Message from the President

A short and sweet President’s message for February, the shortest, and sometimes the sweetest (for those of us that partake in Valentine’s Day celebration) month of the year.

Leadership:

Leadership Manual: The edits continue; very, very slowly. I am determined to complete the manual before the end of my term, so that the incoming executive board and committee chairs can hit the ground running.

Leadership Transition: A leadership transition workshop is tentatively scheduled for the April 13, 2012 Spring Meeting. All incoming and outgoing executive board members and committee chairs will be invited to participate.

Pride:

Electronic Newsletter Collection: All RALLA and VALL newsletters are in the process of being scanned and converted to OCR (Optical Character Recognition) format. Many thanks to Gail Zwirner and our archivist Gail Warren for providing the print copies.

The ultimate goal of this project is to create a searchable and browseable newsletter collection which will be accessed through the VALL Wiki. The digitization of the newsletters is just the first step. I invite and encourage you to join Gail Warren and me in seeing this project through to its completion. Please contact me (mgernhardt@hunton.com) if you are interested in participating in the planning and/or execution of this project.

Growth/Other important updates:

VALL VIP: John Douglass has accepted our invitation to attend the 2012 AALL Annual Meeting in Boston as the VALL VIP. Lyn Warmath has been the driving force behind this process. I deeply appreciate her efforts in keeping us on task in ensuring VALL participates in this important program.

AALL Chapter Visitor: Our request for a AALL executive board visitor was submitted in advance of the deadline. We are currently awaiting a response.

Elections: The election process is underway and on schedule. Please send any further nominations to Fred Dingledy, Nominations Committee Chair, by February 15, 2012. I am so very appreciative of the Committee’s timely efforts, and the responsiveness of the membership in submitting nominees. Thank you all for your part in a successful elections process!

List-serv: The List-serv is being vigilantly administered by our Membership Committee Chair, Chris Vassey. All active 2011-12 members should be receiving list-serv messages. So, you should have received a “save-the-date” announcement for the Spring 2012 meeting at the University of Richmond School of Law. If you did not, please contact Chris at christina.vassey@thomsonreuters.com.

I wish you all the very best in 2012 and hope to see you at the Spring Meeting on April 13.

Michele Gernhardt

Save the Date: April 13!

The Program Committee is in the process of finalizing the Spring meeting -- please save the date for the meeting which is scheduled to be held at the University of Richmond School of Law Library.

The day’s program will include a presentation from the team at the University of Virginia that is digitizing the papers of Frank S. Tavenner relating to the Tokyo War Crimes Trials; a visitor from AALL (still to be determined); and a presentation from David Mao, the new Law Librarian of Congress.

Mark the date on your calendars -- it looks to be an interesting and informative meeting.

Happenings at Ehrhorn Law Library

Congratulations to Anthony Brown Ikwueme who is now the director of Ehrhorn Law Library! Tony assumed the directorship in December after serving as acting director when Barbara Baxter retired in the summer of 2011.

Welcome to Sola G. Babatunde who is the new reference librarian at Ehrhorn Law Library. Sola comes to Ehrhorn from from Texas Southern University – Thurgood Marshall School of Law where he was the Government Documents Librarian.

For nearly eight years, Sola served Fondren Library at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, first as Library Specialist III in the Center for Information Processing and then as Library Specialist IV in the Government Documents Department.

Sola is a recipient of the SMU Colophon Library School Scholarship Award, the University of North Texas School of Library and Information Science Scholarship, and has been invited to join the Beta Phi Mu honor society. He is a member of the American Association of Law Libraries, the Houston Area Association of Law Libraries, and the Houston Area Network of Documents Information. Babatunde has been a member of the Tennessee bar since 2005.

Below is Sola's educational background:

M.L.I.S., University of North Texas, School of Library and Informational Sciences;

LL.M., Southern Methodist University School of Law;

LL.M., Unviersity of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria;

B.L., Nigerian Law School;

LL.B., University of Lagos; Lagos, Nigeria

We look forwarding to meeting Sola at future VALL meetings.

Message from the President

Greetings, fellow VALLers.

Time has hurtled by at a startling pace as it is wont to do. I hope this message finds you all in good health and high spirits.

Our joint annual meeting with VLA last week was a great success. All of the programs presented by VALL members were very well-attended and well-received.

Congratulations again to the presenters: Tim Coggins, Suzanne Corriell, Fred Dingledy, Ben Keele, Terry Long, Bill Magee, Greg Stoner, Jeanne Ullian and Gail Zwirner. I had the opportunity to attend the programs offered by Tim, Suzanne, Fred and Ben, which were at a perfect level of complexity to be of value to law librarians and non-law librarians alike.

By chatting with other conference attendees, I found that they all had very positive things to say about each VALL program. The venue, activities and personal interactions made the conference a very rewarding experience for me. I had the chance to re-connect with library school classmates and professors, have lunch with some VALL members each day, and celebrate in excellent company at the Thursday night social.

