As directed by Article VII, Section 3 of the IALL Constitution, I am hereby submitting notice of the slate of candidates selected by the IALL Nominating Committee to all members for the required 60 days from the date of this notice. The full list of candidates appears below and is also found along with the personal statements submitted by each candidate.
During this 60 day notice period (1st February to 1st April 2022), names of Individual members may also be submitted as candidates for any elected office by petition. Such nominations by petition shall be submitted to the Secretary by 1 April and must be accompanied by a supporting personal statement. Nominations by petition shall be reviewed by the Nominating Committee to ensure eligibility and ability to serve. At the end of the 60 day notice period, IALL 2022 Individual members will be sent an electronic ballot to the email address provided when they renewed their IALL memberships for 2022.
Candidates for the IALL Board Election 2022
Officers
President: Mark Engsberg, Emory University School of Law
Vice President: Kerem Kahvecioglu, Istanbul Bilgi University Library
Secretary: Trung Quach, University of Melbourne Law School
Treasurer: Jean Wenger, Chicago-Kent College of Law
Members of the Board of Directors
Vanessa Blackmore, New South Wales Law Courts Library
Rebecca J. Five Bergstrøm, University of Oslo
Heather Casey, Georgetown University Law Center
Yee Xin Chai, Singapore Management University
Sonia Crenn, International Committee of the Red Cross
Claudia Holland, Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law
Lyonette Louis-Jacques, University of Chicago School of Law
Taryn Marks, Stanford Law School
Michael McArthur, Duke Law School
Kim Nayyer, Cornell Law School
David Wills, University of Cambridge
David Gee
IALL Secretary
Personal Statements
Officers
President:
Mark Engsberg, Emory University School of Law
For members who may not know me, I have twenty-one years’ experience as a law librarian. My academic credentials include a JD, an MSLIS, an MA, and a PhD. Since 2005, it has been my privilege to serve on the IALL board as editor of the IJLI, to serve as Board Liaison for the 2014 Buenos Aires conference, and to help plan the 2002 Yale and the 2017 Atlanta conferences. It is my hope to offer my experience in IALL and my other acquired skills to the IALL organization.
The future of IALL should be known for significant accomplishments – ones we identify together. They may include redefining the mission of IALL in light of the COVID-19 global pandemic, increasing membership, developing position papers, creating new alliances with sister library organizations, creatively involving law or library students and teachers, or expanding grant opportunities for IALL members. The list is suggestive only, but it does serve to underscore the need to focus and achieve results. It would be my great honor to take these next steps with you.
As President, I would be a strong, reasonable advocate for the entire IALL membership and a diplomatic voice for the Association.
Vice President:
Kerem Kahvecioglu, Istanbul Bilgi University Library
I am a law librarian and the Team Leader for Databases and Serials at Istanbul Bilgi University Library and e-Resources in Istanbul, Turkey since 2005. I have been teaching the course “Research Methods and Accessing Legal Information Resources” at Istanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Law since 2009. I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Library and Information Science from the Hacettepe University and my master’s degree in Business Law from Istanbul Bilgi University.
I joined the International Association of Law Libraries in 2008 as a scholarship holder to attend the 27th Annual Course in Puerto Rico where I met many members and gained organizational experience to organize the 28th Annual course in İstanbul, Turkey in 2009 as a member of the Local Organization Committee. I was awarded an Internship Grant by the IALL in 2011 and I spent a month at Yale Law School Library and Harvard Law School Library as a visiting fellow.
I became a Board Member of IALL in 2013 and served in the Communications Committee as the Chair the Blog Editor, in the Education Committee where I contributed to developing the IALL Public International Law Research Instruction Guidelines http://iall.org/education-committee and in the Conference Committee. Currently, I am the Vice President and Chair of the Finance and Membership Committee of IALL.
I also have relevant experience from our national association having served on the Board Member of UNAK-Turkish Platform of Law Librarians and served on the License Agreement Group at Anatolian University Libraries Consortium (ANKOS). Moreover, I have regional and international network and experience in the law field.
I have written on copyright in libraries and information literacy. My current research focuses on copyright, legal information, information literacy, outcomes assessment and open access.
Serving on IALL’s several committees and as the Vice President, has given me great insight and knowledge of the association’s operations so that I am willing to stand for the second term as a Vice-President of IALL.
