 Although the holidays are now behind us, before us we have a full year of AALL centennial celebration! AALL formed in 1906 during an American Library Association meeting in Narragansett Pier, RI. Albert J. Small served as our first President, helping us grow from an initial 23 charter members to the over 5,000 we have today.
While centennials give us an opportunity to celebrate our past, it is the vibrancy of this past that informs our ambitions for the present and especially for the future. AALL came into being based on the vision of a small band of people committed to the profession of law librarianship. Today, we thrive because of the vision and commitment of thousands of law librarians both here in the United States and throughout the world.
The AALL Centennial Committee, formed in 2003, has been working hard and with remarkable creativity to insure we have all the tools necessary to celebrate our 100th in all our rich diversity. Whether you are an AALL Chapter, a Special Interest Section, or a proud member, the Centennial Committee Web Site will help you with items such as the Centennial Toolkit to help us spread the word.
What a great year this is going to be!
The AALL Research Committee is accepting applications through April 1, 2006 for research grants from the AALL/LexisNexis Research Fund Grants Program, totaling up to $5,000.
The committee will award one or more grants to library professionals who wish to conduct research that supports the research/scholarly agenda of the profession of librarianship. The grants program funds small or large research projects that create, disseminate, or otherwise use legal and law-related information as its focus. Projects may range from the historical (indexes, legislative histories, bibliographies, biographies, directories) to the theoretical (trends in cataloging, publishing or new service models in libraries) to the practical (implementation models for collection, personnel or infrastructure management).
More information is available here.
The AALL Research Committee is pleased to announce that the 2005 AALL/Aspen Research Grant for $5,000 has been awarded to Timothy Kearley, University of Wyoming College of Law Library, for: "Justinian’s Code on the Web", a project to digitize, edit, and publish on the Web the only known English translation of Justinian's Code to use the authoritative Latin sources, along with the translator's extensive explanatory notes.
Competition for the grants was competitive this year with five submissions, all of which showed great promise. The number and quality of submissions reflects well on the vitality of law librarianship and the high interest in meaningful scholarship among AALL members.
The AALL/Aspen Publishers Grant Program was established in 1996 with a generous contribution of $50,000 from Aspen Publishers, a New York-based legal publisher. Aspen considers its contribution as an investment in research that will provide a prospective look at the role of librarians, researchers, and legal information providers and will yield results to which publishers can respond. Aspen’s goal is to sponsor research that will have a practical impact on the law library profession and inspire products and changes in the marketplace.
The AALL Research Agenda offers suggestions for possible research projects that cover a wide segment of professional interest, including the profession of law librarianship, law library patrons, law library services, legal research and bibliography, legal information resources, and law library facilities. However, projects are not limited to those described in the agenda; the committee will consider all applications and research projects.
The AALL Research Committee members are: Chair Eloise Vondruska, Duncan Alford, Karen Beck, Jean Callihan, Carol Collins, Joel Fishman, and Jeanne Frazier Price.
I’m pleased to report that AALLNET recently received a Gold Award from the Association Trends All Media Contest for it "usability, design, navigation, and content." From the Desk Of also won Bronze in the Weekly/Daily Member Communication category.
Another reason 2006 is getting off to such a great start is the fact that today is Charles Reese’s first day with AALL. He is replacing Reggie Swanigan, former AALL IT Director, and will be working here as our Database/Systems Administrator. He comes to us from the Alzheimer’s Association, where he spent the past five years as Systems Administrator. He has a B.S. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in Aerospace Engineering and has conducted graduate coursework in Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
We are thrilled to have attracted a talent such as Charles to AALL and I think you will enjoy getting to know him when you see him at our Annual Meeting in St. Louis, July 8-12.
Last Fall AALL held an Education Summit to discuss the future of educational programming for AALL and the profession. One key outcome of that meeting was the desire for a comprehensive educational event calendar for member access, input, and use. Before his departure, Reggie Swanigan worked closely with Christopher Siwa, our Web Administrator, in designing a calendar that will be both robust and flexible. It is near completion and will be available in the very near future.
One of the best features of the Members’ Only section of AALLNET is the member profile. Here you can easily upload a photograph of yourself (or any other photo for that matter). It’s a great tool for networking and comes in handy especially around annual meeting time, when we need a visual reminder of members of our community. Please be sure to also update your member information if it has changed recently. This way you will be guaranteed not to miss any of our communications.
Sincerely,
Susan E. Fox, CAE
Executive Director
American Association of Law Libraries
53 West Jackson Blvd., Suite 940
Chicago, IL 60604
312-939-4764, ext. 11
Fax 312-431-1097
AALL: Maximizing the Power of the Law Library Community Since 1906.
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