Barbara Bintliff ('79), an alumna of the UW iSchool's Law Librarianship program who also earned a law degree at the University of Washington, has been appointed director of the Tarlton Law Library and the Jamail Center for Legal Research at the University of Texas. She has also been named the Joseph C. Hutcheson Professor of Law.

Bintliff has been director of the law library at the University of Colorado at Boulder since 1989. She received the university's highest honor, the Robert L. Stearns Award, in 2008 for achievements in teaching, research and service.

Bintliff received the master of law librarianship in 1979 and the juris doctor degree in 1978. Her research includes differences between print and electronic media in legal research.

In a recent interview with Tarlton Library News, she said legal research has always been taught as if the law were an identifiable set of rules, doctrines and applications. "But there is so much information today, in so many formats and in so many places," she said, "that attorneys may not be looking in the same places and finding the same law."

It makes coherence difficult, she said. "We need to develop new tools and processes that are not tied to the print world alone and that will re-establish a common starting place for research."

Bintliff will assume her new role at the University of Texas this coming fall.