Secretary:
Trung Quach, University of Melbourne Law School
I would like to serve as Secretary on the IALL Board. I have been a law librarian since 2012. Currently, I am the manager of the Academic Research Service at the University of Melbourne in Australia. In this role, I assist law academics with their research. I have previously acted in the role of Law Librarian at the University of Melbourne. In that capacity, I managed the law library operations, including collection development, coordination of the law school’s teaching and research programs, and supervision of library staff. Prior to working as a librarian, I practiced commercial litigation in San Francisco for 10 years. I worked as a lawyer in boutique to international-size law firms. I am currently admitted to practice law in the United States and Australia. Since becoming a law librarian, I have dedicated myself to the profession. I have served on the IALL Board since 2019, serving on the Conference Committee and Finance Committee. I am also an active member of the Australian Law Librarians’ Association (ALLA), serving as its Vice-President, President, and Past President (2016-2020). I am very interested in furthering my involvement with IALL and helping it expand into Pacific Rim nations.
Treasurer:
Jean Wenger, Chicago-Kent College of Law
I am honored to stand for election to the IALL Board as Treasurer. I currently serve on the IALL Board of Directors. Professionally, I am the Director at Chicago-Kent College of Law Library and previously served as Deputy Law Librarian and FCIL Librarian at Cook County Law Library (Chicago). My educational background includes a J.D. and M.L.I.S. I have been actively teaching and writing about FCIL research for students, attorneys, judges, and librarians. My other service credentials include the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) President, AALL Executive Board, FCIL-SIS chair, AALL Annual Meeting Program Committee Chair, and LLMC Advisory Council.
I will bring relevant skills to IALL as Treasurer from my work and professional association experience. As a deputy law librarian, I helped manage a $4.9 million budget. As law library director, I oversee the budgets of two departments. I gained first-hand knowledge of a professional association’s fiscal operations while serving on the Finance and Budget Committee as the AALL president. These financial responsibilities taught me the requirement of sound fiscal management, the value of collaboration, and the importance of transparency. For IALL, I would bring to the Board, the Finance Committee, and any other board assignment a strategic outlook, a focus on diversity and inclusion, and a goal to seek new ways to sustain and expand the ability of IALL to engage its members. I would be privileged to serve you as the IALL Treasurer. Thank you.
General Board Nominees
Vanessa Blackmore, New South Wales Law Courts Library
I am an experienced law librarian with passion for the global nature of our profession. My career includes 25 years as a law librarian and I am now the manager of the Law Courts Library in Sydney, leading a dedicated team in providing legal library services to all judges and decision makers in New South Wales. My experience includes post graduate qualifications in law and management, and 5 months as visiting fellow in law librarianship at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London, where I promoted free access to legal information.
I have attended eleven IALL meetings, from Rome in 1998 to Toulouse in 2021. I was a lead member of the local planning committee for the 2019 Sydney meeting, and was honoured to host colleagues in my home city. I previously served as national president of the Australian Law Librarians Association, and value the opportunity to mentor younger members of our profession, and partner with other professional associations. I have published a range of journal articles on law librarianship under the names of Vanessa O’Meara and Blackmore.
If elected to the IALL Board, I will bring commitment, experience, and enthusiasm with an Australasian perspective representative of our region. Our proximity to developing nations in the Pacific, and to our South East Asian neighbours, offers opportunities to promote the work of IALL, share knowledge, and advocate for worldwide free access to legal information.
Rebecca Josefine Five Bergstrøm, University of Oslo
I became a member of the Board of Directors in 2019. During this period have I served as the blog editor and been in both the communications committee and the education committee.
My work description has changed some since the last election. We have merged all our Libraries into one and I am now an academic librarian at the Law Library at the University of Oslo. I am responsible for and coordinating the local work with research support, and collections. I am the contact Librarian for Center for Human Rights and the Department for Public and International law. And among other things I do I contribute with legal support regarding copyright and data privacy for different projects at the University Library and the University of Oslo.
