Monday, January 29, 2018
In and Aroung VALL
Congratulations to Amy Wharton, who will take over as director of the University of Virginia Law School Library on February 1. Amy was previously the library's research and web services law librarian, and VALL president from 2013 - 2014. Happy retirement to Taylor Fitchett, the outgoing library director.
Cheryl Jackson, the manager of information and resource services at the Virginia Division of Legislative Services, is now deputy clerk for strategic operations at the House Clerk's office. Congratulations to Cheryl! Ginny Edwards is now the director of the Reference Center at the Virginia Division of Legislative Services, and a new member of VALL. Welcome, Ginny!
John Scherrer is the reference & outreach services librarian at George Mason University Law Library and a new member of VALL. Welcome, John!
Longtime VALL member, Deborah Elkins, retired from the Virginia Lawyers Weekly, on Sept. 1, 2017. Deborah worked at VLW for more than 31 years, and her colleagues said it best in this tribute to her: Elkins Happy retirement, Deborah!
Friday, January 26, 2018
AALL – Austin, Texas – July 15-19, 2017
by Jane Harrison
The theme of this year’s American Association of Law
Libraries annual conference, Forgo the
Status Quo was mirrored in several
programs I attended.
Among them, and two I will discuss briefly in this article
are: Identifying Competitive Intelligence
in Public Filings: 30 Ways to Find
the What, Where, Why and How and
Moneyball for Lawyers: How Legal Analytics is Transforming the Business and
Practice of Law.
In Identifying,
presenters Agnes Mattis [Skadden Arps], Carolyn Hersch [ Ropes Gray} and
Christopher Walunas [Intelligize] offered their insights on the content and
review of SEC filings with a bent toward Competitive Intelligence. It was
suggested that it takes, on average, 90 minutes to review a 10-K. All IPO Table of Contents are the same. Highlights on 10-K’s for many Competitive Intelligence reports are:
Overviews, Section 1a – Risk Factors, Section 7 Mergers, Deals & Acquisitions,
and Section 8 – Financials and the ‘top of the list’ go-to’s when preparing
Competitive Intelligence reports.
The Moneyball
session provided the insights of Owen Byrd [Lex Machina], Peter Geovanes
[Winston Strawn] and Jean O’Grady [DLA Piper].
Byrd outlined how Lex Machina analytics can serve as a catalyst on both
sides of the equation. Geovanes
highlighted services he and his team use in gathering needed data to keep the
firm moving forward. Among his
suggestions: Altryx and Thought Spot.
O’Grady noted Manzama ‘Signals’.
Described more fully in a blog she posted in December 2016, “A company
called Manzama is developing
Signals and working with a handful of law firms to develop and refine
algorithms which will tease out patterns and momentum from exabytes
of news stories, public records, court filings and social
media posts to generate predictive signals. These custom “signals”
will alert law firms to leading indicators of risk and opportunity
for business development.” When she left the podium she told us her takeaway
was: Play a role in driving analytics into practice. Are elements of Moneyball the Crystal Ball of the business and practice of
law? Surely I do not know the answer. I
would suggest we researchers, and the businesses designing these products would
like to some degree for the answer to be ‘yes’.
Are Analytics the tea leaves of change? It would appear conferences such
as AALL lean in full support of ‘yes’.
The Exhibit floor, so many vendors to visit, so little
time. Or at least it seemed that
way. For example, SMI – Social Media
Information. In brief, they’re about
locating and preserving social media content.
Selecting a jury? Making a new hire? They may be able to help. The genesis of e-books in our collections and
how the format will have a place in our institutions were part of the showcases
at Lexis and ThomsonReuters.
Lots was learned.
Extraneous facts new to me: In
March 2017 Harvard Law School announced it will accept GRE scores in its
admission process. Since beginning this
article, The George Washington University Law School has jumped on the GRE
score bandwagon.
In Canada, Paralegals can represent clients in court, albeit
in a limited capacity. Washington State
non-lawyers can perform legal functions.
In-between programming and in and at vendor-sponsored events
there was lots of conversation. Sure,
about Austin. The city’s slogan: ‘Keep
Austin Weird’ is emblazoned on virtually any product you can imagine. The city has since the conference been
described to me by a UT-Austin grad as the ‘blueberry in the tomato soup’. Aside from interest in the culture of Austin
– you could not escape the music – nor would you want to, the food, and, yes
- the bat tours.
Two issues in the forefront of conversation with several
people: Catalogs and Business
Information Reports [BIR] Several
libraries are looking to change or are in need of replacing their catalogs. There was lots
of dialog about who uses what and the plusses and minuses. The BIRs, where to find content and how to
construct the content aside, lots of talk about meeting the expectations of our
constituents. While the wheels of
justice may grind exceedingly slow, that
is not as many reading this can attest, always the case in the increasing
demand in the business of business development.
I am tremendously grateful to VALL for awarding me grants to
attend the AALL conference this year. I
am equally grateful to my employer for allowing the time to attend and
participate in AALL. I have my list of
follow-ups following the conference.
They include contacting people, evaluating some new sites, and, I trust,
in due time implementing some of these new elements to benefit the development
of the profession, and the organization where I work.
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
The Badass Librarians of JEOPARDY!
Read about VALL's own Ben Almoite: American Libraries Nov/Dec 2017
Thursday, September 28, 2017
VLA Council Meetings Highlight Sept 15, 2017
submitted by Terry Long, VALL Liaison
·
VLA’s
Jobline is profitable
·
Membership
dues are over the projected amount this year; VLA has 934 members
·
VLA issued a
statement regarding the demonstrations in Charlottesville in August.
·
VLA members
need to be encouraged to vote; as of 14 September only 26% of membership has
voted.
·
The next
annual meeting of the VLA Professional Associates Forum will be 21 May 2018 at
the Newport News Marriott. Planning has
already begun.
·
VLA’s annual
conference in Norfolk has 564 people registered.
o Dine arounds have had a great response (there
is a VALL sponsored one)
o Prince Books (across the street from The
Main) will sell copies of Hidden Figures
by Margot Shetterly at the conference to be autographed by her following her
keynote address. Anyone who comes into their shop with their conference badge
on will receive a discount on their purchase.
o Scholarship Committee is conducting a raffle
to benefit their fund. Tickets can be purchased online.
·
The Legislative
Committee is working on questions to submit to the gubernatorial candidates.
Their responses will be posted on VLA’s website.
Intellectual Freedom Committee wants to be
proactive in the future – see a need to get out in the community and talk about
freedom of speech, etc.
From Terry Long:
This conference is
co-sponsored by VALL and yet, as of the 15th only 6 members were
registered. VALL members please send in your registrations NOW http://www.vla.org/2017-vla-annual-conference-portal . If the Marriott is sold out, there are other
hotels nearby. Come for the day, if you can’t get away for two. The VALL
Business meeting is on Thursday and there is a VALL Dine Around that evening
with Ron Wheeler. Come join the fun. Learn something new from non-law librarians.
Let’s all work together on areas of common interest and make contacts with colleagues whom
we can lean on to help us when we do not have the resource at our respective
library and, we may be able to help when they are in need.
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