TO: AALL Executive Board
FROM:Kathie J. Sullivan, PLL Chair 1999-2000, Downs Rachlin & Martin PLLC
DATE: May 30, 2000
RE: AALL Booth at Association of Legal Administrators Annual Meeting

Background Information

In October 1999, PLL asked the AALL Executive Board to help fund the AALL/PLL presence in the exhibit hall at the annual meeting of the Association of Legal Administrators, to be held in Denver in May 2000. This request was referred to Finance and Budget Committee for a Spring 2000 meeting, but as the time between that meeting and the Denver exhibiting was short, Margie Axtmann made the decision to use her discretionary funds for the exhibit hall rental fees.

However, I did not find out that Margie had made this decision until 4 weeks prior to the exhibiting dates and PLL had already made the decision not to send anyone to the meeting in any official capacity. I found out the funds had been released only when Peter Beck called me to find out who would be attending and who needed the paperwork.

Because of the short time frame in which to plan, I contacted representatives from the Colorado Association of Law Libraries (CoALL), since they had expressed an interest in working with PLL on the exhibit hall efforts. Druet Cameron Klugh and I happened to be at a meeting in Scottsdale and we made preliminary plans for staffing needs, materials, and booth setup and breakdown.

Report from CoALL

I am pleased to tell the AALL Board that any success of our efforts is due to the collaboration of PLL and CoALL members, and I hope such joint efforts with AALL will be encouraged in the future. I will attach a copy of the report from Druet Cameron Klugh but in short:

Ö 17 members of CoALL helped with booth set-up, staffing, and breakdown

Ö Lexis Librarian Relations members helped gather PLL related documents for the booth

Ö PLL purchased a set of the AALL Resource Guides for a raffle item

Ö PLL paid for the booth "furnishings", extra name badges for staff, and miscellaneous items

Ö Peter Beck was extremely helpful and timely in gathering printed materials for our use and shipping the AALL booth to Denver.

There was a concern about booth placement and whether there were different fees associated with more prominent placement. I don’t know the answer to this question. I assume placement is based, in part, on date of response from an organization. Since we were fairly late in our planning, we may not have received a favorable location. This fact should be kept in mind for future planning.

Suggestions from local planners include:

Ö participation in "Booth Bingo" or whatever organized efforts are available for vendors

Ö purchasing a gift basket for raffle events

Ö training staff on approaches with passing attendees and being more interactive

Other concerns expressed by local arrangements and by Lee Nemchek, PLL Board Member and speaker on the only program PLL had accepted by ALA this year dealt with the ideas of appropriate program proposals, the ALA audience, and presence of an official from PLL or AALL. The PLL Board has been wrestling with the issue of program proposals to ALA for some time but has not been able to determine a better approach to result in higher visibility for librarians. The ALA program proposal process is much different from AALL’s and there seems to be enough change in the ALA leadership that we cannot seem to establish working relationships with them at a national level. There has been some discussion of placing our efforts at the ALA Regional level and attempting to produce programs for smaller audiences. We think the administrators who attend the national meeting are from smaller firms without librarians and also may not be ready to hire a librarian, therefore making our message appear useless to them.

Lee Nemchek shared some observations with me after spending time in the Exhibit Hall:

Ö for the most part, the vendors who exhibit at ALA are human resources vendors (employment agencies), supplies vendors (legal stationery, printing and the like), financial services vendors, and law office technology vendors.

Ö According to the conference roster, there were only 1,450 attendees at this conference. It just didn't seem to be a bustling sort of gathering [to me].

Ö Regarding the programs, the two substantive programs that [she] attended

seemed to bear out my view that the conference was small. The program attended on "Calendaring and Docket Control" had about 55 people in the audience. The program entitled "The Library and Legal Research" had even fewer: about 45 people. Both were scheduled for small meeting rooms. The speaker for the library program, Greg Thompson, listed himself as a "systems consultant/paralegal," and he self-described as a "tech person" and "a systems guy." [She] sat through the whole program, which lasted only about an hour, including questions. The subject of the program was collection

balancing -- print vs. databases vs. CDs vs. internet -- something that all

AALL members talk about ad nauseum. Obviously, this program could have (and probably should have) been given by a librarian, but we don't know why ALA chose not to ask us. [Her] notes on the program indicate that the speaker did a good job of speaking to office administrators who do not have a librarian, and, thus, who need to know what every private law librarian already knows in order to make decisions concerning the purchase of legal research materials. And this is the crux of the matter: most of the OAs attending this program were from very small firms that don't have librarians. If they had librarians, there would be no need for them to attend this kind of program. Perhaps ALA doesn't perceive the value of our knowledge to firms that are not in the market to hire a librarian, and that's why they had a consultant give the program instead of a librarian. Perhaps ALA thinks its members consider the "teaching" of a consultant to be more authoritative than that of a librarian. In defense of Mr. Thompson, though, he was extremely complimentary of librarians throughout his presentation and definitely gave credit where it is due. He very much touted the value of librarians. Interestingly, though, in his many mentions of librarians, the message that came across was that librarians in law firms are just that -- staff-level librarians -- and not senior managers.

