Davis Legal Information Professional Among Team To Receive Advocacy Award

News from the American Association of Law Libraries:

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) announced today that the 2012 California Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) Advocacy Team has been honored with the 2015 Robert L. Oakley Advocacy Award.

Established in 2008, the award recognizes the outstanding efforts of an AALL member, or group, who has contributed significantly to AALL’s policy agenda at the federal, state, local, or international level. The award honors the memory of Robert L. Oakley, AALL’s Washington affairs representative from 1989 to 2007.

UELMA is a uniform law designed to ensure permanent public access to trustworthy online state legal material.

UELMA was enacted in California in September 2012 in large part because of a local advocacy team, comprised of Michele M. Finerty (retired), formerly of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento; Judy C. Janes, director and law lecturer at the UC Davis Mabie Law Library in Davis; David L. McFadden, senior reference librarian for the Leigh H. Taylor Law Library at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles; and Lawrence (Larry) R. Meyer, executive director of the Law Library for San Bernardino County, San Bernardino.

The advocacy team gained support for UELMA by working with California Legislative Counsel Diane Boyer-Vine, who also represents the state on the Uniform Law Commission, and by meeting with key state officials.

“It has been an honor and pleasure to work with Larry, David, Michele, and Judy to establish the principles of authentication and preservation for electronic legal materials that have now become law in California and many other states,” Boyer-Vine said.

AALL 2015 award recipients will be recognized at AALL’s upcoming 108th AALL Annual Meeting & Conference, to be held in Philadelphia from July 18-21, 2015.

About AALL

The American Association of Law Libraries was founded in 1906 to promote law libraries’ value to the legal and public communities, foster the law librarianship profession, and provide leadership in the legal information field. For more information, visit www.aallnet.org.