It has been different to serve on the board during a pandemic than during normal times. And I am motivated to serve a second term, hopefully under normal conditions. IALL is an excellent arena for making new acquaintances, keeping in touch with the old, and sharing experiences. I want to encourage membership involvement during the year. For example, through members contribution of content to the blog as a platform for sharing knowledge and to give insight to other members’ work life. I am also interested in working for IALL connecting with the members throughout the year. And among other things am I motivated to continue the work with modernizing our visual identity and to reshape our website and social media.
Heather Casey, Georgetown University Law Center
I am delighted to be nominated to serve IALL for a second term as a board member.
I have been an international and foreign law reference librarian at the Georgetown University Law Center for nine years. Previous to Georgetown, I worked at the University of Richmond and Louisiana State University. Throughout my career as a law librarian, I have been an active member of AALL, IFLA, and LLSDC, among other professional development organizations. In addition to being a librarian, I am also an adjunct professor, teaching courses on foreign and international law as well as legal research skills for practice.
During my time at Georgetown, I have helped organize and participate in three workshops for law librarians in Africa and one in India. These workshops were jointly funded by IALL and IFLA. The main goals were to strengthen the regional relationships between law librarians so they could create their own continental organizations, as well as build connections between law librarians around the world. This is one of the reasons I am so passionate about the importance of organizations like IALL which provide opportunities for librarians to connect with others around the world. I am particularly interested in the board mission to support and further education and professional development for legal information professionals worldwide.
Yee Xin Chai, Singapore Management University
My name is Yee Xin Chai and I am a Research Librarian from Singapore Management University. I have been working in my current role for five years where I manage the law collection; provide legal research training; and develop research services for our faculty and students. I have been an IALL member for 3 years and have been a recipient of an IALL Scholarship to attend the 37th Annual Course to Luxembourg.
I provide training and research guides on Singaporean legal research which not only includes resources for our library but includes regular contributions to the Singaporean guide for GlobaLex. I have an interest in Asian legal research, in particular for the South East Asian region, and I wish to join IALL to provide more representation for Asian law librarianship and increase accessibility for law librarians in the SEA region.
I enjoy working with exploring new technologies for outreach and communications, which includes developing Digital Learning Objects and designing promotional materials and events for user outreach. As a part of my passion for outreach I am also a member of the Programmes & Social Committee for the Library Association of Singapore.
Sonia Crenn, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
I studied law and international relations at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in France before moving to Geneva, Switzerland in 2011. I have been working as a law librarian at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Library for the past 6 years. No doubt like many of you, I am passionate about making sure international law aficionados know about the vast resources available to them. I take pride in contributing to the ICRC’s unique mandate to promote the dissemination of international humanitarian law and have enjoyed meeting like-minded professionals through the International Association of Law Libraries. After attending the IALL annual course in Atlanta in 2017, I felt like Geneva’s position as the seat of many multilateral organizations would offer a great setting for an upcoming course. I have since worked to bring together a team of Geneva librarians to apply to host the annual course and look forward to organizing the 2023 annual course. Building on this experience, I would love to further contribute to IALL’s work by serving on the Board and bringing the perspective of an international organization’s library that serves both academics and practitioners.
Claudia Holland, Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law
My name is Claudia Holland, I am 59 years old and live with my husband in Leipzig, the city of Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. We have two grown-up sons who are already going their own ways.
I have been working in academic librarianship for over thirty years, having studied German and French law at the universities of Göttingen and Saarbrücken. My professional stations led me from the University of Freiburg via the Technical University of Dresden and the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe to Leipzig, where I worked at the university library for over 15 years.
Six years ago (2016), I seized the opportunity to make another fresh start and began my work as Head of the Library of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law. There, I have the opportunity to deal primarily with foreign legal systems. In doing so, I benefit from my ability to speak Spanish as well as English and French. This internationality is very much cultivated at the Institute, as every year more than one thousand scholars from all over the world are guests here.
I have had the opportunity to participate in the Annual Conferences of the past six years and very much appreciate the collegial atmosphere and the professional exchange. From my professional experience – I was active in national committees of library associations for over twenty years – I know only too well that this also requires personal commitment, which I would like to express through my candidacy.