 

Ö PLL Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect should be present in the Exhibit Hall

Ö AALL/PLL should enlist aid of Baltimore and D.C. librarians for staffing and PR

Ö AALL will continue to fund the space rental, as a collaborative effort between national, SIS and chapter entities.

Ö PLL will continue to explore constructive methods of placing substantive programs on the ALA Annual Meeting offerings.

Ö PLL will publicize the AALL funding of the exhibit booth at ALA.

Ö Per AALL Board request, PLL Board will continue to evaluate the benefit of the representation to ALA as well as those to the ABA Law Practice Management section.

Ö Per AALL Board request, PLL will continue to evaluate the benefit of requesting an official AALL representative to ARMA and will submit a funding request/evaluation at such time the benefits are justified.

 

The CoALL report to PLL is attached for your benefit and records.

Upon learning on April 14 that AALL had paid for a booth at the ALA convention to be held in Denver, May 8-11, Kathie Sullivan and I began brainstorming about what would be needed. Kathie’s expertise and experience the year before were invaluable in planning the booth and its contents; Peter Beck was accessible and incredibly helpful at organizational details and transmitting the "corporate memory" of AALL’s involvement in this event. Thanks to Margie Axtmann for using her discretionary funds to cover the $2,600 booth fee.

Druet Cameron Klugh (Holme Roberts & Owen) coordinated the volunteer effort in Denver. The following CoALL members were active in the booth planning, setup, staffing and knockdown:

Kaye Ammons (Davis Graham & Stubbs)-staffing

Barbara Bintliff (Univ. of Colorado Law Library)-staffing

Georgia Briscoe (Univ. of Colorado Law Library)-staffing

Martha Campbell (Colo. Supreme Court)-staffing and knockdown

Katheryn Christnacht (Holme Roberts & Owen)-staffing

Mark Estes (Holme Roberts & Owen)-planning

Holly Hoxeng (Carpenter & Klatskin)-staffing

Mary Killoran (Holme Roberts & Owen)-staffing

Holly Kulikowski (Holland & Hart)-staffing

Wanda McDavid (Holland & Hart)-staffing

Linda Rose (Ballard, Spahr, Andrews and Ingersoll)-setup, staffing and knockdown;coordination of materials

David Selden (National Indian Law Library)-setup

Karen Selden (Univ. of Colorado Law Library)-setup

Tom Seward (Sherman & Howard)-staffing

Camilla Walker (Holland & Hart)-staffing

Patricia Wellinger (Univ. of Denver Law Library)-planning

Ann-Marie Wills(Otten Johnson Robinson Neff & Ragonetti)-staffing

I was blessed with CoALL’s efforts to pull this event together at the last minute, and thankful that Linda Rose was willing to coordinate and orchestrate the actual booth logistics while I (DCK) was on vacation. We were fortunate to have Prof. Barbara Bintliff, incoming AALL Vice President/President-Elect, as part of our staffing effort.

Booth rental......................................................... $2,600.00
Booth furniture, carpet rental................................ 463.00
Additional booth badges....................................... 50.00
Miscellaneous booth materials/parking.................... 34.13
AALL shipping costs............................................ unknown
Materials provided from AALL/PLL................... unknown
TOTAL................................................................. $3,147.13+

1. AALL continue to fund booth fee.

2. Placement of booth needs to be more prominent. Does this require a more expensive booth fee or earlier registration?

3. Booth should participate in "Booth Bingo" promotion to encourage visitors.

4. AALL should purchase fruit baskets or other desirable raffle items to increase daily booth attendance.

5. Presence of PLL Vice President throughout the conference and at the booth as needed. Registration, airfare, hotel, etc. should be paid by AALL/PLL.

6. At least one AALL/PLL speaker and program geared toward helping firms with library related issues needs to be on the ALA program roster.

7. Booth staffers need to be very interactive. They should stand at the edge of the booth and put a copy of the pamphlets Private Law Librarian Standards (PLL) and Finding Your Way in the Information Age: The Many Roles of Law Librarians (AALL) in the hand of every passer-by. Look ‘em in the eye, and ask: "Do you have a librarian?", "Do you have library questions?", "Do you need a library consultant?".

8. Any questions that cannot be answered by booth staff should be written down, with the business card of the questioner attached, and forwarded to the PLL President for evaluation (i.e. to be answered or forwarded to the correct party for responding).

9. The booth needs to be accompanied by additional items on the attached list.

Items for AALL/PLL Booth at ALA Convention

1. Ballpoint pens
2. Tablet of paper
3. Post-its
4. Large marker pen
5. Double-sided mounting tape
6. Roll of packing tape
7. Scotch tape and dispenser
8. Scissors
9. Stapler
10. Blank labels (for name tags, etc.)
11. Pushpins
12. Kleenex
13. Glass fishbowl (for business cards)