GallagherFYI Lists: The Concept
Public Services librarians often send notes to professors and others in the law school alerting them to new material in their areas of interest. This could include government reports, news stories, academic articles, or new books. In summer 2016, we began creating listservs to make it easier to send messages to people with similar interests. Instead of having to think each time about which professors and staff are interested in, say, health law, we can now send a message to GallagherFYI-HealthLaw.
The GallagherFYI lists are not comprehensive. Not even our team of crack librarians can keep up with all the news and scholarship in one area, let alone all of these areas. You will still want to use a variety of other tools for keeping up. Ask us, if you'd like help setting up alerts or finding relevant newsletters.
We are selective in what we send. If an event is on the front page of every newspaper, we assume that subscribers will learn about it without our help. We will send out material that adds depth or breadth. For example, health law scholars (along with everyone else) saw the headlines about the first Zika infections in Florida. We didn't need to share the front-page stories, but we sent to the GallagherFYI-HealthLaw list a link to the Lancet's Zika Virus Resource Centre and CQ Report on Mosquito-Borne Disease (CQ Researcher is a UW-restricted database).
We all receive a lot of email, so the GallagherFYI lists try to make it easier to deal with.
1. Every message has the list name in the subject line, like this:
So you know that it's not a message that requires action. You can put it in a folder or save it for later or delete it if you're too busy to read it.
2. Each list has an archive, so you can go back later to look up something you blasted past the first time.
3. The lists are set up to avoid duplication. So if we send one message to two lists (say, Criminal Justice and Social Justice), then you'll only see it once.
4. If you want, you can get your messages in a daily digest, instead of potentially getting several messages in a day.
GallagherFYI Lists: The Lists
| List Name | Scope |
|---|---|
| GallagherFYI-Business | Business law and policy |
| GallagherFYI-Children | Children's legal issues: foster care, adoption, custody, education |
| GallagherFYI-Const-Hist | U.S. constitutional law, legal history. (Will mostly be new books; don't look for messages every time a court rules on a constitutional question!) |
| GallagherFYI-Courts | Court administration, judges, juries |
| GallagherFYI-CrimJustice | Criminal justice |
| GallagherFYI-DrugPolicy | Marijuana legalization, opioid policy, etc. |
| GallagherFYI-EnvirLaw | Environmental law, water law, wildlife law, natural resources. Generally limited to US. |
| GallagherFYI-HealthLaw | Health law, law and public health, law and genetics, global health, health and human rights |
| GallagherFYI-IntDev | International development, human rights |
| GallagherFYI-IP_Tech | Intellectual property; technology and the law |
| GallagherFYI-LegalProfession | Legal profession, legal ethics |
| GallagherFYI-MentalHealth | Mental health law and policy |
| GallagherFYI-NativeAm | Indian and tribal law |
| GallagherFYI-SocialJustice | Race, poverty, income inequality, immigration, sex, LGBT issues |
| GallagherFYI-Tax | Tax law and policy |
| GallagherFYI-Theory | Legal theory and comparative law (generally just announcements of new books) |
| GallagherFYI-Writing | Legal writing, writing in general, some legal research |
GallagherFYI Lists: Mechanics
For information about using Mailman lists at the UW, see this Subscriber's Guide. That explains how to subscribe, unsubscribe, view archives, etc.
If you don't want to bother with those steps, just email the library (lawref@uw.edu) and a Public Services librarian can sign you up.