Education

Continuing the work begun at the September 2005 Education Summit, AALL made great strides during 2006-2007 in supporting and developing high quality educational programming and partnerships to enhance the continuing professional education of our members.

New Member-Driven Approach to Education

Teaching The Special Committee on Continuing Professional Education, chaired by Carole Hinchcliff, worked with new Education Manager Celeste Smith to launch AALL's new member-driven approach to educational programming outside the Annual Meeting. They implemented the AALL/BNA Continuing Education Grants Program (CEGP), which had been approved by the Executive Board. They set up procedures, guidelines, and criteria for awarding funds on a revolving basis throughout the year. One important criterion for any program proposal is that it must include a provision for sharing the content with the wider AALL membership, to ensure that as many members as possible can benefit from the program. In the April 2007 Members' Briefing, the committee summarized the new philosophy and plan for AALL's continuing education program.

In its first year, CEGP provided a total of more than $34,000 in funding for 18 programs, which were presented by chapters, special interest sections, member institutions, and individual AALL members. These programs were a diverse mix of live and online programs, single and multi-day workshops, and collaborations with other organizations, including:

a workshop on law firm library management
a program on collaboration and innovation, presented jointly with the Special Libraries Association
a program on copyright compliance
a moderated online discussion forum on "Compassion Fatigue and the Law Librarian: I Just Don't Care Anymore"
a combined live seminar and webinar, Buying Electronic Content: The Theory of Negotiating Capital
a webinar, "Licensing 101 for Law Libraries"

In March the Executive Board approved a new Professional Education Policy for AALL and created a new AALL standing Committee on Continuing Professional Education to continue the work of the special committee.

Also assisting AALL members in planning educational programs and pursuing their own professional development are two features on AALLNET, the Calendar of Events and Speakers Directory. The content found on these online resources is contributed by AALL members.

Streamlined Schedule Proves Successful for 100th Annual Meeting

Nearly 1,700 registrants attended the 100th AALL Annual Meeting and Conference in New Orleans, July 14-17, 2007. This year's theme, "Rise to the Challenge," reflected both the challenges facing the host city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and those currently faced by law librarians. Thanks to the hard work and flexibility of AALL staff and members, the Annual Meeting schedule provided a balance of educational programming, membership entity meetings, and networking time within a four-day time frame (one day shorter than previous Annual Meetings), beginning with the Opening Event on Saturday evening and concluding with the Closing Banquet on Tuesday night.

Presented in New Orleans were 66 conference programs and four workshops, which had been selected by the 2007 Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC), chaired by Donna Bausch. These, plus 23 special interest section-sponsored programs, covered a wide range of topics. The AMPC also selected a Hot Topic program, "Legal Publishing in the 21st Century: A Conversation with the Publishers," which featured two law librarian moderators and a panel of vendor executives who carried on a wide-ranging conversation on the changing nature of law and law-related publishing.

As part of the new schedule, a new Opening General Session was held on Sunday morning to kick off the Annual Meeting. It began with welcoming remarks from President Sally Holterhoff and featured keynote speaker Joan Biskupic, Supreme Court correspondent for USA Today and a regular panelist on "Washington Week in Review." Biskupic spoke about her experiences researching Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justice Antonin Scalia, along with her impressions of the current Supreme Court. After her speech, she participated in a book-signing event in the Exhibit Hall.

More than 80 international registrants attended the meeting, as well as nearly 30 VIP guests from outside the AALL membership. The Exhibit Hall featured 97 vendors in 193 booths. A new event held in the Exhibit Hall was Meet the Candidates, which allowed AALL members to chat with members of the AALL slate for the 2007 election. The Local Advisory Committee, chaired by Charlene Cain and Michael Whipple, did an outstanding job providing New Orleans hospitality before and throughout the meeting.

This year's Closing Banquet was a gala occasion with very special entertainment. Attendance at this year's banquet was the best in the past five years. It featured a video presentation during dinner that showed winners of AALL awards and participants in New Orleans service projects. A highlight of the evening was the presentation of AALL's most prestigious awards, the Marian Gould Gallagher Distinguished Service Award and the Joseph L. Andrews Bibliographical Award. There were three Gallagher Award winners for 2007: Carol Billings, Roger Jacobs, and Cossette Sun. The recipient of the 2007 Andrews Award was Prestatehood Legal Materials: A Fifty-State Research Guide, Including New York City and the District of Columbia. The award honored Michael Chiorazzi and Marguerite Most, editors of the two-volume compilation, as well as the work of 69 individual contributing authors.

Educational Support

AALL continues to initiate and support research and continuing education in law librarianship. The Association's numerous scholarships and grants recognize efforts made by law librarians and provide new opportunities to members.

