CS-SIS Blog

The CS-SIS is pleased to announce that Richard Leiter is this year’s winner of the CS-SIS Kenneth J. Hirsh Award.

This award honors a CS-SIS member who has made outstanding contributions to the SIS, to AALL, and who is well regarded for his or her service to the profession. The inaugural award recipient was Ken Hirsh, in whose honor the award is named.

Richard Leiter is currently Director of the Schmid Law Library and Professor of Law at the University of Nebraska. Rich has a long history with CS-SIS, serving as president when it was Automation and Scientific Development SIS and as the editor of the SIS’s Automatome Newsletter. He also is host of CALI’s “Law Librarian Conversations” podcast. Rich chaired the LLJ and AALL Spectrum Committee and is currently Vice President of the Mid-America Association of Law Libraries. In addition, he has been writing the “Database Report” for Legal Information Alert and won the Joseph L. Andrews Bibliographical Award for his book National Survey of State Laws. Rich is also the co-founder with Roy Mersky of the Spirit of Law Librarianship Award and co-author of both editions of the book, Spirit of Law Librarianship

Emily Feldman, AALL Advocacy Communications Assistant who is working with the White House's Open Government working group, is asking AALL members to contact her with specific types of information and datasets that you’d like to see Federal government  agencies publish. The working group is also very interested in any cross-agency datasets you’d like to see added to Data.gov (e.g., crime data from DOJ/DHS, health data from EPA/HHS).

Some of the suggestions received so far include:

• All historic content that agencies have digitized (presuming that agencies followed the Paperwork Reduction Act and didn’t make exclusive deals)
• All the legislative histories that have been digitized by the Department of Justice Library
• Dataset on "charges of discrimination" filed from the EEOC

Are there other information holdings or datasets that you’d like to see added? Please email Emily (efeldman@aall.org) the title and name of the publishing agency by close of business today,  Wednesday, March 17.

AALL is asking for feedback on specific issues related to the AALL annual meeting.  The AALL Annual Meeting Review Special Committee is taking a comprehensive look at the AALL Annual Meeting and is soliciting comments from AALL members on an online form that it has developed.  The committee values everyone's viewpoints and needs input as it works to develop recommendations for Annual Meeting. The comment form will be available through Weds. March 17.

Richard Leiter, host of "The Law Librarian" on BlogTalkRadio, recently announced that the radio show has changed its name to "Law Librarian Conversations" and will be hosted by CALI from now on. The show will continue to provide stimulating conversation and discussion of key issues facing law librarians and the world of legal bibliography.

This Friday, March 5, the inaugural episode of "Law Librarian Conversations" will be broadcast on CALI's classcaster at http://lawlibcon.classcaster.net.  As always, listeners have  the opportunity to listen live and participate in the discussion in the live chat room; past episodes will be available on iTunes.  Guests include Margie Maes who will be sharing developments in the world of preservation.  You can register online and automatically add a reminder to your calendar by clicking here.