One More Reason To Celebrate!
The American Association
of Law Libraries (AALL) has announced its 2005 award winners for
The Excellence in Marketing Awards. The awards honor
outstanding achievement in public relations by an individual or any other
entity affiliated with AALL. The award for Best Use of Technology
was bestowed upon the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library for the
multi-media presentation prepared by the staff in honor of the celebration
of the addition of the 500,000th volume to the Law Library Collection.
AALL
Press Release
Half Million Celebration Video
Download
Cleveland-Marshall College
of Law Library
Has Reached the Half Million Volume Milestone
On February 4, 2004, Dean Steven
H. Steinglass, Associate Dean and Law Library Director Michael J. Slinger,
the law school community and best-selling author Scott Turow added the
landmark volumes 500,000 and 500,001 to the State's Second Largest Legal
Collection during a ceremony in the College of Law's Joseph W. Bartunek
III Moot Court Room. The 500,000th volume placed into the collection was
The History of Law School Libraries in the United States: From
Laboratory to Cyberspace by
Glen-Peter Ahlers, Sr., Associate
Dean for Information Services and Director of the Law Library at Barry
University in Orlando, Florida. The 500,001st volume placed into
the collection was author and attorney Scott Turow's latest work Ultimate
Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty.
Following the ceremony, Mr. Turow delivered the law school's third
Criminal Justice Forum lecture of 2003-2004 Confessions of a Death Penalty
Agnostic.
The
Half Million Celebration Video
The staff of the Cleveland-Marshall
College of Law Library created a multi media presentation tracing the
100 year history of the Law Library. Done completely in-house, it
is a testament to the pride and esteem in which the Law Library is held
by the Law School community.
The
History of Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library
Cleveland–Marshall College of
Law is the direct descendant of two proprietary night law schools, the
Cleveland Law School, founded in 1897, and the John Marshall School of
Law, founded in 1916. In 1946 the two schools merged to become Cleveland–Marshall
Law School. In 1969 the law school joined Cleveland’s new state university
and was renamed Cleveland-Marshall College of Law of Cleveland State University.
From their earliest days both law schools had law libraries. The 1905
bulletin of the eight-year-old Cleveland Law School mentions a “large
library” in its description of its facilities in the “commodious American
Trust Building” near Public Square. By 1934 the school’s law collection
had grown to “many thousands of volumes.” The 1919 bulletin of the John
Marshall School of Law proclaimed its “excellent law library.” By 1924
the school boasted 1,000 volumes, and by 1937 its holdings contained
most of the basic tools of general practice. The collection of the merged
1946 Cleveland–Marshall Law School included 45,000 volumes.
In 1955 Cleveland–Marshall Law School employed its first librarian,
Winifred R. Higgins. A Cleveland-Marshall alumnus, Professor Jack F.
Smith (LL.B., LL.M.), succeeded her the following year, and five years
later Rudolf H. Heimanson (LL.B., LL.M. University of Berlin, J.U.D.
University of Wurzburg, M.S.L.S. Pratt Institute) was appointed Law Librarian.
Assistant Professor Helen L. Garee, a 1933 alumna of the law school,
held the position until 1969 when the school joined Cleveland State University.
From 1969 until 1972, Professor J. Patrick Browne (J. D. University
of Detroit, M.S.L.S. Case Western Reserve University) served as the school’s
Associate Librarian, and Bardie C. Wolfe, Jr., (J.D., M.S.L.S. University
of Kentucky) was the school’s Law Library Director from 1973 until 1977.
By 1977 the College of Law had moved into its new $7,500,000 building
on the corner of East 18th and Euclid. The next year, Anita J. Morse,
(J.D. Indiana University, LL.M. George Washington University, M.S.L.S.
University of Kentucky, M.P.A. CSU) became the new Law Library Director
during a period of rapid expansion and collection development. The bookshelves
in the library’s new home were only half filled, and the library’s 130,000
volumes formed the smallest academic law collection in the state. In
1979 attorney Melvin Arnold, Executive Vice President of the Eaton Corporation
and a CSU trustee, was the driving force behind one of the law school’s
most successful fundraising campaigns. Under Mr. Arnold’s leadership
the library raised approximately $750,000 from law firms, corporations,
community foundations, alumni and friends. In 1979 the law school was
named a selective federal depository, and by 1981, when Ms. Morse left
for the University of Wisconsin, the collection numbered close to 200,000.
From 1985 until 1988 Robert J. Nissenbaum (M.S.L.S. Pratt Institute;
J.D. Western New England) served the school as its Law Library Director.
In 1988 when Steven R. Smith was appointed the law school’s new Dean,
the collection, by then the second largest academic law collection in
the state, had outgrown the building that in 1977 had seemed so capacious. Recognizing
the need for a new facility to accommodate the ever–expanding holdings
and the increasingly necessary on-line resources, the new Dean, with
assistance from the new (appointed 1987) Law Library Director Scott Finet
(J.D., M.L.S University of Illinois) and Associate Library Director Katherine
Malmquist (M.L.S. Kent State, J.D. University of Toledo) organized an
effort to secure funding for the new law library.
Michael J. Slinger (M.L.S. University of South Carolina, J.D. Duquesne
University) succeeded to the post of Law Library Director in 1995. Working
with the new Dean of the College of Law Steven H. Steinglass, he supervised
the completion of the building project and the move into the new law
library, which was dedicated on September 25, 1997. The Cleveland-Marshall
Law Library is a superior research and learning facility and one of the
15 largest law libraries in the country, housing the second largest law
collection in Ohio. Students preparing for legal practice in the 21st
century have access to electronic research services, a 50-seat computer
lab, group study rooms, a research instruction room and a media center.
The law school’s future attorneys may study and read at leisure in the
four–story, light-filled atrium or study and research in one of the 200
carrels with built-in power and wireless access for portable computers.
By 1997 the Law Library’s collection had grown to 400,000 volumes. Today,
under the leadership of Dean Steinglass and Associate Dean and Law Library
Director Slinger, the Law Library has reached the landmark of 500,000
volumes.
Among the library’s present strengths are its collections in Ohio and
federal legislative history, urban law, international law, health care
law, corporate law, constitutional law, fair employment practices law,
tax law, labor law, Judaic law, and Islamic Law.
A library is more than its physical structure or collection, however.
At Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library a knowledgeable staff, committed
to excellence in service to faculty, students and members of the legal
community, provide reference services, instruction in basic and electronic
legal research methods, and all the administrative and technical services
that make a library an easy-to-use, comprehensive teaching, research,
study and meeting center.
Our appreciation to Dean Steven H. Steinglass, Rick Zhang, Leslie A.
Pardo, Marie Rehmar, David Genzen, Sandra Natran, Laverne Carter, Rita
Pawlik, Sylvia Dunham, Namita Shetty, Cleveland-Marshall Criminal Justice
Forum faculty, and our special guests, Glen-Peter Ahlers, Sr., Associate
Dean for Information Services and Director of the Law Library at Barry
University in Orlando, Florida, and author and attorney Scott Turow.
Sources
Carrington T. Marshall, ed., A History of the Courts and Lawyers of
Ohio, New York: American Historical Society, 1934.
Samuel P. Orth, A History of Cleveland Ohio, Chicago and Cleveland:
S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1910.
Elroy McKendree Avery, A History of Cleveland and Its Environs: the
Heart of New Connecticut, Chicago and New York: Lewis Publishing Company,
1918.
Bulletins of the John Marshall School of Law, Cleveland
Law School, and Cleveland-Marshall Law School.
(Leslie A. Pardo rev. 9/7/05)
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