American Association of Law Libraries

Treasurer’s Report: There is currently $39,000 in the treasury. The report will appear in the next issue of Perspectives. As of May 31st PLL membership was 1,542. The report was seconded and approved. Pat Keller recognized the representative from Lexis-Nexis and thanked Lexis for sponsoring the business meeting breakfast.

Toolkit: Michael Saint-Onge provided background for the toolkit project. The Resource Guides are sold by subscription. The Resource Guides are out. Be sure to use them. They will be incorporated into the toolkit. The toolkit should be complete by the end of the year. Lexis has contributed $20,000 toward the project.

Future of Libraries: Nina Platt reported that an open meeting will be held in the Peabody where the results of this report will be presented.

Program Committee: Connie Dickson reported that the Program Committee review has been submitted to the Board. The committee report will be on the website.

Public Relations: Lucy Curci-Gonzalez reported that the committee did not meet its goals this year. She is looking for new members for the committee. She would like to redo the PLL brochure and come up with other marketing ideas.

ALA: Pat Keller reported on Janeen Heath’s trip to San Antonio to man the PLL booth at the Association of Legal Administrator's conference. Janeen later gave a full report.

Independent Group: Ruth Balkin reported that the new PLL Independents Group Directory of Members and Specialists is online. There is a direct link from the PLL website to the directory site, which is sponsored by Cassidy Cataloging. Joni Cassidy asked anyone with a subject specialty who does freelance work to send her your name for inclusion in the directory.

Technical Services Group: Betty Roeske reported that the group will meet Tuesday at 5:30 in Peabody Plaza Ballroom H. The agenda will include Seattle presentations and utilities and how to protect data.

Records Management Group: Lee Nemcheck reported that activities focused on speaking and publishing. Lee and Bob Oaks were speakers at the SLA annual conference in Los Angeles. No PLL programs were accepted for the 2002 ALA conference.

Awards: Randall Thompson reported that eleven awards were made and 10 were accepted. The names of the recipients were read. $2,500 is the normal limit of awards but a one-time waiver was granted which allowed $3,343 to be awarded. The Executive Board asked the committee to expand the award to encompass other educational opportunities.

Perspectives: Questions were asked about the archiving of Perspectives, the length of time they will be archived, how far back are they currently archived, why are ads stripped. Washburn University hosts the AALL site and Washburn does not allow any advertising on its site. Jan Brown was recognized for her work on Perspectives. She asked for volunteers for Perspectives and issued an appeal for writers.

New Chair: Pat Keller recognized Janeen Heath as the PLL chair. Janeen presented a gift to Ann Jeter as she departs from the executive board. Janeen reviewed ideas for the upcoming year.

PLL EXECUTIVE BO ARD MEETING 2002-2003

July 12, 2003, Seattle, WA by Elizabeth LeDoux, Convington & Burling, Washington, DC

In Attendance: Holly Riccio, Caren Luckie, Jan Brown, Philip Rosenthal, Sue Johnson, Terri Lawrence, Terry Psarras, Richard Leiter, Elizabeth LeDoux, Janeen Heath, Tory Trotta.

The meeting was called to order at 6:15 p.m.

Tory Trotta, AALL Vice President, spoke to us about committee appointments for 2004. She is worried that PLL is not adequately represented and asked for our opinions about the reasons.

The Board does not have the answer but agreed to post information about AALL Committees on the PLL listserv, write an article for PLL Perspectives and mention Tory’s concerns at the PLL Business Meeting on Sunday morning.

Objectives Met This Year Strategic Plan

“Promote Hiring of Law Librarians”
Holly attended the Association of Legal Administrators Conference in San Diego with the new brochure from the Public Relations Committee. Should we consider getting a table at the Law Practice Management Section of the ABA?

“Promote Core Competencies”

PLL Toolkit being created by Michael Saint-Onge

Marketing Possibilities
Key chains with “Librarians are Lifesavers” were created for ALA. Lifesavers candies with AALL logo and web site were also created.

Articles in PLL Perspectives
Programs not accepted for Seattle conference would make very good articles for PLL Perspectives.

Law Library Visitation Program
Richard Leiter has created a program proposal where academic law librarians would “job swap” for a summer with law firm librarians. He is looking for volunteers for a steering committee. Terri Lawrence volunteered to get involved.

Grants
Global Securities Information Inc. gave us $10,000 for travel grants for which we are very grateful.

ALA
Holly attended the ALA (Association of Legal Administrators) Conference in San Diego. Several local librarians volunteered to help. They handed out issues of PLL Perspectives and AALL Spectrum. There were lots of questions from attendees. Holly raffled a gift basket with a “by-the-sea” theme. They also gave out key chains and lifesavers.

The Public Relations Committee is going to propose a program for next year. Also, vendors did 10-15 minute presentations, which we may do next year as well (May 2004, Philadelphia; May 2005, San Francisco).

Election Report
The secretary feels a slate with two people for each office is necessary. Bylaws were amended in 2001 to reflect that only one candidate is necessary. The PLL Nominations Chair contacted only local librarians. A decision was made to find a Nominations Chair with a broader, nationwide scope.

Procedures Manual
The PLL Procedures Manual is out of date, and an electronic version is not available anywhere. The Secretary will have the current, outdated manual created digitally, and the PLL Executive Board, Committee Chairs and Group Chairs will update the manual this year.

Thank You Notes for Volunteers
The Secretary is compiling a list of all volunteers last year. Each will be contacted for employer contact information, and letters will be sent to both the volunteer and their employer.

Stationery
PLL has bond stationery, but it may not be in compliance with AALL. We need to check with Rachel Shaevel.

Electronic Newsletter
The newsletter, PLL Perspectives, is expensive to print and mail. We need to go to an electronic format. PLL members were resistant last year. The Newsletter Advisory Committee is going to put out a survey this year to see if there is still resistance.

Partnering with Publishers
Terri Lawrence is developing a program to partner with publishers to help librarians write articles for PLL Perspectives and other publications. Librarians often need help fleshing out ideas, compiling information and formatting articles, and publishers are very good at all of these things. Terri has some very excited publishers, but they would like us to have some specific guidelines in place. Terri and Elizabeth will work on these guidelines.

Other Business
Philip Rosenthal, from Fastcase, is the SLA liaison to AALL. He came to ask the Board our feelings about the 2008 SLA Conference being held the same week as AALL, one in Seattle, the other in Portland. We informally agreed this was a disaster waiting to happen, unless we could make a joint conference work well, which most members doubted.