Youngwoo Ban

What's the most important thing you are working on right now?
 
As a research librarian, one of the most important job responsibilities is to provide the faculty with research assistance, which can range from obtaining requested books/articles to conducting 50-state surveys. As the library liaison to nine Boyd Law faculty members, I am very grateful for the opportunity to assist their scholarship by providing research assistance. Another important thing I am working on currently is teaching. In this semester, I am teaching Advanced Legal Research: Intellectual Property. As indicated by the course name, it is a legal research course focusing on IP-related research methods (including patent and trademark searches). Preparing for the class has been both challenging and rewarding. I consider myself lucky to have the ten students in my class.
 
How do you approach teaching your favorite topics? Your least favorite?  
 
As a legal research instructor, I have realized that I decided my favorite and least
favorite topics based on my familiarity with the topic. My least favorite topic became the least favorite because I was afraid of the fact that I did not know enough about the topic. Thus, in order to successfully teach my least favorite topics, I must spend more time in preparation so that I will be able to deliver the major lesson points to my students. My mentors and colleagues have told me that the best way to learn about a topic is to teach or write about it.
  
What is it about being a law librarian that inspires or motivates you?

A great thing about being an academic law librarian is that I get to work on different
types of tasks every day. One day, I could be working on a faculty research project. The next day, I could be working on collection development and Scholarly Commons (our institutional repository contacting faculty scholarship, NLJ/GLJ articles, etc.) In addition, being able to provide the law students with reference services motivates me as well. In order to be able to provide good reference services and carry out the variety of daily challenges, I must learn every day. This is what motivates me.