Thursday, June 24, 2004
Boston Statistics
We are less than three weeks out until the annual meeting and it looks like it’s going to be a rousing occasion! As of yesterday, we have 1,930 people registered for the meeting, with 176 booths sold to 96 firms. These numbers are the best we’ve had since our Washington, D.C. meeting in 1999!
Hot Topics - Not One but Two!
This year we will have not one, but two Hot Topics as part of our annual meeting programming.
On Tuesday, July 13 at 10:15 a.m. we will hold a discussion on The Baghdad Biblio-Files: Tales from a Librarian at Large, that will feature Kimberli Morris of the International Human Rights Law Institute, DePaul University College of Law. Kim is Program Manager for Library and Information – Baghdad. From her residence/office in Baghdad, she has been traveling to three law schools in Iraq and meeting with the deans and staff to assess their respective collections and begin the process of rebuilding their law libraries. As the session description says, “Imagine your law library is located in the middle of a war zone and your most important ‘library accessory’ is a flak jacket.” It’s sure to be as fascinating as it will be up-to-the-minute.
Also on Tuesday, July 13 at 4:00 p.m. we will hold a discussion on Same Sex Marriage: the Legal Issues. In this session, the speakers will analyze the legal challenge of same-sex marriage in the courts and legislatures to assist librarians who are being asked to research this topic and raise the understanding of the social context of this issue in the legal system. Bennett Klein, an attorney with Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders who participated in the Goodridge case, Professor Libby Adler, a constitutional law scholar at Northeastern University School of Law, and Professor Joseph Singer, a conflicts of law scholar at Harvard Law School, will discuss. Here’s your chance to examine this cutting-edge issue with those who have most knowledge of the legal and social underpinnings involved.
Read Boston 2004 Book Drive
It is not too late to send your donation to the 2004 Book Drive to benefit Read Boston. To contribute online, go to Amazon.com's Wish List and "Find a Wish List" by searching for Read Boston or AALL Book Drive. Please feel free to use the list of titles that have already been purchased also, because Read Boston can always use multiple copies. Your donation will be shipped directly to the Book Drive team! Sponsored by the Social Responsibilities SIS. If you have any questions, please feel free to email Annette Demers ademers@law.harvard.edu - and thanks in advance for your support!
Space - The Final Frontier
The AALL Career Development Task Force proudly presents a discussion forum devoted to the librarian’s constant battle with the space-time continuum—the endless problem of not enough space to house your growing collection and not enough time for constant shifting. To address the space-time problem, many libraries turn to off-site storage as a means of housing lesser used items that the library does not want to weed from its collection.
This forum will address the issues surrounding the development and day-to-day operations of an off-site storage facility. Topics will include:
- physical arrangement and environmental conditions within the storage space;
- selection and preparation of materials to be transferred;
- arrangement of materials in the storage space;
- planning and executing the move of materials to the storage space; and
- policies and procedures related to retrieval of materials.
AALL will host the discussion forum June 28-July 11, with Ellen Platt and Whitney Alexander, both of Santa Clara University’s Law Library, as moderators. We hope that the forum will satisfy the following AALL Competencies of Law Librarianship: Core Competencies, Library Management, and Collection Care and Management, but most of all also provide an interesting discussion. As an added bonus, since the discussion lasts up to the start of this year’s AALL Annual Meeting, this forum will allow interested participants to further discuss this topic at the meeting.
You are cordially invited to join in. Please contact Pam Deemer with any problems.
This is not a permanent discussion forum; after the two week discussion period, all list subscribers will be purged. Subscribers to past Career Development/Prodev forums please note: because Prodev’s subscriber list is purged after each forum, you will have to re-subscribe for this one.
IMLS Requests Proposals for Online Library and Museum Course
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is seeking proposals to develop, pilot, deploy, and evaluate a packaged instructor-mediated online course to train library and museum personnel to plan and evaluate outcomes-based projects. The successful proposal will compare the effectiveness of the online course to an analogous existing workshop. It will also develop a cost model for developing and offering the course.
The deadline for proposals is September 15, 2004. The maximum award is $1,000,000 for up to three years. IMLS anticipates a single award for the project.
Organizations eligible for the award include public and not-for-profit institutions of higher education, all types of libraries (except federal and for-profit libraries), library consortia, all types of public and not-for-profit museums, and museum consortia. Federally operated and for-profit museums may not apply for IMLS funds. Professional associations serving the museum or library field are eligible. Research libraries that give the public access to services and materials suitable for scholarly research not otherwise available to the public, and that are not part of a college, are also eligible.
The Request for Proposals is available on the IMLS Web site. For more information, contact Susan Malbin, IMLS program officer.
Sincerely,
Susan E. Fox, CAE
Executive Director