Wisconsin State Law Library

Once again the newsletter team has asked me to summarize our many and varied accomplishments over the past year. As usual, our staff has been busy adding to, organizing and improving access to our collections, responding to your questions, and teaching locally and around the state. We’ve also had the pleasure of cheering for several of our award-winning staff, the sadness in saying good-bye to long-time staff, and the opportunity to welcome new colleagues.

The Collection

• Worked on the implementation of Electronic Resource Management as a feature of our online catalog – which brings full-text electronic journals and other legal materials to our users via the internet. Many staff have worked very hard to iron out the technical aspects, verify licensing agreements, add over 4000 new journal records to our catalog, and test the end result – which for our library card holders will be the ability to link remotely and directly to the full-text of many law reviews, legal journals and newspapers, general interest periodicals, medical journals, historic legal texts, and government publications such as the Federal Register, which are provided by information vendors including HeinOnline and LegalTrac. We hope to have this “ready for prime time” very soon – so look for more news about this service in upcoming newsletters.

• Spent many hours on the dreaded “Claim Report”, which is library lingo for all the pocket parts, supplements, journal issues, and the like that we are supposed to receive but don’t. I am always amazed that, although we get large bins of mail every day, there seems to be an equally large number of items that show up in our reports as “not received.” A big thanks to all of our library staff detectives who spend significant time making sure we are getting everything we pay for!

• Initiated standing order programs with both National Business Institute, Inc. (NBI) and Lorman Education Services in order to add a variety of their current Wisconsin CLE course workbooks to our collection. A few recent additions include: How to get your expert testimony admitted into evidence and Condominium and planned community practice in Wisconsin. We also initiated a new subscription agreement with Thomson West to better manage both the cost and acquisition of the hundreds of subscriptions we purchase from this major legal publisher.

• Added new topics and revised/updated older ones on our Legal Topics webpage, resulting in over 450 topics on a wide variety of legal subjects. This continues to be the most used area of our website.

• Completed a major shift of materials housed in our microform cabinets - due to collection growth – which refutes the popular perception that “it’s all on the Internet.” We continue to purchase and house microfiche in order to preserve and provide access to many types of legal materials, rather than rely on internet websites that may not even exist five or ten years from now.

• Doubled the 2005 total number of pages scanned by our briefs processing team – these highly efficient staffers scanned over 200,000 pages in 2006. Due to the change in the docket number format used for Wisconsin appellate cases, we also had to update the online searching protocols for briefs. We’re happy to report that users may use either the old or new format when searching the UW Law Library’s briefs webpage.

• Accepted 31 new donations to our Prose and Cons collection – 30 novels and one lonely film – so please keep us in mind when weeding your personal movie collections!

Reference and Outreach Services

• Answered over 10,200 questions from a wide variety of users – lawyers, justices, judges, state agency staff, pro se litigants, law librarians, and students. Many of these people hail from all over the country and find us through our website – making us truly a library without walls. This figure is an increase of approximately 1,000 inquiries over last year – and based on the hours that we staff our reference desk, we are now averaging one question every 12 minutes. No wonder our reference staff feels busier – they are!

• Delivered over 16,000 pages of information to our users – via email, fax, and mail.

• Hosted tours for over 180 people from a variety of groups – U.S. Embassy Information Resource Centers staff from over 20 countries ranging from Angola to Vietnam; students from the UW-School of Library and Information Studies and the MATC paralegal program; Wisconsin Dept. of Justice externs; Legislative Audit Bureau and Legislative Fiscal Bureau staff; Wisconsin Department of Corrections records supervisors from around the state; state agency librarians; new court system law clerks and interns; and law firm summer associates.

• Taught 13 classes through our training program and also presented programs around the state for the Wisconsin Library Association, the Manitowoc-Calumet and the South Central Library Systems, the State Bar of Wisconsin, the State Public Defenders, the Wisconsin Judicial Conference, NBI, and at several regional training programs for clerk of courts staff.

The Staff

• Congratulated our two Unsung Heroes of Wisconsin Law nominees – Rebecca Knutson and Julie Tessmer – and applauded wildly when Julie was awarded the honor of winning in the Law Librarians category. Of course, all of our staff are of award-winning caliber – the public recognition is just the icing on the cake!

