Law Librarian Wins Award
Julie Jones, head of information services and lecturer in law, Cornell Law School, was recently honored with the 2008 "AALL LexisNexis Call for Papers - New Member Division" Award. This distinguished recognition, which comes with a substantial cash prize, was for her paper, entitled “Not Just Key Numbers and Keywords Anymore: How User Interface Design Affects Legal Research.” In it, Ms. Jones wrote that legal research is one of the foundational skills for the practice of law. However, law school graduates frequently do not enter the bar with adequate competencies in this regard. Applying both information foraging theory and current standards in optimal web design, Ms. Jones considerd through a heuristic analysis whether the user interfaces of Westlaw and Lexis help or hinder the process of legal research and the development of effective research skills. She was also subsequently invited by the AALS Section on Law Libraries to present the paper during a panel discussion at next year's meeting in San Diego. "The award is a well deserved recognition of Julie's original thinking and writing on a topic of great utility to the legal profession," commented Claire M. Germain, Edward Cornell Law Librarian and Professor of Law.