Over the past few months I have been thinking about how the FCIL SIS can best serve its members. According to our bylaws, the SIS exists “to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information of foreign, comparative, and international law; and to represent its members’ interests and concerns within the AALL.” I believe the SIS has developed a number of ways to encourage the exchange of ideas and information—this Newsletter, the listserv, the website, the Interest Group sessions at the Annual Meeting. However, I am concerned that the FCIL has not been as successful as it should have been in communicating the concerns of the membership to AALL. In part, that may result from the difficulty of precisely identifying the concerns of the members.

Of course, the overriding interest of the membership is with foreign, comparative, and international law librarianship. In fact, however, there is an enormous range in the amount of time and the level of expertise members have with FCIL librarianship. Librarians from larger institutions (be they firms, law schools, or governmental entities) have significant FCIL collections with which to work and can devote their full energies to the area and develop a high level of expertise. On the other hand, librarians in smaller institutions will have skeletal collections and duties that encompass much more than FCIL librarianship. Even though these librarians may have a strong interest in the area, they do not have the resources, the time, and (usually) the patron demand to develop the same level of expertise as their colleagues in larger institutions.

FCIL can be a significant resource to librarians from smaller institutions. Through the SIS, they can become acquainted with more experienced librarians from larger institutions and develop relationships with these experts as mentors and personal resources. This clearly fits into the SIS objective of “the exchange of ideas and information.” In addition, the SIS has been relatively successful in getting program proposals accepted at the introductory and intermediate levels.

However, the SIS is less successful in meeting the needs of the more experienced FCIL librarians, who form a relatively small subset of our membership. Introductory and intermediate level programs do not provide the educational experiences they are looking for. When the Annual Meeting does not include programming that provides substantive material for them, they will go elsewhere to find it—ASIL, IALL, and the International Law Weekend in New York, to name a few options.

The common perception is that it is difficult to have an advanced level FCIL program accepted for the Annual Meeting. I have not kept statistics on the matter, but the Annual Meeting Program Committee’s selections among the FCIL proposals seems to bear out the common perception. This year the FCIL SIS proposed eight programs. Two were introductory, one was advanced, and the remaining five were intermediate. Four programs were accepted, including both introductory level programs (one ranked in the top four, the other ranked in the bottom four). The one advanced program (ranked among the top four) was not accepted. This means that the AMPC selected one introductory program and one intermediate program ranked by the FCIL education committee below the advanced level program that was rejected.

Obviously, one year’s results prove nothing. There may have been good reasons to reject FCIL’s one advanced program this year. Nevertheless, one wonders if the AMPC worried that an advanced FCIL program would have too little attraction for the broader membership and draw too small an audience. (We thought the topic was one that would have appeal beyond our own membership.)

Whatever the reason, the lack of advanced level FCIL programming next year may result in a smaller number of FCIL specialists attending the Seattle meeting. Again, I admit that I have no statistics, but I perceive that the number of FCIL librarians from large institutions attending the Annual Meeting has dwindled over the twelve years I have been a member of this SIS, and that is an alarming trend. Without the participation of these specialists, the quality of FCIL programs will diminish and the members from smaller institutions will be deprived of establishing contacts with the leaders in the field. Thus, the quality of “the exchange of ideas and information” will suffer.

What can we do? For the last few years our SIS has instituted an “off-program” session on the law of a foreign jurisdiction. These have been well received. Just this summer, our SIS strongly supported a proposal that would allow SISes to schedule meetings concurrently with regular educational sessions. However, neither of these solutions is ideal. For programming that has not been approved by AMPS, the SIS incurs relatively substantial expenses for audio and computer equipment that might be needed by the speaker. In addition, scheduling meetings against regular educational sessions will diminish the size of the potential audience.

Perhaps our only option at the present is to continue proposing creative programs aimed at the specialist FCIL librarian. If the program is well thought out, it will also appeal to the many AALL members who are not specialists. It is worth the effort to keep the FCIL SIS as the place for FCIL librarians to find support, no matter what their level of expertise.