15 scholarships totaling $36,000 were awarded to recipients by the 2006-2007 AALL Scholarships Committee. AALL scholarships include the George A. Strait Minority Scholarship and the John R. Johnson Memorial Scholarship for library degree and law school students.
21 grant recipients, including eight student members, were selected by the AALL Grants Committee to receive a total of $6,000 in grant funding to attend the AALL Annual Meeting.
"Assessing Information Literacy of Law Students" is the title of a research project conducted by Molly Brownfield and Dennis Kim-Prieto, both of Rutgers University Law School Library. These two AALL members were awarded a $1,847 grant for their project by the 2006-2007 AALL Research Committee.

Changes in Editorial Leadership for AALL Spectrum and Law Library Journal

After Paul Healey announced that he would step down as editorial director of AALL Spectrum when his term ended in July 2007, AALL began a search to select his successor. With the assistance of the LLJ and AALL Spectrum Editorial Board Advisory Committee, the Association selected Mark Estes, director of library services at Holme Roberts & Owen LLP, as the new editorial director, beginning with Volume 12.

After more than 13 years of service as editor of Law Library Journal, Frank Houdek announced that he would step down at the end of Volume 99. A task force headed by Richard Leiter, chair of the 2006-2007 LLJ and AALL Spectrum Editorial Board Advisory Committee, created a job description for the position and conducted the search for a new editor. The task force selected Janet Sinder, associate director for research services at the Thurgood Marshall Law Library of the University of Maryland at Baltimore, as the new editor, beginning with Volume 100. She will be the 24th person to serve in the position since LLJ began publication in 1908.

Connecting Online

This year the Association added new content and resources to AALLNET, the Association's website, including streaming media in the Professional Education section. Now posted as free, members-only educational resources are more than a dozen video and audio programs, including How to Use Competitive Intelligence to Win Clients, The Creative Conflict Resolution Toolbox, and The Future of Cataloging. Bringing select Annual Meeting content to members was also part of new efforts to repackage and extend learning opportunities to members who could not attend the Annual Meeting. These resources allow geographically-dispersed members to have access to online content. These resources also allow members to see and/or hear specific speakers and use them for a future program. The content also serves as a springboard for education sessions. For example, AALL members have used these video programs locally for staff training and discussion.

The AALL Handbook, formerly available in full only as part of the print AALL Directory and Handbook, is now available on AALLNET. Parts of the handbook content were previously available in various locations on the website, but now a table of contents provides easy access to the complete handbook.

New this year, the Research Instruction and Patron Services (RIPS) Special Interest Section released its 2007 RIPS Teach-In Kit in an online-only version, available in the Members Only section of AALLNET. Each year the Teach-In Kit contains fresh materials for use in promotion of National Library Week. The new online format means the kit can be released in a timelier manner without page limitations.

New Publications and Tools

AALL members are prolific writers and researchers, as evidenced by the number of publications the Association's entities produce each year. This year saw a number of important new resources for law librarians.

AALL Guide to Fair Business Practices for Legal Publishers, 2nd Ed. was published by AALL as a supplement to the March 2007 issue of AALL Spectrum. The new edition includes more examples of "Practices to Follow/Practices to Avoid," as well as references to the AALL Principles for Licensing Electronic Resources. These additions are intended to make the guide easier to understand and improve its usefulness for librarians and publishers.

The AALL Publication Series, published by Hein, added two new titles in 2007:

Celebrating Diversity: A Legacy of Minority Leadership in AALL was jointly edited by Vicente Garces, Ruth Hill, and Carol Avery Nicholson. The book features profiles of 32 minority law librarians and includes a historical overview of AALL's diversity efforts. All royalties for this publication will be contributed to the AALL/Thomson West George A. Strait Minority Scholarship Endowment Fund. In the foreword he wrote for the book, Robert L. Oakley points out that, "This book is itself reason to celebrate. It chronicles the increasing richness and ethnic diversity in our profession; it recognizes the significant contributions made by these members; and it celebrates the leadership of many pioneers within the Association. This book is a look back at where we have come from and a look forward at some of our younger leaders who will define the future of the profession."
Sexual Orientation and the Law: A Research Bibliography, Selectively Annotating Legal Literature through 2005 was published by the Standing Committee on Lesbian and Gay Issues of the Social Responsibilities Special Interest Section. This almost 500-page volume includes 877 new citations with annotations by members of the standing committee.

Three new state legal documents bibliographies were added this year to the series produced by the Government Documents Special Interest Section:

Arizona: A Survey of Arizona State Legal and Law-Related Documents, compiled by the reference staff of the Maricopa County Superior Court Law Library
Wyoming State Documents: A Bibliography of State Publications and Related Materials, by Debora A. Person
Michigan Legal Documents: A Bibliography of Legal and Law-Related Materials, edited by Michael W. Tillman-Davis.

Two new Briefs in Law Librarianship were completed this year. The Research Instruction and Patron Services Special Interest Section is the corporate author for this series, which presents surveys of law library practices. It is part of the AALL Publication Series. The new briefs are: