Greetings everyone!
My name is Polya, and I work in a public academic law library. If you’ve ever tried to trace a bill, or a public policy, from introduction through hearing transcripts and committee reports, to enacted code, you know it’s its own kind of hyperlink trail. Tracing legislation sometimes requires a kind of navigational thinking that has some parallels to the networked approach this course examines.
Law libraries tend to operate conservatively, given their grounding in formal procedure. The profession, however, is undergoing a shift toward more self-service and digital research tools, as well as a broader redefinition of what user-centered service entails. A recent post on the RIPS Law Librarian Blog, for instance, discusses how academic law libraries are expanding their role to support student well-being alongside traditional research services. I selected this course because I wanted a structured opportunity to examine what concepts such as “participatory” and “user-centered” mean within a legal research context.
My professional focus is legal information services. I’m especially interested in how libraries can demystify legal research for self-represented individuals and the public, and how emerging tools (AI-assisted search, better citation tools) might lower that barrier further.
Glad to be here.