RLLC Committee Meeting Minutes
July 10, 2006, St. Louis, Missouri
Review of 2005-2006 Annual Report and New Charge
The committee members introduced themselves. Susan Lewis-Somers, the outgoing Chair, reviewed items from the Annual 2005–2006 Report. She mentioned that there are several AALL committees that have overlapping missions and that RLLC had just revised its charge. Among other changes, the new RLLC charge clearly states that we will act “as a clearinghouse of law librarianship education and career information for prospective law librarians” as well as providing “resources for members and chapters to use for local recruitment and outreach initiatives.” Joyce Janto, our AALL Board liaison, informed us that the Board has approved this new charge, and it may be posted on the website at any time.
Susan also reported that she has been receiving 1–3 queries per week from the “Contact Us” form on the RLLC website. Michael Saint-Onge asked whether it was burdensome for Susan to be solely responsible for responding to these inquiries and suggested that the RLLC Chair may want to delegate responsibility for responses to other committee members. We all agreed that we would be willing to share the responsibility for handling these recruitment queries in the future.
Introduction of AALL Board Liaison
Susan also introduced our AALL Board Liaison, Joyce Janto. Joyce stated that she would be happy to take action items from the RLLC to the Executive Board at any time. Joyce also mentioned that AALL has created a “committee on committees,” called the AALL Committee Structure Special Committee. This committee will examine all of the AALL committee charges over the next two years and will reassign committee duties as necessary. We should all alert Joyce if we observe any duplicative efforts among AALL committees during our tenure.
Joyce and Susan also mentioned that the AALL Executive Board recently voted to merge the Graduate Education for Law Librarianship Special Committee into the RLLC. Barbara asked for more details about this merger. Joyce reported that the Graduate Education for Law Librarianship Special Committee felt that it would be most appropriate if the RLLC was charged with the responsibility for contacting library schools to explore modifications to the curriculum to better support law librarianship.
Discussion of Committee Action Plan
Our new Chair, Ann Green, began the discussion of new business by noting that Diane Murley has kindly agreed to continue serving as the RLLC webmaster.
Ann Green informed us that our Committee will need to develop an Action Plan, which can delineate action items that will occur over one year or several years. The Committee discussed the merits of both approaches. At this time, we are leaning towards creating an Action Plan that will cover several years.
Ann asked us whether our committee should draft some form letters that we can send to library schools and law schools to publicize law librarianship. The letters would include scholarship information and information on law librarianship from the RLLC website and other sources. In addition to sending these letters to various academic institutions, we could post them on our website.
Ann also mentioned that we should keep an eye out for new recruitment-related materials that we can either link to or post on the Committee's website. Leah Sandwell-Weiss thought that Jennifer Murray's recent ALL-SIS newsletter articles would be excellent additions to our website.
Michael Saint-Onge stated that most AALL regional chapters have library school liaisons. He suggested that we should find out who those liaisons are and begin to forge relationships with them. By making these contacts, we could collect ideas for developing relationships with local library and law schools from regional chapters and post these ideas on the RLLC website. We could also furnish links to any regional chapter websites that provide recruiting materials. Susan Lewis-Somers reported that she had tried to collect this information from the regional chapters, but she didn't receive many responses to her inquiries.
Other committee members mentioned that it was also important to contact regional chapters that aren't doing any liaison work and offer to help them to begin these efforts.
Barbara mentioned that, if we can identify local librarians who are working as liaisons, it would be useful to identify which library schools do not have law-related courses and target them for curriculum change. Local librarians are in a great position to offer to teach new law-related courses at library schools, and RLLC should offer resources to librarians interested in these efforts. Local librarians can also post about law librarian job openings and regional chapter events on library and law school listservs. Sara Paul reported that the AALL website has a list of library schools with law-related courses (located at: http://www.aallnet.org/committee/tfedu/LawLibDepth.htm) and that we should verify the accuracy of this information.
Jim Milles and Amy Wright mentioned the need to reach out to younger people. Amy, Sara, and Eric all attended the Gen X/Gen Y caucus this year, and we all volunteered to serve as informal liaisons between the RLLC and this group. Amy mentioned that we should use the newly created Gen X/Gen Y to solicit ideas for recruitment activities. Jim mentioned that we should consider establishing a presence on sites visited by younger generations, including MySpace and Wikipedia (there is currently no entry for “law librarian” in Wikipedia, although there is an entry for “law library” that mentions AALL).
Discussion of Promotional Items
Ann encouraged us to think of some promotional items that we can give away at the AALL Exhibit Hall, CONELL marketplace, and at regional career fairs and law librarianship promotional events. Jim Milles thought that distributing bookmarks might be perceived as too old-fashioned. Ann mentioned distributing a tip card, and Barbara thought that pens would be a good promotional item. Susan stated that we should place the graphics for any printed promotional items that we develop on the RLLC website so that regional chapters and others can download and produce their own materials. Michael Saint-Onge cautioned that regional chapters may want to promote the chapter rather than AALL. He also reminded the committee that Lexis should be able to make some funds available to finance part of the cost of RLLC promotional items. Susan Lewis-Somers also reported that money could be made available from AALL for this purpose as well.
Ann introduced the idea of asking Lexis or West Librarian Relations Managers to help sponsor coffee cards, which we could distribute to AALL members who serve as law and library school liaisons so that they could take students out for coffee to discuss careers in law librarianship. We all liked this idea and agreed that it was worth pursuing.
The committee adjourned at 11:30 am.
- 2005 RLLC Committee Meeting Minutes
- 2004 RLLC Committee Meeting Minutes
- 2003 RLLC Committee Meeting Minutes
For More Information About Law Librarianship or the AALL Recruitment Committee, contact committee chair Sarah Mauldin.