Report on AALL Annual Meeting

Report on AALL Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., July 1999
Rob Richards

I am very grateful to the CoALL Grants Committee for their generosity in awarding me a travel grant to attend the 1999 AALL Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. What follows is a report of my activities at this conference.

My principal reason for attending the 1999 AALL Annual Meeting was to fulfill my responsibilities as chair of the AALL Publications Committee. This committee is charged with promoting works published by AALL, encouraging people to publish with AALL, reviewing proposals and manuscripts for new AALL publications, and developing publications policies for the association.

In addition to Publications Committee activities, I needed to attend meetings and functions of other AALL bodies to which I belong: the Acquisitions Committee, Technical Services SIS (TS-SIS), and Government Documents SIS (GD-SIS). Further, I had been named coordinator and presenter at a round table discussion on collection development co-sponsored by the Academic Law Libraries SIS and TS-SIS.

Activities of the Publications Committee took up most of my time at this annual meeting. The Committee held two business meetings. The first consisted of a discussion with representatives of W.S. Hein about future and promotion of the two AALL-sponsored series that Hein publishes: the AALL/Rothman Publications Series, and the AALL Legal Research Series. This meeting proved very fruitful: Hein and the committee members affirmed their support of the two series, discussed methods for improving promotion of the series, and discussed ways of generating new titles and authors for the series.

The second Publications Committee gathering, a general business meeting, allowed committee members to discuss a wide range of issues. These included the committee website (http://www.aallnet.org/committee/publications/) -- which features downloadable forms for proposing new publications, and which will soon display an interactive proposal form developed by Janeen Heath; a new database, created by April Schwartz and Gail McCain, of authors in law librarianship from which to identify potential authors for new publications; the process of finding general editors for the two AALL-sponsored series published by Hein; and proposals for new AALL publications.

Beyond chairing these two meetings, I attended a business meeting of the LLJ/Spectrum Advisory Board to represent the Publications Committee's views on issues of copyright policy and the role of publications on AALLNET. I staffed the Publications Committee table in the conference public relations area. I also met informally with several AALL members to discuss ideas for new AALL publications.

For the Acquisitions Committee, I attended its business meeting and reported on the usage of two acquisitions-related web resources that I maintain: "A Legal Publishers' List: Corporate Affiliations of Legal Publishers" (http://www.Colorado.EDU/Law/lawlib/ts/legpub.htm ) and "Law Library Collection Development Policies: Policy Documents and Resources" (http://www.colorado.edu/Law/lawlib/ts/aall/policies.htm), the latter a publication of the Acquisitions Committee. I attended the TS-SIS business meeting, and made an announcement encouraging SIS members to submit publications proposals to the Publications Committee.

For the GD-SIS, I attended the business meeting, and volunteered to become a member of their Grants Committee. I also was present at the GD-SIS reception to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of law libraries' participation in the Federal Depository Library Program. I attended two GD-SIS conference programs: an update on the Federal Depository Library Program by Superintendent of Documents Francis Buckley, and a program on creating collection development policies for the depository program. As I am currently writing a depository collection development policy for the University of Colorado Law Library, I found the latter program especially valuable.

The SWALL Business Meeting gave me the opportunity to meet several SWALL members for the first time. I also learned a great deal about SWALL's many activities, especially preparations for upcoming SWALL conferences.

The round table discussion on collection development proved quite successful, with over thirty participants from many different types of libraries. In order to spark discussion, Frank Lee of Latham & Watkins began the program with an overview of collection development issues in private law libraries, and I offered a brief outline of collection development concerns about electronic resources. One conference program I attended was especially helpful for me in facilitating discussion at this round table: "Legal Resources at the Crossroads: What Will the Millennium Bring?" provided a compelling discussion of the challenges for larger law libraries in converting to electronic resources. I also took in several other very enriching conference programs, including an AALL Washington Office update on key legislative issues affecting legal information, and a forum on the effect of Internet resources on technical services operations.

Overall, the 1999 AALL Annual Meeting proved extremely rewarding, in terms both of the association activities in which I was involved, and of the knowledge I gained from programs and informal discussions. I am very grateful to CoALL for their support of my attendance at this conference.