Texas Tech Law Meet the Faculty Biographies

Sharon Blackburn

Faculty Services Librarian
(806) 742-3990 x281
Office Number: 127A
Office Hours: 8:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Email:

Sharon Blackburn is a native of Lubbock, Texas, and joined the Texas Tech Law Library in March 1982. She fondly states that she has been at the Law Library ever since dirt was clean. Prior to working in the Law Library, Sharon worked in the Waco-McClennan County Public Library, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame Library, and the Undergraduate Library and the Law Library at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has served the Texas Tech Law Library in various positions including as the Automated Legal Research Coordinator, Government Documents Librarian, Head of Reference and Instruction, and, her present position, Faculty Services Librarian. She is also the law library representative to the Legal Practice Program.

Sharon is active in law library professional associations at the local, regional, and national level. She has served as president of the Lubbock Area Library Association and the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries (SWALL) and has chaired and served on numerous committees and special interest sections in associations at all levels. Since 2002, Sharon has presented each year at the annual workshop "Legal Reference for Non-Law Librarians" sponsored by SWALL's Legal Information Service to the Public committee.

She is married to Joseph Blackburn, Unit Assistant Director – Serials, TTUHSC Libraries of the Health Sciences. They have two cats and a house full of books.

Degrees

B.A., Baylor University, 1977

M.S., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1981

M.A., Texas Tech University, 1993

Courses

Certificate of Excellence in Legal Research

Selected Publications

with Amy Hale-Janeke, Law Librarians and the Self-Represented Litigant, 27:1 Legal Reference Services Quarterly 65-88 (2008), available online at http://lrsq.haworthpress.com.

with Stephen Good, Cyberplagiarism and the Law Librarian: Identifying and Confronting Plagiarism from the World Wide Web, 8:9 AALL Spectrum 6-7, 34 (July 2004).

with Robert H. Hu, Masako Patrum, Sharon K. Scott, Status and Tenure for Academic Law Librarians: A Survey, 96:1 Law Library Journal 127-66 (Winter 2004).

Administering Selective Housing Arrangements from the Law Library Perspective: An Overview. Proceedings of the 8th Annual Federal Depository Library Conference, April 12-15, 1999, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999, pp. 67-71.

Presentations

SWALL History and Future, program presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries, Galveston, Texas, April 12, 2008

Filling the Seats: Credentialing Legal Research Skills as a Means of Marketing Library Instructional Services, program presented with Terry Conaway at the 49th Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries, Tempe, Arizona, April 21, 2007

Negotiating with the Bizarre: Strange Questions at the Reference Desk, program presented with Amy Hale-Janeke at the Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, April 13, 2007

Negotiating with the Bizarre: Strange Questions at the Reference Desk, program presented with Amy Hale-Janeke at the 97th Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries, Boston, Massachusetts, July 12, 2004

PDAs for Law Librarians, program presented with David King and Stephen Good at the Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries, Kansas City, Missouri, April 4, 2003

Here Comes the Judge: Law Librarians Evaluate Online Services, program presented with T. R. Halvorson, et al., at the 95th Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries, Orlando, Florida, July 24, 2002

Lexis Publishing Meets Matthew Bender Meets West: How to Compare Products, program presented at the Joint Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Libraries and the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries, Atlanta, Georgia, April 21, 2001

Comparing Selected Federal Tax Resources, program presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries, San Antonio, Texas, April 1, 2000

Spreading the Riches Around: Administering Selective Housing Arrangements from the Law Library Perspective, program presented with Robert C. Richards and Martha Jo Sani at the Federal Depository Conference, Bethesda, Maryland, April 13, 1999

The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: Team Building in "Our Library," program presented with Kelly Browne, Susan Freeman, et al., at the 91st Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries, Anaheim, California, July 13, 1998

Presentation Software Power, program presented with Christine Boller at the 40th Meeting of the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries, Houston, Texas, March 27, 1998

The Law Library of the Future, or the World Wide Reference Port, program presented with Lou Lindsey and Jennifer Stephens at the 39th Meeting of the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries, Tucson, Arizona, April 5, 1997

Public Librarians and Legal Information to the Public, paper presented at the Fifth National Conference of the Public Library Association in Atlanta, Georgia, March 22-26, 1994

Presenting Legal Information to Non Law Librarians, paper presented at the Joint Meeting of the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries and the Colorado Association of Law Libraries in Denver, Colorado, April 24, 1987