Nov. 20, 2013                                                                                                                   Vol. 5 Issue 3/4
 
NELLCO E-Newsletter
Implementing Innovative Ideas
In This Issue
NELLCO Member Spotlight
Website/Blog of the Month!
Director's Corner
NELLCO's NYTimes.com Offer
PALMPrint Update
NELLCO's NYTimes.com Offer
The Name Game
FREE eBook Collection for Members
Nov. is . . .

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University of Hawaii

 Honolulu, HI

NELLCO Affiliate Member

Victoria Szymczak, Director

Blog of the Month
  
From the site:

 

Lawyerist, an online law practice magazine, is edited by Sam Glover.

 

Lawyerist publishes news and information about law practice, including law firm marketing, practice management, technology, career development, law school success, legal ethics, how to start a law practice, and more.

 

Recent posts include:

Check it out!

Does your staff need grantwriting skills? As a NELLCO member you can get them for free!

NELLCO member libraries that can host a 2-day grant writing or grant management workshop will receive two free seats for staff to attend. That's a value of almost $1000.00!     

gwusa

NELLCO has teamed up with Grant Writing USA to offer these workshops across the US. Host institutions only need to provide space and a local contact person. We do the rest. Interested? Let us know!
Streaming Video!
 Anne Acton
Swank Digital Campus! Take a look. View the recorded demo at your convenience. Swank offers a great service that librarians can provide to support their faculty!

Bepress Launches Law Review Commons

 

Bepress is pleased to announce a new portal for open-access legal scholarship: the Law Review Commons. The site brings together a growing collection of law reviews and legal journals in an easily browsable and searchable format. It contains both current issues and archival content spanning over 100 years from nearly 150 law reviews. 

  

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Quick Links

NELLCO 

LIPA Legal Information Preservation Alliance 

MALLCO Mid-America Law Library Consortium 

LLMC  Law Library Microform Consortium  

ICOLC International Coalition of Library Consortia

ACL Association for Collaborative Leadership

ASAE American Society of Association Executives

Director's Corner

 

 -NELLCO Fall 2013 Board Meeting

 -Crowdsourcing Open Access 

 

On Oct. 17-18, 2013 the NELLCO Board of Directors met in Philadelphia, where Board President Paul George hosted us at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The meeting focused primarily on planning. The Planning Committee, composed of  Sarah Hooke Lee (Northeastern), Meg Hayden (MA Trial Courts), Chris Hepler (UMaine), Pat Newcombe (Western New England), Suzanne Wones (Harvard), and me, reported out to the full Board of Directors on the results of our weekend retreat in Sept.

 

One of the most significant factors that determined the planning method we decided to employ was the very rapid rate of change that our profession is currently experiencing. The scenario planning process recognizes that, while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for possible futures.

 

Through a facilitated, iterative process the committee was able to discern two primary drivers that require our attention in mapping out a plan. To uncover these drivers, we began by listing out all of the factors that are currently affecting law libraries. As you can imagine, the list was long and diverse.

 

We began culling our list by considering each item with respect to two characteristics: its predictability and its importance to NELLCO. Our goal was to identify those drivers which were both unpredictable (i.e. beyond our control) and important to NELLCO. The theory behind scenario planning is that those things that are predictable can be planned for and managed, and those things that aren't important to the organization don't matter for planning purposes. Organizations need to be positioned to weather unpredictability. For NELLCO, those unpredictable and important drivers are the economy and the practice of law

 

With these drivers as our backdrop, we established 4 possible scenarios, and teased out 6 specific areas of need for NELLCO to be well-positioned to succeed in any possible future: 

  • Find common ground
  • Incubate innovation
  • Expand Service
  • Provide Training
  • Broker Expertise
  • Broaden Collaborations 

In the afternoon session, Board Members were assigned to one of six groups, according to the areas above. Each group did some creative brainstorming using a lateral thinking tool called random words. This resulted in six lists of ideas from which the final plan will be created.

 

My task now is to synthesize the lists and all of the results of this planning effort into an actionable plan for Board approval. That effort is in progress.  

 

Crowdsourcing Open Access

A noteworthy open access initiative is underway in the humanities and social sciences disciplines. Knowledge Unlatched (KU) has launched a pilot project to test a model in which the cost of first publication (Title Cost) of an e-book is borne by interested libraries, each of which pays a portion of that cost. The e-book publisher agrees that once the Title Cost is reached, the publication will be made freely available via the Open Access in European Networks (OAPEN) website with no DRM.

 

The pilot will consist of 28, frontlist titles from well-respected publishers. KU needs 200 libraries to participate in the effort to 'unlatch' this content. At that level of participation, each library would pay just $1,680.00 for the 28 titles, an average of just $60.00 per title.

 

This is a bold and creative project, and a model for deep collaboration among libraries globally. Consider being a leader in this effort. Libraries that participate in the pilot will have several advantages, such as participation in the governance of KU, and membership fees waived for a period following the pilot. If you can't participate, this one's worth watching!

 

Yours In Collaboration,

Tracy L. Thompson

Executive Director 

NELLCO Symposium 2014 - Eliminate Sludge! 
The dates have been set (March 13-14, 2014), the venue secured (Albany Law School) and the theme established (Shifting our Focus: From the Rat Race to Results!). We're thrilled to announce that Jody Thompson, author of Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It and Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It, will serve as our keynote speaker! Jody will share the Results Only Work
.
Environment (ROWE)
concept with us, and challenge us to think about work in 21st century terms.  She'll also expose how sludge is poisoning the  workplace. You won't want to miss this!
  
