Harvard Library Report

Posted on November 12, 2009 by Phillips Academy

Over the past nine months or so, a group of us have worked on a Harvard-wide Task Force to consider our library systems. The report is being issued today by Harvard’s Provost, Steven E. Hyman, who chaired our Task Force. Over the next year-plus, we will be working to implement changes in five key areas of the Harvard University library system.

Harvard is fortunate to have one of the great library systems in the world as a crown jewel. The library system plays a central role in the intellectual life of our community, both as physical spaces and as resources of teaching and scholarship. The 1200 or so library staff at Harvard, as I’ve come to learn, are simply extraordinary in terms of breadth and depth of talent. But we can do more with what we have, and we can better position ourselves for the future — a future that will be “digital-plus” — than we are today.

As Provost Hyman wrote about the report:

“The report of the Task Force on University Libraries is a very thoughtful document about an extraordinary system. But it is also a stark rendering of a structure in need of reform. Our collections are superlative, and our knowledgeable library staff are central to the success of the University’s mission. The way the system operates, however, is placing terrible strain on the libraries and the people who work within them.

“Over time, a lack of coordination has led to a fragmented collection of collections that is not optimally positioned to respond to the 21st century information needs of faculty and students. The libraries’ organizational chart is truly labyrinthine in its complexity, and in practice this complexity impedes effective collective decision-making.

“Widely varying information technology systems present barriers to communication among libraries and stymie collaboration with institutions beyond our campus gates. Our funding mechanisms have created incentives to collect or subscribe in ways that diminish the vitality of the overall collection.

“Libraries the world over are undergoing a challenging transition into the digital age, and Harvard’s libraries are no exception. The Task Force report points us toward a future in which our libraries must be able to work together far more effectively than is the case today as well as to collaborate with other great libraries to maximize access to the materials needed by our scholars.”

I am excited to work with members of the Harvard library community and many others — inside and outside the community — to build on the promise of this report and the Harvard library system.

New Harvard Law School Library Organizational Design

Posted on August 10, 2009 by Phillips Academy

Over the past year, I’ve worked with my colleagues at the Harvard Law School Library, our Library Committee of faculty members, and many others to develop a new organizational design for the HLSL. It goes into effect today. The description of our new organizational form is posted to the Library’s blog, Et Seq. The future of libraries may seem on its face to be unclear in a digital world. But I am confident that it is bright; that librarians have never been needed more than they are today; and that the best thing that we can do to move into this future is to work collaboratively to chart it ourselves.

Hiring Empiricists at HLS Library

Posted on July 17, 2009 by Phillips Academy

One of the new efforts underway at the Harvard Law School Library is providing support for the growing number of faculty who perform empirical research. It’s something that a few other libraries have begun to do, and we think it’s a great idea. After a successful pilot this past year (where we were swamped with business), we are hiring for two positions for this coming year: one, an empiricist to support faculty and student research and two, an empirical teaching fellow to support the teaching of statistics and related methods. This field is growing and changing in exciting ways, and we’re looking for a few great people to join us in this endeavor.

Curricular Reform at Harvard Law School

Posted on October 10, 2006 by Phillips Academy

Last week, Harvard Law School adopted substantial changes to its first-year curriculum. The office announcement is here.

These changes are important for several reasons. On the simplest level, these changes are the first adjustments to the much-vaunted HLS first-year curriculum in over one hundred years, as the NYTimes’s Jonathan Glater pointed out in his story. The 19th century design of this curriculum has served many of us — students, lawyers, law teachers, maybe even society at large — very well. But the practice of law has changed enormously over that century-plus; well-reasoned change, reflecting those changes in practice, seems much in order as a general matter.

These particular curricular reforms happen also to be terrific choices. A process led by Professor Martha Minow over a few years, including a massive consultative process, led to the proposal that passed the faculty unanimously — a sure sign that the proposal was well-crafted. (If you are unfamiliar with the history of the Harvard Law School’s faculty, the point about unaminity may seem unremarkable. But it is remarkable, truly; a testament to the leadership of both our dean, Elena Kagan, and of Prof. Minow.) The three major changes to the curriculum are that students will take a course in legislation and regulation; one of a few choices in international law; and a course on legal problem solving. These changes mean that there will inevitably be less emphasis in the first year on the traditional slate of courses (torts, contracts, civil procedure, and so forth), but the basic structure that has worked so well over time has been preserved. One big scheduling change for HLS first-years is that they will have an intensive winter-term course, just as the second- and third-year students already do. The winter term idea is a great one, as this is an institution that allows for a different, and differently effective, mode of teaching some courses. Students take only one class during January, which meets every day, and they focus solely on this one subject. Taken together, these changes are geared toward ensuring that law students are better prepared for the profession into which they will enter, whether as practicing lawyers in a firm, public servants of various sorts, or businesspeople in a global economy.

On the occasion of the unanimous faculty vote, Dean Kagan wrote: “This marks a major step forward in our efforts to develop a law school curriculum for the 21st century. Over 100 years ago, Harvard Law School invented the basic law school curriculum, and we are now making the most significant revisions to it since that time. Thanks to yesterday’s unanimous faculty vote, we will add new first-year courses in international and comparative law, legislation and regulation, and complex problem solving — areas of great and ever-growing importance in today’s world. I am extraordinarily grateful to the entire faculty for its vision and support of these far-reaching reforms, which I am confident will give our students the best possible training for the leadership positions they will soon occupy.”

(Volokh Conspiracy, by contrast, has less positive things, or perhaps just more skeptical things, to say.)

As a variant on the same theme, several of us at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School are looking at the question of whether, and how, technology should be factored into the law school curriculum more so than it is today at HLS and many other schools. Over the course of this fall, we’re working with partners at Lexis-Nexis on a survey of lawyers and a white paper on ways that technology might appropriately be used in the teaching of law. The project is being spearheaded by new Berkman fellow Gene Koo. While on a much smaller scale than the curriculum reform just passed at HLS, this research project is intended to be in step with the hard look at whether law teaching today prepares students well for the practice of law.

As a footnote: the Harvard Crimson notes that the unanimous vote of our faculty in favor of this broad first-year curricular reform is good news for those hoping that Dean Kagan (of Harvard Law School) will become President Kagan (of Harvard University). I agree with Professor Elhauge, who says, “I hope we don’t lose her to the university. But I don’t think they could find anyone better to be President.”