Category Archives: General

Follow-Up to Banned Books Week at the Charlotte Law Library

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A Poll

Every September since 1982, the library world celebrates the freedom to read by creating programming around Banned Books Week. At Charlotte School of Law Library, we created displays, blog posts, signage, and held a Read Out to raise awareness of the issue of books being challenged and banned.

The American Library Association (ALA) defines a challenge to literature as an attempt by a person or group of people to have literature restricted or removed from a public library or school curriculum.

Few people realize that since the inception of Banned Books Week more than 11,300 books have been challenged. Last year, 311 challenges were reported to the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. They track challenges, at least the ones that are reported. A lot are not reported.

In an effort to raise awareness, a librarian decided to ban a book. Scott DiMarco, Director of Library and Information Resources at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania announced the banning of One Woman’s Vengeance by a local author named Dennis R. Miller. DiMarco declared the ban on the library’s Facebook page and got a swift response of outrage, but only eight people actually asked to discuss the ban with him. He wrote about his experience in a blog post.

We are interested to know what you think about this librarian’s method of raising awareness.

JD Career Fit: Equipping Students for Long-term Career Success

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On Saturday, February 7, 2015 the Center for Professional Development (CPD) of Charlotte School of Law hosted Session 1 of its innovative workshops geared toward cultivating the practical, or ‘soft’ skills needed to be successful in the law profession. This effort aligns with CharlotteLaw’s commitment to providing experiential learning from the first day of class to add value to any organization upon graduation.

The JD Career Fit program is a requirement for graduation and includes two sessions to be attended by students in their first semester. Developed by CPD staff, the program focuses on self-assessment and self-knowledge as the basis of creating individualized career plans and objectives that uniquely fit the skills, interests, values and strengths of each CharlotteLaw student.

Students attending JD Career Fit first seek to gain a true sense of self to lay the foundation for personal development. On-going exercises throughout the program enable students to establish personal brand, utilize social media effectively, develop their image, and perfect the art of networking. Employers in the law profession have identified these skills as among the top performance gaps they find in newly-graduated law students.

Aretha Blake, Director of CharlotteLaw’s Center for Professional Development noted “By requiring students to attend JD Career Fit, we are sending them a message of the importance practical skills play to supplement academic theory.”

Partnering to Promote Professionalism

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At Charlotte School of Law, we embrace the idea of “interdependence.” I recently attended the Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries conference, which was held in Lexington, Kentucky. I had the privilege of presenting, as part of a panel, on the topic of “Partnering to Promote Professionalism and Effective Practitioners: What Every Law School Graduate Should Know.” My co-panelists were law firm librarians. In addition to having been friends for many years, we each, at some point, had been responsible for training and coordinating the training of young associates.

Law firm librarians have always played an indispensable part in the nurturing and development of new associates. They still do, but as the hiring practices of “Big Law” firms have undergone a change, the responsibility of providing students with the practice-ready professionalism, the technology skills and the business acumen necessary to succeed has shifted back to law schools. The message that I, an academic librarian and former law firm librarian, and my two law firm librarians attempted to impart was that we are more effective when we work together.

In order to prepare for my portion of the presentation, I drew upon the first annual BarBri “State of the Legal Field” survey, Wawrose’s, “What Do Legal Employers Want to See in New Graduates? Using Focus Groups to Find Out” 39 Ohio N. U. L. Rev. 505 (2013) and Stouffer’s “Closing the Gap: Teaching ‘practice-ready’ legal skills,” 19 AALL Spectrum 10 (February 2015). I also interviewed Associate Dean Michael Farley, Director of the Center for Professional Development Aretha Blake, and Program Coordinator for Process Excellence Krystyll Gardner in order to gain an overview of the Charlotte School of Law “Student Success Initiative.” The CSL library staff also implemented its own projects and while those projects contributed to the goal of focusing on professionalism, GRIT and relationship-building, it was clear that greater inroads were made when the library partnered with other departments.

Likewise, when law school librarians join forces with their counterparts in firms and government libraries, the impact is greater than when they work alone. My co-panelists discussed the “Business Side of Law Firms” and “Making the Transition” from law student to practitioner. We encouraged all attendees to work with each other, not only for the betterment of their own employer, but for the greater good that can be achieved. To quote Mark Shields, “There is always strength in numbers.”