Barbara Bintliff named Distinguished Alumna

The Distinguished Alumni award, established in 1961, recognizes outstanding graduates of the Information School. Alumni are chosen for their distinguished service in community affairs, and/or specific meritorious service on behalf of the Information School and the UW.

Barbara Bintliff has spent her law librarianship career in Colorado, first at the University of Denver and then at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she served with distinction as the Director from 1989 to 2010. She recently started a new position as Joseph C. Hutcheson Professor of Law and Law Library Director at the University of Texas School of Law, Tarlton Law Library and Jamail Center for Legal Research.

Bintliff served as Chair of the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section and as President of the American Association of Law Libraries, the Colorado Association of Law Libraries and the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries. She is currently serving as chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Law Libraries.

Awards for Bintliff's work include the 2005 Frederick Charles Hicks Award for Outstanding Contributions to Academic Law Librarianship and the 2008 Robert L. Stearns Award, for achievements in teaching, research, and service, the University of Colorado's highest honor.

Over the years, Bintliff has authored over three dozen articles and book chapters and has spoken on dozens of professional programs - locally, regionally, and nationally. She shares her expertise to better the profession and those who use the services of law libraries - law students, lawyers and judges, members of the University community, librarians, and members of the public. She is a consummate teacher of legal research, recognizing the challenges and opportunities of the digital media.

Recently, Bintliff started the Conference on Legal Information: Scholarship and Teaching, a workshop for legal research professionals. While work-shopping professional papers by law librarians, the conference focused on defining a pedagogy of legal research instruction. The resulting Boulder Statement on Legal Research Education expresses a comprehensive approach to legal research instruction that will significantly improve the preparation of law students for their legal careers. As a result of her ground-breaking efforts, the Conference meets every year in the summer to mentor and work with new young professional law librarians who seek to enhance legal research scholarship and teaching.

She is also serving as the Reporter for the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws as they draft state legislation on Authentication and Preservation of Electronic State Legal Materials. There is perhaps no greater challenge to the rule of law than the move to electronic legal information that is not authenticated and preserved in its many formats. Barbara has been a leader in this effort as she works to form the drafting committee's ideas and concerns into a coherent piece of legislation that could be adopted by all 50 states.