Dear In Custodia Legis readers and Law Library of Congress patrons, colleagues, and friends:
The holiday season is always a special time to pause and reflect on the past while looking ahead to the future. As the year ends, I would like to extend warm holiday greetings and sincere gratitude for your support this past year. Together we have achieved some incredible things with meaningful impact. Still, our achievements would not have been possible without the hard work of our employees, the collaboration of our partners, and the support of our patrons. To celebrate this “togetherness” as we head into 2025, I am presenting you with an overview of the Law Library of Congress updates and achievements from this year.
As a team, we are committed to being user-centered and digitally enabled, and we continue to focus on increasing the discoverability and accessibility of the Law Library’s collection materials while providing the highest-quality research and instruction services to Law Library patrons. Despite having to navigate through multiple continuous resolutions-related funding limitations and other budgetary obstacles impacting our operations and our staff numbers, the Law Library remains a powerhouse that regularly exceeds all planned goals and operational target numbers. Our efforts are intended to ensure that the Law Library never stops evolving, that the Law Library meets the needs of its patrons, and that it continues supporting our partners in the law library community and beyond.
In 2024, the Law Library’s amazing team successfully handled multiple ongoing projects, proposed and implemented new initiatives, and processed a very high number of research requests from all three government branches and legal reference requests from our public patrons. The expertise of foreign law specialists was actively sought by congressional staff and the intelligence community. We continued to host in-person and virtual classes, trainings, and events and to engage our user communities and partners so they can learn more about our collections and services. Providing free access to United States legal materials remains our focus, as it benefits not only American citizens but also the global public, by serving as a model of transparency and democratic governance.
This fiscal year, the Law Library’s Global Legal Collection team, Collection Services, and Digital Resources divisions made significant efforts to enhance our print and digital collections. Our digital collection is richer for 136,782 PDFs and over 3.6 million pages, including materials from the Congressional Serial Set, Century of Lawmaking, Law Library reports, and foreign legal gazettes. The team also completed the inventory and preparation of the final Serial Set volumes and initiated the digitization of Supreme Court records and briefs. A pilot program resulted in the digitization of 892 volumes of the records and briefs, setting the stage for a full digitization contract, which was just awarded. From our print collection, 7,051 physical items were circulated on-site to Law Library patrons. To improve discoverability and access to the Law Library’s collection, the classification of retrospective collection items from the obsolete LAW shelving system into the Library of Congress K classification also successfully continues, thanks to both our employees and our tireless volunteer, Jolande Goldberg. Thank you, Jolande!
I am very proud to say that the Law Library highly benefited from the contributions of 153 unpaid interns and volunteers, who collectively donated 19,276 hours of service to enhance access and improve library offerings under a specific arrangement for volunteer contributions. I cannot express how grateful we are.
The Law Library’s Global Legal Research team, Public Services Division, and two Foreign, Comparative, and International Law divisions, processed 10,748 research inquiries related to U.S. and foreign law. This included 1,099 from congressional offices, and 9,649 inquiries, primarily from executive branch agencies and the public. The Global Legal Research Directorate provided 152 programs last year, reaching a total of 6,000 congressional, executive branch, and public attendees. The programs – both online and in person – included research instruction, briefings, orientations, collection presentations, and tours. The staff published 299 reports on legal developments around the world in the Global Legal Monitor, the Law Library’s online legal news product, with an average of 70,000 page views per month.
The Law Library’s total events attendance in FY24 was 1,647 attendees. Some event highlights include the Law Library and the American Bar Association’s jointly-hosted 2024 Law Day celebration, with a panel discussion on innovative practices that encourage democratic participation in governance, and the Constitution Day event with Georgetown Law Dean William Treanor interviewing Yale Law Professor Robert Post concerning Prof. Post’s book, “The Taft Court: Making Law for a Divided Nation, 1921–1930.” This book was published as part of the Holmes devise. Additionally, the Office of External Relations’ small but powerful team organized and provided 30 tours for 462 delegates from various countries, and won the first Library of Congress Friends’ Choice Challenge, which involved the creation of a contest where the public would compete to create simple video games that teach civics and incorporate Library of Congress resources. In August of 2024, the authors of the winning games, Duck Duty, TownSprings, and Pillars of Persuasion, were honored at the National Book Festival and the winning games were made available to the public to play via a laptop or desktop.
