Professor Janet Sinder, the director of the library, who teaches in the area of legal research, was granted tenure this spring.
Sinder is highly respected by students and faculty colleagues, not only for her award-winning scholarship and institutional accomplishments, but for her enthusiasm for the Law School community. “If our incomparable Law Librarian Janet Sinder were a book, she would be showcased where rare and priceless treasures are securely featured by any institution fortunate to be her home,” said Dean Nick Allard.
She was honored with the Law Library Journal Article of the Year Award for her article, "The Effects of Demand-Driven Acquisitions on Law Library Collection Development," 108 Law Library Journal 155 (2016). In the article, Sinder examines the advantages and disadvantages of demand-driven acquisitions, in which libraries include books in online catalogs but do not pay for them unless a user requests them. The practice is used most often for e-books and has the advantage of making a lot of books available to users without the cost of purchasing all of them, Sinder explained.
Sinder joined the faculty in 2012 after working at the law libraries at Duke University and the University of Maryland. She began her legal career as an Assistant Defender at the Office of the State Appellate Defender in Springfield, Illinois.
At the Law School, she has championed and implemented several key initiatives including BrooklynWorks, a free, open-access digital repository that includes faculty scholarship and student journals, which was introduced in 2015.
“Anyone from anywhere in the world can download and read journal articles from BrooklynWorks,” said Sinder. “It widens accessibility to our faculty scholars and the important work produced in our journals. It’s all just a Google search away.” BrooklynWorks has been accessed from every continent except Antarctica, and it also serves as a preservation system.
When Sinder is not immersed in her professional work, she loves to travel. She has traveled extensively through Australia, New Zealand, India, Egypt, Thailand, Cambodia, South Africa, and Europe. “I still need to go to South America and Antarctica, then I will have visited all seven continents,” she said.
“Professor Sinder is a forward-thinking, nationally and globally regarded leader among law librarians, a scholar, a widely-read award-winning author and editor, a superb teacher, a technology innovator, and someone who has totally insinuated herself into the heart and soul of our law school community,” said Allard.