Lyonette Louis-Jacques, University of Chicago School of Law
I have been an IALL member since I entered the profession in 1986 and have regularly attended the annual course on international law librarianship and legal information. I was the originator of the “International Calendar” column in the International Journal of Legal Information, was on the Communications and Website Award committees, and have contributed articles in IJLI and other international law journals. I co-founded the Int-Law (International Law Librarians) listserv with Mila Rush in 1991. I have written books, book chapters, and articles on international legal information, including an AALL FCIL-SIS (American Association of Law Libraries Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Special Interest Section) award-winning selection of Slaw columns published as an ebook. I am a member of the several national and international law library associations as well as the American Society of International Law and the American Bar Association Section on International Law.
In terms of how I can contribute to IALL, I have long wished to follow in the footsteps of my predecessor, Adolf Sprūdžs, who was former President of IALL, and serve at a high level as an IALL officer. I would like to help improve IALL’s social media presence, publications, and strengthen geographic representation at meetings.
Taryn Marks, Stanford Law School
I am honored to be considered for election as a general board member for the International Association of Law Libraries. IALL is a unique organization within the law librarian world, and I would view service on the board as a chance to develop and support IALL, its mission, and our members’ diverse needs and goals while continuing efforts towards transparency and diversity.
I would bring to the Board my experiences co-chairing the 2022 Local Planning Committee for this year’s annual course, chairing AALL’s Research, Instruction, and Patron Services special interest section, and serving as chair of the Asian-American Law Librarians Caucus, among others. I have also taught legal research at a law school in China, and earned an LLM in international law in law school, experiences that gave me a broad view of and passion for international, foreign, and comparative law and the wonderful legal scholars and librarians who work within it. I would appreciate the chance to give back to the community that has provided me so much by serving on the IALL Board. Thank you for your consideration.
Michael McArthur, Duke Law School
I appreciate this opportunity to be considered for a seat on the IALL board. My name is Michael McArthur, and I have been the Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Librarian at Duke University School of Law for the past 4 years. I also lead our Collection Development team. Prior to this position, I worked at the University of Michigan Law School for 5 years. I also am fluent in Japanese.
From the first time I attended the Annual Meeting, in Buenos Aires, I felt that IALL was a special organization that uniquely bridges borders and culture. While there is nothing that can replace the in-person experience of the Annual Meetings, I believe there may be more ways to facilitate additional online programming and build connections with colleagues all around the world. I would take this responsibly most seriously, and be a reliable and productive board member, given the opportunity.
It has been a joy to meet so many of you, and regardless of the outcome, I hope to see you again in San Francisco or wherever possible. Thank you again for your consideration.
Kim Nayyer, Cornell Law School
I’m honoured to be nominated to the IALL Board. Here I share personal and professional highlights, perspectives, and aspirations relevant to IALL interests.
I’m a library administrator, teacher, and researcher at Cornell Law School. In a previous library I handled law collection management, reference services, and assessment; worked with FCIL materials; taught legal research and writing; and was Associate University Librarian for law library and copyright services. Before law librarianship and academic library leadership, I practiced law in two Canadian provincial jurisdictions and clerked at a Canadian federal court.
My interests reflect issues I think are important to IALL. I’m concerned about access to primary and secondary legal information globally, and I pursue related advocacy, legislative reform, and public interest litigation. I write and teach about comparative copyright issues; ethical work with Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous legal systems; legal information, AI, and data literacies; data appropriation in scholarly and networked communications; and equity, inclusion, and decolonization in legal information environments.
I’m a first-generation Canadian of Indian origin working in the U.S., and first-generation in a legal or academic field. This personal background and my diverse professional experience can bring an interesting confluence of perspectives to IALL activities and decisions.
David Wills, Squire Law Library, University of Cambridge
I am the head of one of the UK’s leading academic law libraries, the Squire Law Library – at the University of Cambridge – which is associated with one of the top law faculties/law schools in the world. I am also a senior manager at Cambridge University Library. I have 28 years of experience at the Squire, 25 of which as Squire Law Librarian. The Squire has extensive international law collections especially in the areas of public international law and comparative law, and maintains resources that reflect the global interests of legal researchers and law students at Cambridge.
I have been an active member of the British & Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) since 1997 having served on, and chaired, several committees. I was President of the Association in 2010/2011, and made a Life Member in 2017. I have been the editor of Legal Information Management since 2011.
As a Board Member I believe that I would be able to contribute to the work of the International Association of Law Libraries based on my extensive experience. I have attended several of IALL’s Annual Courses in the past and I have an understanding of the work relating to the Association.