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UPCOMING EVENTS

Greetings,

What a pleasure to be able to share some of the achievements and highlights of the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library team in this special issue of Letter of the Law.

I joined the Law Library in April 2020—at the very beginning of this longest year ever—and although I still have not met all of my teammates in person, we have gotten to know each other well utilizing collaborative technologies online. Now, we are looking forward to getting back to campus, all together, so that we can more easily connect, collaborate, and share ideas and information with each other and with our students, faculty colleagues, alumni, and public patrons.

We look forward to welcoming everyone back to the Law Library this fall. And we are excited to share with you just a few of the past year’s highlights.

Teresa Miguel-Stearns

Associate Dean and

Director of the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library

Highlights from the Cracchiolo Law Library

Book Talk Series

The Law Library launched its Book Talk series in the spring by featuring Professor Sergio Puig in conversation with former Arizona Law Professor James Anaya (now at Colorado) on the occasion of the publication of Prof. Puig’s new book, On the Margins of Globalization: Indigenous Peoples and International Economic Law. You can watch our inaugural Book Talk -- and future ones -- on the Law Library’s YouTube channel.  

Colorado Dean James Anaya in conversation with Professor Sergio Puig.

This fall, keep an eye out for several Book Talks featuring professors Paul Bennett, Tessa Dysart, and Carolyn Williams -- each of whom published books this summer.  

Arizona Edge: College of Law Partnership with UA Athletics 

For the last few months, we have been partnering with UA Athletics to create an online learning platform to educate Wildcat athletes about their new opportunities to capitalize on their name, image, and likeness (NIL).

After a series of U.S. Supreme Court cases, changes to NCAA rules, and passing of local legislation, college athletes may now receive compensation for endorsements, appearances, and camps -- anything that does not involve their actual performance on the playing field. 

UA Athletics approached the College of Law to help them educate our student athletes in this space. Naturally, we enthusiastically agreed and pulled together a team, based in the Law Library, who created online learning modules in the areas of contracts, agents, tax, business entities, and intellectual property. Devan Orr, a former Law Library Fellow, was hired to lead the project and rising 3L Carrington Vaughn (’19 UA football) to contribute his expertise. Their efforts were supported by Ginger Hunt from the College of Law’s online learning team, Professor Mona Hymel, and Professor Gavin Milczarek-Desai (PhD '97, JD '00). Together, this team created the foundation of the Arizona Edge program for our student athletes. Arizona Edge was launched on July 1 to great fanfare around campus and envy around the nation. 

Collaboration with the Navajo Nation

The Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources Library Preservation Project is a collaborative preservation and access project between the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources (NNDWR) and the Law Library, supported by the UA’s Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice. This collection is of invaluable cultural and scientific significance, containing reports, maps, and other information and knowledge that directly impacts the current and future health and economic well-being of the people of the Navajo Nation. 

Collections Management Librarian Jessica Ugstad (above, right) manages this multiyear project, which began in Fall 2020. She shares, “Collaborating with our Navajo colleagues has been a fulfilling, humbling, and educational experience. Having the unique opportunity to begin assisting in the fulfillment of the NNDWR goals for and preservation needs of their collection is a great honor for all those involved.”

The first phase of the project involves the temporary relocation of over 8,000 water resource documents, reports, and maps from the NNDWR Library to the Law Library where they will be secured, stored, and prepared for digitization. The collection will remain available to researchers with the permission of the Navajo Nation. Subsequent phases will involve digitizing the collection to ensure its preservation, while honoring tribal and information sovereignty of the Navajo Nation, the creation of an online database to provide access and facilitate research to improve all aspects of water resources on the Navajo Nation, and finally returning the physical collection and transferring control of the new database to the NNDWR while continuing to support the project well into the future. 

Evolving Library Services

Recent retirements gave us the opportunity to reexamine the needs of the communities we serve and reevaluate the services we provide to them. The new Research, Data, and Instruction (RDI) department is the result of thoughtful restructuring and expansion of our services. This expansion coincided with the hiring of two librarians in two new roles: Cas Laskowski, Technology & Empirical Services Librarian and Marcelo Rodriguez, Foreign, Comparative and International Law Librarian. By combining existing talent with new expertise, the RDI department is able to serve our diverse communities in new and exciting ways. 

Cas is already supporting data-driven legal scholarship, teaching, and learning at the College of Law through her data science and technological expertise. She brings geospatial analytical skills first learned from her time in the U.S. Army. By adding spatial analysis to our services, we allow our scholars and researchers to examine the effects of legal policy and issues through an additional dimension. In one recent project, Cas conducted demographic analysis and created a spatial statistical model to inform recruitment efforts for an Innovation for Justice (i4j) pilot study of solutions to reduce evictions.

Marcelo is the founder and director of the international network and project, Law Librarians Monitoring COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean. This multidisciplinary project bears witness and reports on the legal, governmental, and societal responses to the crisis together with the ongoing impact of the pandemic in the region. Marcelo’s expertise in Latin American law and legal systems further strengthens the college’s collaborations with our partners in Mexico, Peru, and around the world. 

Training the Next Generation: The Law Library Fellowship Program

The Law Library Fellowship, now in its 20th year, is one of the premier programs in the U.S. for training the next generation of law librarians. Begun by retired law library director, Mike Chiorazzi, the Fellows program continues to provide a robust educational experience together with a graduate assistant position in the law library (which includes tuition remission). Cynthia Condit (JD '09), Faculty & Access Services Librarian and Director of the Law Library Fellows program, is enthusiastically leading the program forward. We are also expanding the Fellows program to include an additional emphasis on law librarianship in Latin America. 

More recent developments include:

• Recognizing the changing face of law and legal work, and in an effort to lower the barriers to entry into our profession amidst rising educational costs, we have expanded the Fellows program to include candidates with backgrounds other than the JD. We hope this will provide significantly more opportunities for non-traditional, aspiring law librarians.

• In partnership with the UA School of Information (iSchool), the Law Library developed a new Legal Information Graduate Certificate that will be available this fall. The coursework under the new reflects the reality of today’s job market and changes in the fields of law and legal information. 

Read more about the Fellows program.

A lighter moment during an all-staff meeting as we recorded our warmest congratulations to the Class of 2021 for a very happy graduation. 

We are preparing to welcome an excellent incoming class and invite you to meet them and participate in some of their first learning here on campus.

As part of New Student Orientation on Thursday, August 12 there will be a Professionalism & Ethics session where practicing attorneys (YOU!) join in discussion with students around real-world ethical scenarios that they may encounter as students and attorneys. We will provide you with all the materials in advance.

You are invited for morning coffee and for an informal grab and go box lunch after the session. Tables will be set up if you would like to stay and visit with students, faculty and staff.

Thanks for considering this invitation. It’ll be a fun way for you to engage with new LawCats.

*This is an in-person event with safety precautions in place, following the University of Arizona COVID guidelines. Masks are strongly encouraged, but not required.*

@uarizonalaw, Twitter

Devan Orr

Alex Hutchings

Rebecca Plevel

Jen Rochelle

In closing, we say goodbye to four superb Law Library Fellows who will be leaving for new opportunities at the end of the summer: Devan Orr is going to Wolfe Law Library at William and Mary; Alex Hutchings is heading to William Taylor Muse Law Library at the University of Richmond; Rebecca Plevel ('91) is going to Coleman Karesh Law Library at the University of South Carolina; and Jen Rochelle accepted an offer from the UA’s iSchool. 

It is always bittersweet to see Fellows move on, but also rewarding to know that we have played a role in their success moving forward.

Warmly,

Teresa