also on LLMC-Digital in OCRed format. Additional details on project implementation will be provided as the project progresses.
First Project with Google
The second big programmatic announcement at the Members’ Meeting is that the partner-ship with Google forecast in the previous two newsletters has now been formalized by con-tract. This project will also be focused on Records and Briefs (R&B), with the first targets being the 47,000 volumes of R&B for the State of New York. Sources will be the collections of the Library of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York supplemented by materials held by the Library of the New York Law Institute. Operational details for the project are still being worked out, but it is the ambition of both partners that this mother lode of research materials will be available on both Google and LLMC-Digital within the next six months. Here also, additional details on project implementation will be provided as the work progresses. This initial project is viewed as a prototype. If it works out, it is hoped by both Google and LLMC that the same methods can be applied to the scanning of the R&B of many other states, eventually capturing as much of this literature as possible for preservation and universal access.
Current Serial Count on LLMC-Digital
This is the beginning of ABA and ACRL survey season for our academic colleagues, and we are beginning to receive requests for our official serial count. For the record, the official serial count for LLMC-Digital as of July 2008 is 314. (Endnote # 6)
LLMC Co-Founder Georgia Clark Retiring
There comes a time when all of us move on, but it is an especially poignant moment when the person going is an LLMC stalwart like the very long time director of Wayne State University Law Library Georgia Ann Clark.
Our Consortium began as a partnership between the law libraries of Wayne State and the University of Hawaii way back in 1976. Georgia signed on “for the duration,” probab-
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ly never imagining how long that would turn out to be, but never tiring in her support through the years. She represented Wayne State on the LLMC Board ever since. Even more important she was willing to get her hands dirty down in the trenches; doing much of the actual work of keeping the project going. Over the years she has been indefatigable in running interference when negotiations were needed in her region, in soliciting hardcopy for LLMC’s various filming and scanning projects, and even supervising for years a filming operation in her own library. Her interest and enthusiasm for LLMC never flagged. In good years and bad years she was a pillar of strength and inspiration to us all.
Georgia will soon be leaving Wayne State and has resigned from the LLMC Board. She plans to retire to her hometown of Duluth, MN, where she will be living with her sister and “finally do some traveling.” All of us who have grown to admire and love her over the years wish her a cornucopia of good health and happy living. The Michigan Lawyers Weekly recently featured Georgia in an article published on 30 June 2008. With the kind permission of that publication, the article is reproduced below (Endnote # 7) with the thought that some readers may enjoy seeing how much she valued her participation in our project, and how deeply she wove LLMC into the operations of her library.
Endnotes:
1.) The Advisory Council was created so that our Board of Directors would have a representative group to turn to for advice when major issues came up on short notice. The terms of service on the Council are not onerous, since the Board has referred questions to the Council only sporadically. However, when invoked, the ‘sounding board’ mechanism proved very useful, and we were glad to have it in place. Advisory Council members are elected at LLMC's annual membership meetings, with nominations taken from the floor. While we occasionally get out of sync due to resignations, etc., typically a third of the Council seats come vacant each year.
2.) LLMC 2008/09 governing structure:
(Final year for each term follows the name.)
— Board of Directors:
Richard Amelung Asso.Dir., St.Louis U.L.L. (10)
Jonathan Franklin Asso.Dir., U.Wash. L.L. (12)
Barbara Garavaglia Asst.Dir., U.Mich. L.L. (12)
Stuart Ho Atty. (Represents Univ. of Hawaii)
Bruce Johnson Dir., Ohio St.U.L.L. (09)
Elizabeth Mckenzie Dir., Suffolk U.L.L. (09)
Marian Parker Dir., Wake Forest U.L.L. (11)
Kathleen Richman LLMC Executive Dir. (ex officio)
Julia Wentz Dir., Loyola-Chicago L.L. (10)
Regina Smith Dir., Jenkins Memorial L.L. (11)
— Advisory Council:
Glen Peter Ahlers Dir., Barry U.L.L. (09)
John Barden Dir., Maine Law & Leg.Ref Lib. (11)
Herb Cihak Dir., Pepperdine U.L.L. (09)
Joel Fishman Dir. Law. Serv., Duquesne U.L.L. (10)
Darin Fox Dir., U.Oklahma L.L. (11)
Judith Gaskell Dir. U.S.Sup.Ct.L. (11)
Jolande Goldberg Sen. Cat. Policy Spec., LC (10)
Joe Hinger Hd.Tech.Serv., St. John's U.L.L. (09)
Marcia Koslov Dir., Los Angeles Cnty .L.L. (10)
Margaret Leary Dir., U.Mich. L.L. (10)
Ann Morrison Dir. Dalhousie U.L.L. (09)
Marie Newman Dir., Pace U.L.L.
