D’Angelo Law librarians Todd Ito and Scott Vanderlin received the Innovation Tournament Award and a monetary prize on July 17 from the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). The prize will support the development of a tool that will make research on statutory law more efficient.

The proposed tool, SuperSeed, will address a challenge for legal researchers reviewing court opinions or other legal sources. Currently, legal research platforms provide links to the most recent text of a statute rather than the version relied upon by a court. SuperSeed will alert the researcher to amendments in statutory law and provide a link to the version of a statute discussed at the time a case was decided. This innovative tool will eliminate the cumbersome process now necessary for lawyers and law students to locate the correct version of a statute referenced in a court opinion.

Todd, Head of Instruction and Outreach, and Scott, Student Services Librarian, won the AALL Innovation Tournament at the Association’s annual meeting and conference, which brings together law librarians from academic, private, and government institutions nationwide. Their project proposal was chosen for the award by an overwhelming vote of librarians in the audience at the event. The AALL Innovation Tournament Award includes a monetary prize of $2500, which will be used to develop SuperSeed.

Todd and Scott created the concept for SuperSeed with D’Angelo colleague and Data and Scholarship Librarian Thomas Drueke. Congratulations to these talented law librarians on this award and AALL’s recognition of their creativity and innovative project!