Director of the Fineman & Pappas Law Libraries Marlene Alderman to Retire
A member of the BU Law community for more than thirty years, Alderman will retire in December.
After 32 years of distinguished service, Director of the Fineman & Pappas Law Libraries and Associate Professor of Law and Legal Research Marlene H. Alderman will retire in December 2015.
Marlene Alderman earned her JD with honors from George Washington University. Following graduation, she worked at the Judges Library of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and the Administrative Office of the US Courts. Alderman joined Boston University School of Law in 1983 as a reference librarian and, throughout her tenure, was promoted to associate director and then director of the law library in 2007. She has taught in the First Year Writing Program and, in 1997, received the Gerard Cohen Award for distinguished service to the law school.
Since joining BU Law, Alderman’s focus has been to serve law faculty and students. She has incorporated new and emerging technologies into library operations, coordinating with Westlaw and Lexis to develop one of the first permanent research teaching labs in the country. She started the library’s law journal training program, the faculty research assistant training program, and the faculty liaison program, which pairs librarians with faculty to facilitate research.
An early supporter of integrating research training into the curriculum to provide BU Law students with marketable research skills, Alderman developed the law school’s Advanced Legal Research seminar with former library Director Dan Freehling. Recognizing the need for more skills training, she worked to expand the teaching role of the law school’s reference librarians, adding required librarian-led classes in the Legal Research and Writing Program, eight advanced research classes for credit, and the highly successful Certificate for Legal Research Skills for Practice program to the BU Law curriculum.
She has supported faculty scholarship through reference and research services and collecting and licensing resources, and has transformed the library’s collection, shifting it from a largely print-based collection to focus on online resources. With the onset of the digital age, she played a leading role in writing the library’s first Electronic Collection Development Policy. This document was widely adopted by other law schools and still serves as the core of the collection development policy for the Fineman & Pappas Law Libraries.
As director, Alderman adapted library staff positions to meet the needs of a 21st century research library. Under her leadership, staff focus on service to library users and respond to the unique challenges posed by digital collections. Library space has been dramatically transformed as well. Over the last five years, she has been involved in the building of the Sumner M. Redstone Building and the renovation of the law tower as a member of the Law School Building Committee. She has worked with the building committee, architects, and construction teams to design, build, and renovate library areas to integrate the new Fineman Library with the Pappas Library and renovated library spaces in the law tower. New library spaces for students include collaborative work areas, additional reading and group study rooms, two new state-of-the-art research training classrooms, and new scan/print areas.
During her tenure Alderman also served as a law school representative to the Faculty Council, chaired the Law School Faculty Library Committee, and served on other faculty committees, including the Law School Strategic Planning Committee, ABA Site Visit Committee, and the Lawyering Program Committee. In addition, she has been an active member of numerous library associations at the local, regional, and national level.
Please join us in congratulating Marlene Alderman for her years of service.