I only wish that VALL member attendance at the conference had been more robust. I’d very much like to know what factored in to your decision to attend or not attend the conference. Cost, distance, programming, or something else entirely? I invite you to share your feedback with me or Suzanne Corriell, VALL Vice President and Programs Committee Chair [scorriel@richmond.edu]; we would very much like to factor membership preferences into future partnership planning.

In my first message as your President, I outlined objectives in three areas: leadership, growth and pride. The following is a status report concerning the first two objectives and other recent developments.

Leadership

Executive Board Meetings:

The Executive Board met via telephone conference in June and September. Both meetings were productive and well-attended. Outside of meetings, I have also communicated regularly with officers, committee members and VALL members at-large. Thank you all for your initiative and responsiveness. Donna Bausch and Jennifer Sekula, our Grants committee co-chairs, have been especially communicative and responsive. Thank you both! I have seen evidence, time and again, from nearly every committee that they are truly committed to VALL’s continued success.

Leadership Handbook:
Edits are well under way in updating the leadership handbook. I hope to release an updated version in January 2012. Many changes are being made to account for last year’s bylaws amendments. Here are some other changes being incorporated into the Handbook, which were briefly discussed during the October 28 business meeting:

1. Recruitment committee responsibilities and list-serv administration are being placed under the auspices of the Membership committee.

2. Creation of an Audit committee, at the request of current and past Treasurers.

Other updates:

VALL has adopted the “Private” list-serv policy as required by AALL. All members in good standing will be added to the list-serv by the administrator. Others may request to be added to the list-serv, but cannot be added without administrator approval. We consider the list-serv a member benefit; additions outside of VALL will be very rare.

Copyright and discussion forum statements for Wiki and VALLTalk are forthcoming. The draft statements were distributed at the business meeting and will be posted on the Wiki today. Please submit any comments to me by Tuesday, November 15, 2011.

Growth

Meetings:

The joint program with VLA was a wonderful experience. I learned a great deal working with Lisa Varga (VLA CEO and Conference Committee Chair), Matthew Todd (VLA President) and the conference committee as they planned the conference. Matthew and Lisa each expressed an interest in partnering again next year. We think a less frequent formal partnership would be best for VALL, but I assured them both that VALL’s partnership did not end at the stroke of 4:00 p.m. on Friday, October 28. The VLA conference is an excellent forum for VALL members’ specialized knowledge. We can help improve legal information literacy by sharing our knowledge with librarians across the state. Please plan to submit program proposals for VLA’s next conference.

In the coming months, I will work with the Programs Committee to develop a strategy for maintaining communications with proper contacts at national and local chapters of library associations, such as LLSDC, SLA, VASLA and VLA. A programs page will be added to the VALL Wiki, which will be updated with links and information concerning program/presentation opportunities.

Membership:

As of today, VALL has 120 members in good standing. Each member has been added to the list-serv and has received or will receive a copy of the directory. The membership committee has done a phenomenal job with outreach, follow up and with the directory itself. I sincerely appreciate Chris Vassey’s initiative and leadership in her role as committee chair. Lisa Reinhard and Cathy Palombi have also actively contributed to the committee; thank you both for all of your contributions.

Thank you again for this opportunity to serve.

Michele Gernhardt

VLA/VALL Conference Oct. 27-28, 2011

The joint conference was held at the Renaissance Portsmouth Hotel & Waterfront Conference Center

Photographs by Ben Almoite

Conference attendees were able to enjoy this view from their hotel

The Port Towne Magic Jazz Band at the conference's Grand Opening ceremony

Right after the ribbon cutting, with VLA President Matt Todd, Rebecca K. Miller and VLA Past President John A. Moorman

Eager librarians waiting to enter the exhibit hall

VLA President Matt Todd, with Keynote Speaker Rebecca Kamen

At the Opening General Session: Elizabeth Tai, Diantha McCauley, VALL President Michele Gernhardt, and VALL Vice-President/President Elect Suzanne B. Corriell

Portsmouth Mayor Kenneth I. White speaks at the Opening General Session


Keynote Speaker Rebecca Kamen, Professor of Art at Northern Virginia Community College


Printed book turned into artform by one of keynote speaker Rebecca Kamen's art students


From The Legally Literate Librarian session: Greg Stoner, Williams Mullen; Terry Long, VA State Law Library; and Jeanne Ullian, Williams Mullen


From the Conference Social: VALL President Michele Gernhardt and Ben Almoite, from the VA State Law Library


Librarians know how to have a good time at the conference social!


President Michele Gernhardt leads the VALL Business Meeting


The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum -- one of the local attractions conference attendees were able to enjoy





Lovely house in Olde Towne Portsmouth

Gone With The Wind:

The Literary Legal Complexities of a Bestselling Novel

By Donna Bausch

“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind...”

