New VALL Members

Welcome to the newest VALL members listed below:

Eileen Chandhoke – Odin Feldman Pittleman, PC

Kelsey Cox – Virginia State Law Library

Sarah Drye – Student member

John Holtzclaw – National Center for State Courts

Tiffany Jenkins – Troutman Sanders

Geraldine Kalim – George Mason University Law Library

Audrey Lynn – Regent University Law Library

Eleanor Mullens – Student member

Daniel Turner – University of Richmond School of Law Library

Alex Zhang – Washington & Lee University School of Law

In and Around VALL: Sarah New & Kate Boudoris

This school year, the Arthur J. Morris Law Library at the University of Virginia welcomed two new librarians, Sarah New and Kate Boudouris. 

Sarah New

Sarah joined the library as its web services librarian, bringing extensive experience in digital resources management, web site design and management, and reference services in academic libraries.  

She was previously a web services librarian at the University of Maryland Baltimore County Library.  Sarah holds an M.S. in Library Science from the Catholic University of America and a Masters in Geographic Information Systems from the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Since beginning work at UVA, Sarah has been busy finding opportunities to improve the usability and accessibility of our website and occasionally assisting faculty members with GIS-related research.  

Kate Boudoris

Kate Boudouris is the library’s new research, instruction and outreach librarian. 

She first joined the library in 2016, with a focus on digitization projects and reference services. Since transitioning to her new role, Kate has continued to provide reference service, while also teaching advanced legal research and spearheading the library’s outreach efforts. 

She previously practiced law with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville and with the law firm of Spiegel & McDiarmid in Washington, D.C.  Kate holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and is working toward her M.S.I.S. at the University of Tennessee.

In and Around VALL: Thomas Walker

Submitted by Anthony Brown Ikwueme

Thomas Walker is the new associate librarian for collection management with the Ehrhorn Law Library at Liberty University School of Law. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Music with emphases in Double Bass Performance, Music Composition, and Media Studies; additionally he holds, a Master of Science in Library Science from Clarion University and is completing his doctoral dissertation in Higher Education Administration at Marshall University. 

Prior to joining the world of academia, Thomas was a television news director and worked for NBC. He has also freelanced for MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, and NASA.  

His experience with copyright covers three major areas of user (television news), owner (composer and musician), and lender (librarian).  He has presented on copyright and recorded media, copyright issues with printed scores and copyright and music collections in the modern library. 

Thomas was a member of the Copyright Compliance Team at Marshall University; a member of the Copyright Committee with the Association for Recorded Sound, and the Music Library Association.  In addition to his committee work and presentations, Thomas worked directly with Dr. Júlio Alves on copyright clearance for several of his publications as well as assisted with mechanical rights for several Marshall University recordings.   He also served as an administrator for the Marshall University Institutional Repository, Marshall Digital Scholar, where he worked exclusively with authors and publishers to obtain republishing rights for their scholarly output, which he feels, is paramount for the modern library.

AALL Registration Grant

Submitted by Joyce Manna Janto

Every year AALL gives a full registration grant to several chapters.  This year, VALL is one of these chapters.  The only stipulation on the grant is that it is to go to a newer member of AALL.  They definition of “newer member” is someone who has been an AALL member 5 years or less. 

If you are interested please down load application form here: Application Form

Indicate on the application that you are applying for the registration grant. The applications should be emailed to me no later than 5:00 p.m. on Friday, April 5th.  We must notify AALL by April 15th who the grant recipient is so we cannot extend this deadline.

VALL Spring Meeting, May 3, 2019

The meeting will be held at Hunton Andrews Kurth, downtown Richmond, VA. The deadline for registering is April, 26, 2019. The registration form is available under VALL Meetings on this blog. Don't miss this opportunity to network with colleagues and witness the installation of new board members.

Bethany J. Ochal Award Recipent

Congratulations to VALL's own recently retired Terry Long for being a recipient of the Bethany J. Ochal Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession!

This award is given to a Government Law Libraries Special Interest Section member who has made a significant contribution to law librarianship and who is nearing the end of his or her library career or who has recently retired. For more information about the award and past recipients click here: Ochal

Terry will receive the award at the 2019 business meeting of the Government Law Libraries SIS at AALL in Washington, DC, July 13 - 17, 2019.

In and Around VALL: Kelsey Cox

submitted by Gail Warren

On February 25, 2019, Kelsey I. Cox joined the Virginia State Law Library as our new librarian.

Kelsey is from Chicago, Illinois, and currently lives downtown in Richmond.  In her free time, she enjoys practicing yoga, painting, playing the piano, and hiking.

Kelsey attended Lake Forest College, graduating in 2015 with a BA in Political Science and minors in Islamic World Studies and Legal Studies.  She earned the distinction of Phi Beta Kappa and was her school’s first participant in its 3+3 BA/JD accelerated law program.  Kelsey graduated from Chicago-Kent College of Law in May of 2017 and is licensed to practice law in Illinois.  Kelsey also holds a MLIS degree from the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee.

In her role as librarian, Kelsey will be sharing responsibility for staffing the Reference Desk and providing professional legal reference and research assistance to judicial branch staff, attorneys and the broader legal community, as well as members of the public who call or send us email messages.

She arrived on her first day of work with her own copy of A Guide to Legal Research in Virginia (2017) in hand, so she is familiar with the “ins” and “outs” of Virginia primary and secondary sources of legal information.  

Kelsey’s experience working on metadata projects with the Law Library of Congress to make US Treaties and other International Agreements available to the public has already proven to be invaluable as she assumed responsibility for our law library’s participation in the Legal Information Archive.  Kelsey will be identifying, harvesting and ingesting judicial branch publications and other items for the Legal Information Archive, which migrated from OCLC’s digital archive platform to Preservica in 2018.  Later this year, Kelsey also will begin working on content for the Virginia Judicial System Court Self-Help website, which is hosted by our law library on behalf of the Virginia Access to Justice Commission.

Please join us in extending a warm welcome to Kelsey and look for her at the VALL meeting in May at Hunton Andrews Kurth!