The Interest Group Leaders have begun planning their session content. We've got the rooms blocked at the hotels. The caterers are under contract. Now all we need is YOU! Registration will be opening in December and we hope you'll plan to attend. Mark your calendars now and stay tuned!
PALMPrint Update

Preserving America's Legal Materials in Print, PALMPrint, is a joint effort between NELLCO and the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA). More than 60 libraries are participating in this 3-year pilot program. PALMPrint is aimed at developing a model for the collaborative preservation and ownership of a predefined, comprehensive collection of primary, U.S. legal materials at both the state and federal levels.

 

Four libraries (Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Quinnipiac, and Vermont Law School)  have contributed the corpus of the collection, which is housed by W.B. Meyer at their facility in Windsor, CT. In Oct., Meyer made the final pick-up at Vermont Law School. All of the materials are being ingested, and we're working through some anomalies, like items that lack barcodes, items that have barcodes but no records, etc. These should all be resolved by the end of Nov.

 

We're also working on the discovery and access mechanism for the collection. Members of the current working group (which includes Margie Maes (LIPA), Jean Pajerek (Cornell), Tory Trotta (Arizona State) and Tracy Thompson (NELLCO)) met at Meyer in Oct. to work through some of the fine details. The result is that, during the pilot, participating libraries will discover and request materials via a Meyer search portal. That portal is in development and should be ready for use early in 2014. We will provide the URL to all PALMPrint participating libraries, who can then begin to request materials from the collection for use.

 

If you have any questions about PALMPrint or need more information please contact Margie Maes or Tracy Thompson.

NYTimes.com and NELLCO - 1st Deadline Ahead
NELLCO recently announced an offer to make the NYTimes.com available to academic member libraries under the Times' newly developed Academic Site License. Under this agreement, NELLCO will aggregate the FTE count across all participating libraries to achieve the most favorable price per/FTE. NELLCO libraries have the option of participating at the law school only level, or extending participation to others within the institution so that they too can take advantage of the aggregation in order to get their individual cost per FTE down.
  
In order to establish the access by 1/1/2014, we request that you let us know by 12/1/2013 (via the NELLCO website, where you'll also find additional information, including pricing, about this offer) if you wish to participate, and provide the FTE count for your user population. If your library would like to participate in the offer, but only if we reach a particular price tier, please also include that info, along with your FTE, in the comments section.
What's in a name? You tell us! 

We've seen a number of communities engaged in discussions about organizational name changes in recent years. Most of these conversations revolve around the meaning and relevance of words like library, librarians, informational professional, etc. Since I began as Executive Director in 2001, the name of the New England Law Library Consortium, Inc. has been a recurring subject for a very different reason. NELLCO's early roots were regional; firmly ground in New England. However, in the late 90s a shift away from a regional organization began, and a decade and a half later it shows no signs of slowing.

 

So what's wrong with having a name that reflects your organization's roots? Well, there are several points worth making here:

  1. It doesn't reflect the true nature of our current organization's reach to potential members, partners, stakeholders, funders, etc.
  2. It creates false perceptions
  3. It requires clarification
  4. It may alienate members or potential members outside of the region

All of these may lead to missed opportunities. Recognizing some of these issues, in the mid-2000s the Board of Directors approved a formal change, adopting NELLCO as our Doing Business As (DBA) name. While that was a step in the right direction, we still struggle with aligning our intention to be an international organization (we now have members in 3 countries outside of the U.S.) with the perception that we're a regional organization. So the naming issue has come back onto the table as part of ongoing planning process. The NELLCO Executive Committee is evaluating the issue and will make a recommendation to the Full Board in March.

 

We invite you to participate in the conversation in two ways. First, please complete this poll. It's just two quick questions that will give us more solid data. Second, to help get our creative juices flowing we're holding a contest! We invite you to submit your name ideas in 2 categories:

  1. Names keeping the NELLCO acronym (e.g. Non-Exclusive Law Library Cooperative)
  2. Names without regard for the NELLCO acronym (e.g. Collaboration sans Hesitation)

You get the idea. Give us your best effort! Winners will be announced at NELLCO Symposium 2014 and will receive a free registration for NELLCO Symposium 2015!

 

*The NELLCO Board of Directors has the responsibility to authorize any formal change of name of the corporation. Winning entries may or may not be approved and adopted by the Board of Directors.

 

Facet LIS eBook Collection Free to Members
NELLCO recently acquired a collection of 70, library and information science-related e-books published by Facet Publishing and delivered via the EBSCOHost platform. This collection was acquired with special program funding as an added benefit of your NELLCO membership.
  
Are you being asked to take on a  new role in your library? Considering carving out a new path and need to add to your skill set? Or just realizing you wish had taken [fill-in-the-blank] during your MLS studies? With titles such as Practical Cataloguing, Project Management and Being an Information Innovator, you may find just what you need in this collection. You can get more information, including access details and MARC records, at the NELLCO website. Sign in as a member, then click on For Members>e-resources, trials and offers>free to members.
Nov. is National Alzheimer's Awareness Month!

The Alzheimer's Association maintains the Green-Field Library  in Chicago, IL; the largest library devoted to Alzheimer's and dementia research. 

 

Fast facts from the Association's website:

 

 

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