• Welcomed Leslie Behroozi in September as the Branch Librarian at the Dane County Legal Resource Center upon Paula Seeger’s departure for the University of Minnesota Law Library. Elaine Sharp, our Technical Services Librarian for over 22 years and most recently our extraordinary webmaster, retired at the end of 2006. We wish her well and thank her most heartily for creating an award-winning website that all of us depend on many times each and every day. Amy Crowder has been promoted to the newly-designated Director of Web and Bibliographic Services position, and we will soon welcome a new Webmaster/Cataloger.

2006 has been a busy year for the Dane County Legal Resource Center (DCLRC). Here are just a few of the highlights:

• New Surroundings: The DCLRC moved to the new Dane County Courthouse in January and hosted a Grand Opening and Ribbon Cutting Ceremony during National Library Week in April. Chief Judge Michael Nowakowski read a Governor’s proclamation and congratulatory message at the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony, and library users and guests were treated to workshops, tours, games and prizes during the weeklong celebration.

• A Fond Farewell and a Hearty Welcome: The DCLRC wished Librarian Paula Seeger a very fond farewell in August. Paula relocated to Minneapolis to take a position at the University of Minnesota Law School Library. Following Paula’s departure, the DCLRC welcomed Leslie Behroozi, formerly with the Milwaukee Legal Resource Center. Leslie has been eagerly taking on Paula’s responsibilities but fully acknowledges that it is quite impossible for anyone to replace Paula!

• Updated Resources: The DCLRC was involved in the updating of two critical Dane County resources. An updated version of the Juvenile Court Resource Booklet, a collaborative effort of the Juvenile Court Program, the Dane County Clerk of Courts, and the DCLRC, was released in January. The updated version of the Dane County Family Court Resource Booklet, a collaboration of the Family Court Counseling Service, the Court Commissioner Center, the Child Support Agency and the DCLRC, was released in May.

• Library Services: The DCLRC continues to strive to meet and exceed the needs of library users, including pro se individuals, Dane County Jail inmates, attorneys, and courthouse staff. Though the following figures are preliminary estimates only, they provide a snapshot of certain DCLRC services. In 2006, the DCLRC sold over 6,000 legal forms and answered well over 7,000 questions regarding forms. We also circulated approximately 1,400 books to Dane County Jail inmates and filled over 2,500 information requests from inmates. In addition, the Small Claims Assistance Program (SCAP) assisted over 300 participants with small claims issues in 2006. SCAP is staffed primarily by volunteer attorneys and paralegals and is coordinated in part by the DCLRC, the Dane County Bar Association and the State Bar of Wisconsin.

The DCLRC would like to thank all of its supporters and collaborators for the assistance, encouragement and partnership it has received throughout 2006. We look forward to all that 2007 has to bring!

MLRC Memo: News from the Milwaukee Legal Resource Center

At press time, MLRC was still knee deep in December activities! Their review of 2006 events and activities will appear in a future issue of WSLL @ Your Service.

MLRC had a great turnout for their Legal Ethics Research class on December 6th, and thanks Leslie Behroozi, DCLRC, who presented it. The class has been approved for one CLE Ethics credit. MLRC is currently finalizing their 2007 schedule of classes, and a list will be available soon.

Would you like to receive e-mail notification of upcoming MLRC classes? Contact Rebecca.Knutson@wicourts.gov to be added to their e-mail list.

Upcoming WSLL Classes

A few seats are still available in the 10:30 a.m. session of Using the “New” LegalTrac & HeinOnline on February 7. And a brand new class, Ethics Research: Can You Do That? will be held on March 7 at 9:00 a.m. For details and registration forms, please visit our Classes & Tours webpage.

WSLL After Hours Service

2007 is here, so it’s time to renew or apply for a new calendar-year subscription to the WSLL After Hours Service. Any Wisconsin-licensed attorney may subscribe to this service, which allows use of the library from 5 to 10 p.m. Monday – Friday and from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday - Sunday. Details and forms for both renewals and new subscriptions are available on our After Hours Service webpage or by contacting Tammy Keller, program assistant, at 608-261-7553 or tammy.keller@wicourts.gov .

January Notables

3 – Inauguration of the 2007-2008 Wisconsin Legislature. For more information, see the December 11, 2006 and more recent issues of Wisconsin Legislative Spotlight, a weekly e-publication of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, accessible from the Wisconsin Legislature’s homepage. (See “Spotlight” at right of photograph.)

16 – Observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. It’s both a federal and state holiday so banks, post offices, and government offices will be closed, including the Wisconsin State Law Library and Milwaukee and Dane County Legal Resource Centers.