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Rant on -- all those surveys that pile up on your desk, the evaluation forms at Annual Meeting programs. -- they really matter. The SISs that most catalogers join, OBS and TS, yearly solicit advice and opinions from their members. AALL also polls the general membership from time to time, and recently conducted a focus group. What the Education Committee chooses for the Annual Meeting is based, in varying degrees, on what we say we want in the way of future programs, and our comments on past presentations. The SIS education committees' reps are present at AALL Education Committee open sessions.
Anaheim has very lean pickings for catalogers. In addition to our meetings, the Saturday workshop, W4, "New Horizons: New Schemes for New Regimes -- Understanding and Implementing JZ and KZ," is the only AALL program with an obvious cataloging component. It is also designed to include information that public services and reference will find useful . The only purely cataloging offering is W6 ALCTS Workshop, "Cataloging Now!" But that is tacked on; we deal with ALCTS if we want to attend. Both of these, however, are additional fees and lodging and time, which not all interested members can afford. (And for more whining, note that technical services staff in general have barely a justification to attend. Several of the programs certainly are of intellectual interest, and/or will help techies understand what ref does, but travel budget decisions may not consider this important. ) So if you cannot or will not come to Anaheim because of this, please be sure to let the AALL know that in writing or online, [law-lib; AALLnet; the listserv anaheimedprog@aall.wuacc.edu and cc to your SIS. Note also that the ALA Midwinter program listed 114 programs of interest to tech services. Even if many were "closed," there were plenty.
Committee work goes on all year round, beyond the Annual Meeting. Ongoing is cataloging documentation, collecting data on how we keep track of internal and external decisions and changes. Several people have been gathering the information, and are also trying to figure out how to make it widely available. We are still trying to make the best use of last year's re/classification survey, so that locally dwindling resources are well used now that the whole world (and the oceans and outer space too) can be classed in one scheme. The IGO survey still needs more responses. Contact: Pam Deemer, libped@law.emory.edu This is not just for our use, but will also help Jolande Goldberg and LC fine tune the IGO documents classification. Contributors of revised international law subject headings are still needed by Jolande; this could be a project where involving your public services folks would show them what we do, and that we are responsive to changing times. Documents librarians also may make use of this consolidated information. Even before the originally hush-hush invitation-only "Toronto Conference on the Future of AACR" went public on the Web, we were alerted by our liaisons to comment on the Hirons-Graham seriality paper. We are also going to comment on continuing developments in this area, for the larger discussion at ALA. And a group headed by Bill Benemann is developing a list of genre terms of use to law librarians. Not only catalogers, but also acquisitions librarians in gathering collection development and financial patterns information, and of course reference staff could make use of this work eventually. We really aren't so insular as to be exclusive--or excluded.
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