HLS Library welcomes Shay Elbaum as Faculty Research Librarian  

We are very excited to welcome Shay Elbaum as our newest Faculty Research Librarian.  Shay comes to us from the University of Michigan Law Library, where he served as Faculty Research Librarian.  He has also worked in the law libraries at Stanford and Northeastern.      

Before becoming a law librarian, Shay worked in Alaska for the Native American Rights Fund and was a law clerk for Justice Joel Bolger of the Alaska Supreme Court.   

Shay received his library degree from Simmons College, his JD from the University of Michigan, and his BA from McGill University. 

We asked him some questions to get to know him better. 

What is your favorite legal research database and why? 

I love HeinOnline. It’s my go-to for lots of sources I use regularly, and it’s a frequent pleasant surprise to find that some item I’m looking for has a version on Hein. The way I feel about HeinOnline is like the way I feel about my cast iron frying pan: useful for just about everything, classic and reliable, much less intimidating than it seems at first glance, and thankfully unlikely to ever include an AI chatbot. 

What are you looking forward to doing in Boston?

So many things! The last time I lived in a big city, it was Boston, so a lot of the things I miss about city life are actually things I miss about Boston. I’m looking forward to eating lots of good seafood, and if you have a favorite oyster spot, I’d love to hear about it. I’ve never been to any of the Harvard museums, so I’m excited to remedy that, and also to visit my favorite paintings in my favorite museum, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. And I’m looking forward to living within biking or walking distance of work and overall leading a less car-based life.  

Do you have any good book recommendations?

That all depends on what you like. Lately, I really enjoyed Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker, a warts-and-all look at the contemporary art world. In the realm of fiction, I just re-read The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay, which starts off seeming like a light comic travel novel but turns out to be about the Anglican Church, the Cold War, and of course, love.  

What should we know about you that we haven’t asked about? 

I do the New York Times crossword puzzle every day and I firmly believe that if you can do a Monday crossword, you can learn to do a Saturday crossword.