Faculty Services: Librarian-Supervised Students as Research Assistants in the Law Library

Law Library Journal

Volumn 91, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 279-290

  Richman, Harriet ^a   Windsor, Steve ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON   (United States)

^b NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0033465269     PISSN: 00239283     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. By "support" we mean any research endeavor that the professor does not undertake personally. This would include both minor requests, such as locating case law on a specific question, and major requests, such as assistance in cite checking, locating materials for footnotes in support of the professor's theories, and participating in writing a treatise or portions thereof. Essentially what we mean to include in the concept of research support is anything that a professor traditionally hires his or her own assistants to perform.
2. See Rita Millican & Danny P. Wallace, Research Needs in Academic Law Libraries, 84 L. LIBR. J. 421 (1992); Richard A. Danner, From the President: A Research Agenda, 21 AALL NEWSL. 287 (1990).
3. See Rita Millican & Danny P. Wallace, Research Needs in Academic Law Libraries, 84 L. LIBR. J. 421 (1992); Richard A. Danner, From the President: A Research Agenda, 21 AALL NEWSL. 287 (1990).
4. See also Jon S. Schultz, The Faculty Services Department: Fine-Tuning the Research Engine, 83 L. LIBR. J. 771 (1992) (discussing the implementation and the first five years' experience of the University of Houston Law Center Library's Department of Faculty Services).
5. See Pamela B. Gann, In Memoriam: Richard M. Nixon, 44 DUKE L.J. 437, 437 (1994).
6. See Martha B. Barefoot, The UNC Law Library: 1945-95, 73 N.C. L. REV. 758, 759, 770 (1995) (relating the problems encountered by the UNC law library in the late 1940s and early 1950s in using student help, necessitated by the rapid growth of the faculty and student body in the post-World War II years).
7. Rowena U. Compton, The Student Assistant, 23 L. LIER. J. 24 (1930).
8. Id. at 25-26.
9. Id. at 24.
10. More specifically, these questions asked for the approximate student enrollment, the number of faculty, the number of full-time librarians, the number of part-time librarians, and the number of other non-law student workers. See infra Appendix: Results of Questionnaire Sent to Law Library Directors.
11. These questions asked for the number of law students employed by the law library, the reasons for not employing law students (if no students were employed), the tasks assigned to law student-employees (if the students were employed), the quality of the law student-employee work, and the method of providing research support for those faculty members who did not hire their own research assistants. See infra Appendix: Results of Questionnaire Sent to Law Library Directors. These statistics are calculated by student enrollment with the exceptions of questions 8 and 10 which are tabulated by results.
12. See also Katherine E. Malmquist, Managing Student Assistants in the Law Library, 83 L. LIBR. J. 301, 301 (1991) (stating that for the most part students "are assigned to do the monotonous jobs of shelving, picking up after the patrons, checking items in and out, and working the long evenings and weekend hours that most of the library staff have off).
13. We use the term "legal research" not to imply a law degree, a delicate issue in law librarianship, but to denote experience. See Compton, supra, note 6 at 26 (arguing that, due to the ever-evolving nature of the law, law librarians should be trained in the law as well as library science in order to assist students wishing to avail themselves of the library's resources). See also Christine A. Brock, Law Libraries and Librarians: A Revisionist History or More Than You Ever Wanted to Know, 67 L. LIBR. J. 325, 348, 353-355 (1974); Librarian: Who's Entitled to the Title? AALL SPECTRUM, June 1997, at 12.
14. We use the term "legal research" not to imply a law degree, a delicate issue in law librarianship, but to denote experience. See Compton, supra, note 6 at 26 (arguing that, due to the ever-evolving nature of the law, law librarians should be trained in the law as well as library science in order to assist students wishing to avail themselves of the library's resources). See also Christine A. Brock, Law Libraries and Librarians: A Revisionist History or More Than You Ever Wanted to Know, 67 L. LIBR. J. 325, 348, 353-355 (1974); Librarian: Who's Entitled to the Title? AALL SPECTRUM, June 1997, at 12.
15. We use the term "legal research" not to imply a law degree, a delicate issue in law librarianship, but to denote experience. See Compton, supra, note 6 at 26 (arguing that, due to the ever-evolving nature of the law, law librarians should be trained in the law as well as library science in order to assist students wishing to avail themselves of the library's resources). See also Christine A. Brock, Law Libraries and Librarians: A Revisionist History or More Than You Ever Wanted to Know, 67 L. LIBR. J. 325, 348, 353-355 (1974); Librarian: Who's Entitled to the Title? AALL SPECTRUM, June 1997, at 12.
16. Compton, supra, note 6 at 26. It should be noted that this combination was made for the benefit of students requesting research assistance. However, this is a distinction without a difference to the extent that the research needs of faculty, while potentially more sophisticated, will not differ dramatically from the research needs of students.
17. Id.
18. See Martha J. Dragich, Organizational Structure in Law Libraries: A Critique and Models for Change, 81 L. LIBR. J. 69, 76 (1989) (citing writers who have "questioned the ability of law libraries to cope with change).
19. See Millican & Wallace, supra note 2, at 429 (citing a survey in which 51% of the respondents felt that "the integration of librarians' skills into the research mission of the law school should be addressed").
20. See Richard A. Danner, Managing the Law Library in the 1990's, 81 L. LIBR. J. 181, 184 (1989) (citing Divay, Ducas & Michaud-Oystryk, Faculty Perspectives of Librarians at the University of Manitoba, 48 C. & RES. LIBR. 27, 34 (1987).
21. See Richard A. Danner, Managing the Law Library in the 1990's, 81 L. LIBR. J. 181, 184 (1989) (citing Divay, Ducas & Michaud-Oystryk, Faculty Perspectives of Librarians at the University of Manitoba, 48 C. & RES. LIBR. 27, 34 (1987).
22. See Maureen F. Fitzgerald, What's Wrong with Legal Research and Writing? Problems and Solutions, 88 L. LIBR. J. 247 (1996) (examining the shortcomings of legal research in law school curricula); Robert C. Berring & Kathleen Vanden Heuvel, Legal Research: Should Students Learn It or Wing It? 81 L. LIBR. J. 431, 442 (1989) (remarking that first-year law students typically feel that their legal research training has left them unprepared and misinformed).
23. See Maureen F. Fitzgerald, What's Wrong with Legal Research and Writing? Problems and Solutions, 88 L. LIBR. J. 247 (1996) (examining the shortcomings of legal research in law school curricula); Robert C. Berring & Kathleen Vanden Heuvel, Legal Research: Should Students Learn It or Wing It? 81 L. LIBR. J. 431, 442 (1989) (remarking that first-year law students typically feel that their legal research training has left them unprepared and misinformed).
24. The decline in faculty use, in the authors' opinion, is due to a more computer-proficient professor. However, the authors have no data to support this.
25. Totals exceed 121 because some law libraries reported utilizing more than one method.