Annual Reports of the Public Relations Committee
2001-2002
Annual Report
AALL Public Relations Committee 2000-2001
Joan Shear, Chair
It was a busy year for the Public Relations Committee as it continued its ongoing efforts to recognize, inspire, and support public relations activities of AALL members, and began to explore new ways to share public relations resources more broadly.
The committee received forty-seven entries to the AALL/Findlaw Excellence in Marketing Award. It was not only a large pool of entries, but also a strong one, especially in the category of Best Campaign. Tracey Bridgman and Sue Burch joined me in reviewing them and sending our recommendations to the Awards Committee, which made the final selections. The 2002 winners were Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP (Best Brochure: "The Library: Professional Assistance"), Faegre & Benson LLP (Best Campaign: "Faegre Interactive Documents Online (FIDO)"), Orange County Public Law Library (Best Newsletter: "Transcript"), H. Douglas Barclay Law Library, Syracuse (Best PR Tool Kit: "The Barclay Law Library: Survival Tactics for Your First Semester and Beyond"), and Vermont Law School Library (Best Use of Technology: "Legal Research Project").
Our monthly PR column
in AALL Spectrum included articles on such topics as friends groups, valuing
law librarians, hospitality, recruitment to the profession, and the importance
of effective communication. Committee members Carol D. Billings, Tracey
Bridgman, Sue Burch, Robert Haibin Hu, Raquel M. Ortiz, Cindy Spohr, and
I authored articles.
Our CONELL display, designed and built by Raquel Ortiz, illustrated how
the Public Relations Conmiittee creates connections between AALL members,
institutions, and the communities we serve. Raquel and I welcomed newer
members of the profession at CONELL and provided a variety of handouts
including our FAQs about the AALL Annual Meeting.
The Public Relations
Showcase, now in its tenth year, continues to be the place to find innovative
and new ways to market a library or library-related organization and its
services. Twenty libraries and organizations displayed successful marketing
efforts in the Exhibit Hall throughout the meeting. This year we tried
asking all our participants to be available for interaction with visitors
during the
Exhibit Hall no-conflict times, so interested parties would know when
they could find the experts. Sue Burch and I coordinated this effort.
The Chapter Leadership
Roundtable, planned by Robert Hu and Carol
Billings, featured marketing tips from the experts, including some of
the ElM award winners and some other exceptional ElM entrants. Robert
and Carol are working to try to achieve a more ongoing relationship with
the chapter PR chairs.
Carol Billings and I (in an ex officio capacity as chair of the PR Committee) were named to a special AALL Centennial Planning Task Force to develop and submit a broad-based plan for the celebration of the centennial anniversary of the Association in 2006. The plan will heavily involve the Public Relations Committee, as well as the Law Library Journal and AALL Spectrum, in promoting and documenting the event. Carol will serve as the chair of the Special AALL Centennial Celebration Committee that will implement the plan.
The AALL Strategic Plan has offered many opportunities for the Public Relations Committee to promote the profession and the Association. Our work has focused on the initiative to "actively communicate the value of law librarians to employers and potential employers" and has included drafting a document that succinctly communicates the value of law librarians to their organizations. We've also begun a project to gather law librarians' success stories that document real value actualized by a parent organization, and plan to make this data available through the committee's Web site.
We tried this year to increase the content and usability of the Web site. One goal has been to provide greater accessibility to PR initiatives already tried by AALL and its members. Examples of products we'd like to be able to make available are a PR speakers bureau, links to examples of past ElM winning entries, and other tools for the development of promotional activities. The conmittee would like to formally thank Arek Tarasiewicz, who volunteered to redesign the site on his personal time, and not as part of his responsibilities as an AALL staff member. Continuing committee member Raquel Ortiz will take over the maintenance of the Web site next year.
Finally, in an attempt to make use of many of the public relations initiatives of the past, we discovered that there has been a break in the submission of important historical documents to AALL Archives by this and a number of other AALL committees. The PR Committee would like to encourage all committee chairs to weed their files according to AALL guidelines and send appropriate inactive materials to the archives where they will be accessible to future AALL leaders.
Last Updated: June 30, 2003
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2003, American Association of Law Libraries
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