AALL
has a small yet highly capable staff
that works hand-in-hand with membership
to promote the interests of law librarians
nationwide. In order to help you better
understand the staff’s role in
the organization, throughout the course
of the next few months I will introduce
you to them. Through these thumbnail
profiles I hope to give you a better
understanding not just of the people
and the functions so important to AALL,
but also clarity about who to contact
when you have a question. We always
enjoy hearing from you, so please never
hesitate to call.
Starting
in alphabetic order, this week I introduce
you to Mary Alice Baish, Associate
Washington Affairs Representative.
Mary Alice works in our Washington,
D.C. Office and in close
relation with our Government
Relations Committee and
our Copyright
Committee .
Mary
Alice is endlessly energetic in promoting
AALL’s information policy agenda
by drafting testimony, formal letters
and position papers on a wide range
of federal and state legislative and
regulatory issues. She also represents
the Association to policy makers, Congress,
the National Commission on Libraries
and Information Science, the Shared
Legal Capability, and the Digital Future
Coalition, among many others.
“Mary
Alice is extremely knowledgeable and
hard working, and she never misses an
opportunity to educate and energize
others,” says Keith Ann Stiverson,
past Chair of the Government Relations
and Copyright Committees. “can
think of so many times when she helped
our Committee understand something obscure
about a piece of legislation or a policy
statement that wasn't apparent in the
text. It is a real joy to work with
her.”
Mary
Alice tells us that law librarians are
known throughout Washington, D.C., and
increasingly throughout the states,
as remarkably effective advocates for
fair and equitable information policy.
While Mary Alice may sound the alarm
on an issue, it is law librarians who
respond in a manner that insures we
are heard by those who need to understand
our point of view. This is teamwork
at its very best.
Please
feel free to call on Mary
Alice , Government
Relations Committee Chair Elizabeth
Barber LaDoux, or Copyright
Committee Chair Jonathan
Franklin with any of your
public policy questions or concerns.
They welcome your emails, letters and
calls.
Boston
to Mumbai: The World of Legal Information
is the theme for the 2004
AALL Annual Meeting. As President
Janis
Johnston said in her recent
communiqué to membership,
“Businesses
have become international; the practice
of law has become multinational; so too
has law librarianship become a profession
that reaches beyond its own borders. In
today's world, law librarians are asked
to access foreign, comparative and international
legal information on an almost daily basis…
Whether you work in public services, collection
development, technical services or administration,
each of us is called upon to develop an
expertise in adapting to this larger world.”
We
hope that you are inspired by the international
theme for the meeting and that you will
consider submitting a program proposal.
To make submitting a proposal easier than
ever, this year we are pleased to debut
our new online proposal submission process.
Just go here
and follow the five easy steps.
The contents of your proposal will automatically
go into our database, and you will be
sent an e-mail confirmation that it was
received.
Program
proposals can address any topic and the
deadline for submissions is Monday,
August 18. If you have any questions
about proposals or the process, please
contact Gail
Warren, 2004
Annual Meeting Program Committee Chair.
Remember,
too, that the Salary Survey deadline is
now Friday, August 8.
We encourage all library directors and
heads of libraries to complete the survey
and send it to Association Research, Inc.,
the independent research firm in Rockville,
Md., that that AALL has employed to carry
out the survey in complete confidentiality.
For more information about the 2003 salary
survey, please contact Bob
Gray of Association Research, Inc.
The
Information Access Alliance, a coalition
of six leading library organizations,
has published a white
paper that examines the impact
of mergers among scholarly and legal publishers
and calls for a new standard of antitrust
review of merger transactions in this
by antitrust enforcement agencies. The
Alliance has also launched a web
site containing information
on the impact of publisher mergers on
the market for science, technology, and
medical journals, links to the white paper,
and other key documents.
Please
Note: There will be no edition of
From the Desk Of for the week of August
4th, as I’ll be away attending the
International
Federation of Library Associations
(IFLA) annual conference.