Initiatives that were launched last year and this year are successfully continuing. Our State Law Libraries Outreach Initiative is completing its third year, with a great lineup of new states with which we are forging relationships. Since its initiation, the Law Library has hosted special appearances from law librarians in California, New York, Minnesota, Virginia, Georgia, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Oklahoma, and Washington State. Our next webinar is on January 23, 2025, at 1:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) with the Maine State Law and Legislative Reference Library.
We are also continuing with the Guggenheim Scholars Program for research at the intersection of demography, technology, and criminal justice. In fiscal year 2024, the Law Library hosted a scholar whose project identified best practices concerning the jury system in the United States that might serve as a model in Uruguay. The application process for 2025 is still open, and materials must be received by January 7, 2025, to be considered for the program in the summer of 2025.
Our newest initiative is a collaborative effort with the American Association of Law Libraries, which resulted in the Law Library hosting the recipient of AALL’s Schaffer Grant, which is awarded each year by AALL’s Foreign, Comparative, and International Special Interest Section to a foreign law librarian to attend the AALL annual meeting. In fiscal year 2024, we hosted a librarian from Bhutan, Mr. Ugyen Thinley. He reviewed our collection policies for Bhutan and made recommendations to the recommending officer. He also provided a guest appearance at one of our foreign and comparative law webinars to discuss Bhutan’s legal system and research in a program titled Laws on Happiness—The Legal System and Legislation of Bhutan. We look forward to hosting the 2025 recipient, a librarian from Kenya.
This year, the Library’s Congress.gov team focused on data modernization, enhanced features, and accessibility improvements. The Law Library continued to serve as the public interface for Congress.gov, providing assistance with Congress.gov for the public, as well as congressional and non-congressional governmental entities. Our staff participated as subject matter experts on the Congress.gov development team, advocating for the adoption of enhancements that are requested by the public to better serve their legislative information needs. In addition, the Law Library, and its remote intern program, provided support for the modernization of historical legislative data so that this data can be displayed on Congress.gov. A new system for tracking the support the Law Library provides for users of Congress.gov resources has been developed and implemented. The Law Library also promoted the latest Congress.gov enhancements by drafting release announcements that are published on its blog, In Custodia Legis, and through posts on social media. Finally, the Law Library continued its efforts to educate the public about Congress.gov by providing the Congress.gov webinars, which introduce Congress.gov and highlight its latest enhancements, and by co-hosting and participating in the Congress.gov public forums, which provide an opportunity for the public to discuss Congress.gov and to provide feedback about the site.
Our efforts are being tailored to ensure the Law Library is the first choice for legislative, judicial, and executive agencies, as well as public users. We are also promoting our community engagement through initiatives focused on increased awareness of the Law Library’s collections, services, expertise, and events. Likewise, the Law Library is developing increased posts to social network sites, and you can find the latest news on Facebook, X, and GovDelivery. Our X account @LawLibCongress has over 71,000 followers, while @Congressdotgov has almost 73,000 followers. The Law Library’s Facebook page has close to 40,000 followers. The Law Library continues to offer RSS feeds and e-mail alerts to notify subscribers about selected resources, upcoming events, and training. Join us, follow us, and write to us, we look forward to hearing from you!
And, to end this narrative on a very high note, thanks to all of you, the Law Library’s In Custodia Legis patrons, we have recorded over one million visits and views to our blog this year. I feel proud and humbled to be part of such an amazing team and to be supported by our incredible partners and patrons. Thank you!
I sincerely hope that this post not only reports the progress being made together to create a more sustainable and modern Law Library but also reflects the work being done to build a stronger institution that reflects the aspirations of all. We are very proud of our hard work at modernizing and efforts to build a dynamic and welcoming workplace that continues to attract attention, and we are so grateful for your partnership, support, and commitment to our shared goals and ideals. Thank you for being an integral part of the Law Library family.
In the spirit of the season, I wish everyone the most pleasant, relaxing, and fulfilling of holidays, and a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. We look forward to serving your legal information needs in 2025.
Aslihan Bulut
Law Librarian of Congress
