The American Association of Law Libraries has recognized Associate Dean and Biddle Law Library Director Amanda Runyon for “outstanding achievement in research and writing.”
Associate Dean, Director of Biddle Law Library, and Lecturer in Law Amanda Runyon has been awarded the 2024 Law Library Journal Article of the Year Award from the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL).
Since 1990, AALL has honored “outstanding achievement in research and writing” in a work published in Law Library Journal. Each year, AALL Awards Jury members review every Law Library Journal article published in the previous year before selecting a winner.
Runyon co-authored “Demonstrating Law Library Value Through Mission-Centered Assessment,” (Law Library Journal Vol. 115, No. 5, 2023) with Amanda Bolles Watson, Assistant Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School, Amanda I. Karel, Higher Education Accreditation, Assessment, and Planning Consultant, and Leslie Street, Director of the Wolf Law Library and Clinical Professor of Legal Research at William & Mary Law School.
The article came from a desire to “positively change the professional conversation around law library quality and find better ways to communicate value,” particularly as U.S. News & World Report adopted new metrics that fundamentally changed how it attempted to measure the value of law libraries in its law school rankings beginning in late 2020.
“Their revised formula placed a heavier emphasis on easily quantifiable metrics about law libraries, such as number of seats, titles owned, and hours open,” said Runyon. “While convenient to measure, these metrics offered little insight into the true quality of a law library’s services and collections.”
Conversations about law library quality became dominated by U.S. News rankings, overshadowing how well libraries actually served their institutions. The focus on U.S. News rankings led to a troubling perception of law libraries as separate entities, not integral parts of the law school with specific needs.
Runyon explained how this new emphasis on U.S. News metrics clashed directly with the American Bar Association (ABA) Standards for law libraries.
“The ABA requires libraries to develop resources and services tailored to each law school’s unique mission and curriculum. Suddenly, law schools and libraries were pressured to prioritize measurable statistics over strategic allocation of resources based on actual needs,” she said.
While the article argues against simple quantitative measures defining a law library’s quality and an overreliance on validation from organizations like the ABA and U.S. News, it also urges law librarians and leadership to take an active role in defining and demonstrating law library quality and the many ways in which they support their law schools.
“We believed law librarians, as experts, should lead the conversation on what constitutes a quality law library, not outside entities defining quality and driving resource allocation,” said Runyon.
“Collaboratively authoring this article allowed us to combine our diverse backgrounds and expertise. Our goal was to develop a modern framework for effectively demonstrating and communicating the value of law libraries that would be useful to all types of law libraries,” she said. “Witnessing the positive impact of our efforts on the profession has been immensely rewarding.”