Lee Peoples Dir. Oklahoma City U.L.L. (09)
Jeanne Price Dir., U.Neavda-L.V. L.L. (10)
Ann Rae Dir. Ret. U.Toronto L.L. (10)
Carol Roehrenbeck Dir., Rutgers-N. U.L.L. (11)
Jules Winterton Dir., Inst.Advan.Leg.St.L.L. (09)
Judith Wright Dir., U.Chicago L.L. (11)
3.) However, readers are invited to judge for themselves. The official transition date is 1 Oct. 2008, but the NBS site is currently available for inspection on a complimentary password basis. Go to <WWW.LLMCDIGITAL.ORG>, enter username <LLMC-GUEST>, and password <FALL2008>.
4.) There literally have been too many to mention; although we have tried to flag the most important contributions in the Newsletter as the process went on. Our thanks to all, especially the unsung, who helped us work toward this special day.
5.) This gilt by association factor was illustrated in just the last month or so when our new interface, with no effort from us, just courtesy of Adobe, acquired the ability to vocalize text; something we couldn’t have afforded to prioritize, but which will be a boon to our seeing impaired users.
6.) This statistic is computable from data on the OCLC World Cat site. However, the information is scattered and tedious to compile. So, Saint Louis University Law Library, which does the cataloging for LLMC-Digital, does the compiling regularly to save the rest of us the grief. We announce the current count once a year around survey time, but please feel free to ask for a more up to date figure anytime during the year if you need it.
7.) A Librarian's Librarian: Director of Wayne State University Law School's library made it her mission to get information to the people.
An article by Douglas J. Levy —
“Georgia Ann Clark, director of Wayne State University (WSU) Law School's Arthur Neef Law Library, believes that access to information can change people's lives. That's why, during her 35 years with the library, she grew its 600,000 volume collection, and made it possible for anyone who visits the library to access legal databases such as LexisNexis and Westlaw. And, that's also why she insisted that WSU's law library offer its patrons free access to PACER, an electronic portal to the goings on in the federal courts. Because of Clark's efforts, WSU's law library is one of only 17 libraries in the U.S. to offer the free PACER access.
"This is said casually too many times, but information is power," said Clark, who recently announced she'll be retiring from her post — possibly in September 2008. "The ability to seek out information is so crucial to society," she told Michigan Lawyers Weekly. "Preservation of information, delivery of information, accessibility of information is what I'm all about."
Bloomfield Hills based litigation specialist George A. Peck said he couldn't agree more. He recalled when he was a first year law student at WSU Law School and needed to do research for a brief writing competition. Peck said that Clark, whom he describes as "a selfless individual who's given so much of her time and effort, so quietly and so modestly," pointed him in the right direction. Indeed, Peck's brief took first place. "Her answer was always, 'We have it, and if we don't, we'll get it,'" said Peck, who attended the law school from 1977-80. "She really is a librarian's librarian."
Perhaps nothing reinforces that point more than what Clark, and her colleague Jerry Dupont, accomplished 32 years ago on behalf of law library patrons around the world. Together they co-founded the Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC), a nonprofit group that gathers the world's legal resources, films them and distributes them on microfiche [and now online.]
"What we accomplished was, we reminded the for profit world that they were making a great deal of money on information that was in the public domain, and [we] brought prices down," Clark said. And, in doing so, Clark said, LLMC has enabled libraries to build better collections and share precious reference materials that would otherwise have been accessible to only the very few.
As an example, Clark mentioned the Sir William Blackstone (1723-80) Collection at Yale Law Library. Blackstone, she recalled, authored Commentaries on the Laws of England, which many consider to be the most influential book in the Anglo-American common law tradition. Because Yale's Blackstone collection existed only in print form for many years, Clark said, no one was able to use it and enjoy it, unless they physically went to the Yale Law Library. But, she said, LLMC changed that. "Now anyone can buy a copy of Yale's Blackstone collection and have it in their collection," Clark said.
Three years ago, LLMC made a drastic change in its methodology to reflect the changing "technological" times, Clark said. The group expanded beyond microfiche in favor of digital imaging and scanning, And, the results have been nothing short of remarkable, she said. Clark told Lawyers Weekly that the LLMC's digital service has now been adopted by, among others, over 90 percent of AALS affiliated law school libraries, 85 percent of the Canadian law school libraries, and virtually every library serving the units of the U.S. Federal Court System.”
End of Issue # 31