Research Roundtable Report
Minutes of the 2002 OBS & TS Research Roundtable Held during the 2002 AALL Annual Meeting

Brian Striman announced he is stepping down as Coordinator/Moderator of the Research Roundtable (or RRT). Chris Long volunteered several months ago to take over. Paul Healey, Editorial Director of AALL Spectrum was the guest speaker. There were twenty-two librarians in attendance.

Copies of the OBS/TS Joint Research Grant applications were made available, with a brief discussion that this grant is awarded to qualifying applicants who can be awarded a total of $1,000, funds permitting. This is a shared grant with $500 from TS and OBS. More information about the grant is available at the OBS or TS web sites. Copies of a "Publishing kit" compiled by Brian Striman were made available and distributed to those attending the Roundtable.

Brian talked about the July 2002 issue of AALL Spectrum, noting that there are several articles devoted to writing. Kevin Butterfield, Chair of AALL's Research Committee, and Ellen McGrath (who will be coming on board to that committee) also attended the RRT. They reminded us that there is money for research projects and that they encourage technical services law librarians to consider their Committee as a source for funding when doing research and writing.

Most of the rest of the Roundtable time was devoted to Mr. Healey who discussed some of the writing he did and why he did it and the advantages of writing for publication at large, as well as for AALL. He talked about a writer's expectations and a publisher/editor's expectations, and focused much of his discussions around Spectrum. He said he started writing professionally as a result of a paper he wrote in library school where his assignment was to answer a question on liability of librarians (Paul was one of the few lawyers in class). It was later published and he won an award in a papers competition. Paul said that in the library business, if it is about the profession and in English, it will be published. He continued his talk about how he would do his writing on his own time. It may not sound too good to the inexperienced librarian, but spending that time, even if it's your own time, gets your name out there for exposure, especially if you are new in the profession. It paid off for him when went to University of Illinois where publishing requirements for librarians are the same as for other "teaching" faculty. Paul said it's hard to get the time to do it, but it's essential and may shorten your tenure track approval time because of all the writing you do. Part of the success he enjoys now, from all that writing work is that it led him to be chosen as the successful candidate for editorial director of Spectrum, and one of his new priorities now is to rustle the bushes to get people to write.

He said he hears from people that feel the work they do and the issues, challenges, solutions and ideas that they wrestle with are so specialized that no one else would be interested in reading about it. They feel that they are dealing daily with pieces of minutiae and details not worth writing about. Paul's encouragement for the group was: "You DO, in fact, know things that your colleagues don't know that would be of interest to them… You can't assume that others know what you know." He cited an example with Jolande Goldberg's work on the K schedules, and she recently won the Joseph L. Andrews award for her work. If you notice, many of the awards in our association are for the recognition of excellence in skilled, in-depth work that was published.

Paul continued by stating that librarians already possess, or should possess, the language skills to write, that we need to think about something we would like to see researched and written that hasn't been done yet, and that we should include responding to things about the way our profession works about which we disagree. For Paul, the writing process is not easy. He said that if you are willing to work on the writing and idea, you will find someone to publish it. It's a good idea to have in your mind some potential places in mind as your "target audience." He volunteered to look at our ideas first as possible submissions to Spectrum. It's okay to talk to him before you start writing (rough outline stage), but he prefers to share with any editor your idea plus a rough outline you have drafted up. In most cases, if it is an idea they are interested in, they will guide you as to length, and most appropriate style. Editors are most comfortable working with successive drafts. Articles need to fit in with the purpose and mission of the publication. It's a good idea to start your publishing opportunities by opening a dialog with the people who might want to publish your article.

Paul spoke more in detail about Spectrum. It's focus is moving away from newsletter type content (e.g., member news, chapter news; placement listings, etc., that can, and will be available via AALLnet), toward content that is more professional in scope and style, like ABA Journal. Content will be geared more toward reports on topics, talking to people, pointing to sources, and more reporting (where you think of yourself as a reporter). The total publishing process, from "idea" to "print" is longer than people realize. Spectrum staff try to plan things out in advance. It may be several months before a submission makes it into the magazine. For example, in June, content for the September and November issues is mostly locked down. Deadlines are about 8 weeks before the cover date of the issue, and editing may be done for content only. Other people do editing for copy, grammar, style, length. There is a lot of manipulation that goes on and articles may change considerably. They have a limit of 32 content pages.

Don't send a rush article you need for tenure. Most articles submitted to Spectrum should be fairly easy to write, with the majority falling in the 750 – 1500 – 3000 words range. Don't worry about how it looks when you send the drafts back and forth. They always need your name and position, double spaced, e-mailed as an attachment in Word or Wordperfect to (phealey@law. uiuc.edu). E-mail him with ideas for articles. He will make suggestions on where to publish if your idea is not right for Spectrum. If you have an idea let him know as soon as possible so he can fit it in if it's appropriate. If you don't have a topic in mind, he can suggest some.

Other things Paul is looking at are the AALL Chapter and SIS newsletters, scanning them for good writers and topics. An ideal article for Spectrum has national scope and would be of interest to all members in the profession.

AALLnet is under-used for delivering information to the membership. Paul would like to somehow make sure people know the news-bits are there. Another thing Paul is looking into is the need to profile the various SIS's for different issues, such as the work they do and their organization, including substantive areas of each SIS. These series of articles would let others in the organization know what it does for people, why they enjoy it, how it's a voice, how it functions and why they should be a part of it. The goal is to get every SIS profiled, each with a 750 – 1000 words limit.

Diana C. Jaque spoke about her work editing book review columns in LLJ. She would like to see more diversity in the contributors. They work far in advance, for the quarterly issues. They have guidelines for the reviews, and if you volunteer, you can be put on a list to pick the book and you get a review copy of the book directly from the publisher. They profile what the best library setting appropriate for what set of topics, and you look for authority of authors, and doing comparisons of different resources. It's best that this column represent all sections of AALL.

Debbie Wynot had an idea for an article about using a free form database instead of a turnkey system. Brian Striman wondered about a TSLL "technology review" column, but an editor would be needed and so forth, to get the column going.

Ruth Balkin spoke about some special database or software for sharing data, and someone recommended the Technoids discussion list, or even the TS discussion list, to pose her question. The last topic for discussion, which we didn't have much time to explore, was getting paid for article submissions in professional journals or other publishing sources. Apparently, there are some Special Library Association publications that do pay authors for their published works.

Minutes taken by Ruth Balkin, Balkin Library & Information Services; edited by Brian Striman, University of Nebraska