Author Ellen Brown assured her VLA audience that she went to law school because she wanted to become a law librarian. Music to my ears. After graduating from the University of Richmond, and faced with significant law school loans, she practiced law at Hunton & Williams, Dominion Virginia Power and the Attorney General’s Office. Her passion for books eventually led her to open a rare book business and write for the publication Fine Books and Collections. On a visit to interview John Wiley, the world’s foremost collector of Gone With the Wind memorabilia, she recognized a gap in the scholarship, realizing that she would like to read a book that would tell the story of GWTW, the book itself.

Brown and Wiley decided to chronicle the legal history of the novel. Not an easy task. Mitchell’s papers, though housed at the University of Georgia, remain tightly controlled by the powerful Mitchell Estate. Mitchell has but a single living heir, an unmarried nephew in his 70’s. However, the Estate boasts a full panoply of lawyers to protect the interests of the Mitchell legacy. Brown and Wiley were the first authors granted permission to access Mitchell’s business papers. In addition, they traveled to archives and libraries all over the country in their quest to create an accurate chronology of the legal history of the book.

Margaret Mitchell’s masterpiece continues to elude the respect it deserves. It won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award and lost the Nobel Prize only to Pearl S. Buck.

How did lowly Margaret Mitchell land a book deal? There is the apocryphal fairy tale version of the story and then there is the truth. In the fairy tale, Harold Latham, prominent MacMillan editor discovers unknown housewife Mitchell’s manuscript. Latham was happy to let this version be believed, but in reality a young female Macmillan editor named Lois Cole was responsible. Mitchell’s publishers were disdainful and disrespectful of her. Mitchell garnered only $50,000 from the movie rights to the book.

An interesting aspect of the history of GWTW is the role of Stevens Mitchell, Margaret Mitchell’s brother, an estate and trust attorney with no experience in publishing, but the only attorney Margaret was willing to trust. From the time of her book deal forward, Mitchell’s life was completely overtaken by the book’s success and others attempting to capitalize on it. She felt exploited and was one of the earliest authors to assert rights to her intellectual property. The positions she took, though unsubstantiated when made, eventually became the law.

One example is the sequel. There was a rumor that a reader could send $1 to Macmillan and the “real” final chapter of GWTW would be sent to you. This was at a time when the price of the entire book was $3. Everyone wanted to know what had happened to Scarlett and Rhett. Unauthorized sequels abounded. There were contests to write a sequel and the winning entry posited an absurd kidnapping plot. Stevens Mitchell stood firm and the law of copyright eventually followed. No unauthorized sequels.

An even bigger issue was international copyright. GWTW was even more popular abroad than in the U.S. It was translated into countless languages. Technically, Macmillan owned the foreign rights, but decided to return them to Mitchell. This was a complex, burdensome mess. The U.S. was not then a signatory to the Berne Convention on Copyright. There had not been great demand for American authors’ works abroad, but conversely, our publishers could pirate foreign works with impunity. Mitchell ended up spending almost all her profit from the book on this fight. Her efforts eventually led to the 1950 move of the U.S. to join the Berne Convention.

Mitchell died childless in 1949. Her book was her child. Her litigious estate continued her fiercely protective maternal stance. Most books about Mitchell have been less than sympathetic. Brown urges us to view Mitchell as a strong southern woman who stood up for her rights at a time in history when this was not appreciated by the powerful. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the book and the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. It’s time we give Margaret Mitchell and GWTW their due.

The words of Scarlett’s father about his beloved Tara can be applied to the book itself:

“Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for ’tis the only thing in this world that lasts.”

If you were not able to hear Ellen Brown, “As God is My Witness”…you missed a wonderful program! Thanks to Gail Zwirner for proposing this fascinating program.

And, if you love GWTW as much as I do, run, don’t walk to your local bookstore and purchase:
Brown, Ellen F. and John Wiley. Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood. Lanham: Taylor Trade, 2011.

Measuring the Soft Stuff

by Lara Dresser

Cynthia Hart, Virtual Librarian at Virginia Beach Public Library, gave an engaging presentation on combining social media strategies and web and marketing plans to increase a library’s Return on Investment (ROI) by building awareness, increasing customer satisfaction, and lowering costs.

It was not surprising to hear that socially engaged companies are more successful, people want to engage with companies on social media, and ‘good brands’ can evoke emotional responses. Suggestions included using social media to manage your brand, tell your story, advertise your services, and to simply be part of the conversation.

The discussion of social metrics focused on the importance of identifying your goals and finding ways to capture and quantify information that is generally qualitative, such as buzz, reach, sentiment, influence, and engagement, to determine if you’re meeting those goals.

A variety of online tools were presented, such as Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, Twitalyzer, and Webfollow, that allow you to measure various web and social media events. These tools give you access to valuable data such as downloads/uploads, time spent on pages, ratings, followers, subscribers, retweets, testimonials, ratings, reviews, shares, and click-throughs.

In addition to being entertaining, this presentation opened my eyes to the dizzying diversity of online tools that can be used in powerful and creative ways to promote libraries. It is exciting to imagine what’s next in this surprisingly diverse and constantly evolving intersection.