A new legal advisor for librarians, educators, and information professionals

New York, NY (August 15, 2008)—From the USA-PATRIOT Act and its reauthorization to First Amendment issues dealing with everything from meeting room allocation to perennial concerns such as copyright and licensing, librarians and other information professionals face daily threats from potential liability suits.

Paul Healey, in his new book Professional Liability Issues for Librarians and Information Professionals to be released by Neal-Schuman Publishers on September 12, 2008, tackles the jumble of questions that emerge when considering liability (duty, fault, harm, etc.), immunity, and policy decisions inherent in the milieu of issues surrounding the library, librarians, and tort law. Such critical questions include:
• “Can we really be sued for having an out-of-date reference book or for giving out incorrect or incomplete information?”
• “When does reference service related to legal or medical content cross the line into the unauthorized practice of a profession such as law or medicine?”
• “We received a letter from a publisher requesting that a copy of one of its books be removed because it contains defamatory or erroneous material—do we have to honor that request?”
• “Some of the Web sites our patrons access contain all sorts of potentially harmful information, or other content that is pervasively harmful, such as hate speech of some sort. Are we liable if a patron used the library to access the content and then harmed someone with that information?”

Currently, no librarian or information professional has been successfully sued and found liable for any normal professional activities. This does not mean that such a suit could never happen, but it does indicate that professional liability should be avoidable in the information professions. How and why it can be avoided is the point of Healey’s book.

Both a lawyer and a librarian, Healey is well-positioned to explain the threat of potential liabilities, and most importantly, recommend how to avoid them. In addition, he clarifies how liability issues differ not only between institutions—public libraries, academic libraries, museums—but also between varying information related jobs like reference librarianship and cataloguing.

“This book accomplishes two important goals of empowerment,” according to Tomas A. Lipinski, J.D., LL.M., Ph.D., the Legal Advisor for Librarians, Educators, and Information Professionals Series editor, “First it arms the reader with the basic legal concepts necessary to enable any librarian to undertake an independent assessment and conclusion regarding the possibility of professional liability. Secondly, and more importantly, readers will understand how to ensure that any threat of such liability remains in the remote confines of the hypothetical library school classroom or conference discussion.”

Throughout the text there is a decided focus on organizing the presentation of legal concepts in specific contexts, such as type of information professional (librarian, broker, archivist, curator, etc.), library or entity (public, law, special, etc.), and professional function (reference service, acquisitions, etc.). Thee first several chapters speak directly to these basic ideas. Healey then talks about the “harm” that might arise through various forms of “errors” as well as other torts, applying legal analysis to assess the likely result under the law. Examples, case studies, and summary points throughout increase the usefulness of the text.

Later chapters apply advanced concepts to specific contexts, such as law, medicine, information brokers, and archival and museum environments. The good news of immunity applicable in public employment settings is also discussed. This approach allows each reader to focus on matters directly related to his or her own professional setting. The book concludes on a functional note with a chapter advocating proactive approaches to avoid the legal entanglements discussed in the previous chapters from ever being triggered.

Professional Liability Issues for Librarians and Information Professionals
ISBN 978-1-55570-609-8.
2008. 6 x 9. 200 pp. $85.00.

About the Author
Paul D. Healey serves as Senior Reference Librarian and Associate Professor of Library Administration at the Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Law Library at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Healey received his J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1987 and his Master of Arts in Library and Information Science from the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science in 1995. In 2008 he earned a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Healey has been an academic law librarian since 1995, prior to which he spent seven years practicing law. He has been on the law library faculty of the University of Illinois College of Law since 2000. He has written articles for the National Law Journal, Law Library Journal, and AALL Spectrum, among others.

About Neal-Schuman Publishers and the Legal Advisory Series
Neal-Schuman Publishers is a leading publisher of professional resources for librarians and information professionals. Founded in 1976, Neal-Schuman Publishers in based in New York City, with offices in London, UK. The Legal Advisor for Librarians, Educators, and Information Professionals Series is edited by Tomas A. Lipinski, J.D., LL.M., Ph.D., one of the nation’s foremost experts on intellectual property law. Each title in the series examines relevant laws, analyzes cases for their impact on everyday practice, features question-and-answer sections, and contains model policy and/or other sample language readers can quickly utilize in their own institutions.

For More Information
Contact Yelena Perlin
(yelena@neal-schuman.com)