Libraries
Alumnus, Law Librarian to Speak
John William (Bill) Draper, a 1980 Western Illinois University alumnus and a law librarian at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak on Internet searches and legal research during a visit to the Western-Macomb campus Tuesday, Feb. 22.
Draper will present Loving Google? For Legal and Business Research? from 9:30 10:30 a.m. in Stipes Hall 121. This presentation will describe the extent to which search engines, such as Google, help or hinder legal and business research. He will also offer alternatives to using search engines and offer advice as to when to use Google.
Draper will discuss Effective Legal Research: Past, Present and Future beginning at 4 p.m. in Stipes Hall 121. Area attorneys and judges are invited to attend. During this professional-level presentation Draper will discuss how legal research is changing, what used to be effective no longer works and how lawyers capabilities may change legal research and may ultimately affect the law.
Both presentations are open free to the public. Draper is also scheduled to speak to several law-related classes during his visit.
A Macomb native, Draper received bachelors degrees in history and economics from Western. An Illinois State Scholar and a member of several honor societies, he also received the WIU College of Business Wall Street Journal Student Achievement Award. After Draper graduated from the University of Illinois Law School, he worked as a staff attorney for Prairie State Legal Services in Peoria. He later returned to the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science to receive a library science degree.
Drapers career experiences as a law librarian at both the University of Missouri Kansas City Bloch Law Library and The University of Pennsylvania Biddle Law Library included such responsibilities as serving as a reference librarian and participating in collection development, employing extensive computer and web skills. Draper has also served as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and has taught legal bibliography to graduate library school students at Drexel University. He was also one of 30 librarians nationwide accepted for the TRIALL (Teaching Research In Academic Law Libraries) Conference in Philadelphia in 2000.
Drapers visit is co-sponsored by the University Libraries, the Visiting Lecture Committee and the Council on Student Activity Funds, For more information, contact Pam Hines, University Libraries at 309-298-2762 or email ps-hines@wiu.edu.
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