Documents, presentation materials, and other resources from AALL 2012 Boston are available online. Hosted by Legal Informatics Blogs viewers can access blog posts and the conference program. Also from AALL 2012, it’s not often that the Digests/Key Numbers are championed and we are lucky to have had University of Colorado Boulder Professors present their paper: The Case for Curation: The Relevance of Digest and Citator Results in Westlaw and Lexis. Adding to the fun, check-out the archived twitter hash-tag feed.
by Amy Eaton
PLL-Summit III: The Path to 2020: A Vision for Change
Saturday, July 21, 2012 | Boston | Marriott Copley Place
Are you starting to make your plans for the 2012 American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting? If so, don’t forget to also register for the third annual PLL Summit! The PLL Summit will occur on Saturday, July 21. The Summit is an all day program focusing on issues critical to the future of law librarians and law firms. As change agents, we must ask the questions which will help us understand the fundamental changes in the business and practice of law. What will information services look like in 2020 and what should we be doing now to advance that vision? How do we empower ourselves to drive information strategies, ensuring our own viability as information professionals? In addition to a forward-looking discussion of library services, a panel of partners, including Greg Castanias, Library partner at Jones Day, will discuss the value proposition librarians bring to the table and how they see our roles evolving. Break-out sessions will cover the business of law, proactively managing your career and technological advances and challenges. We will continue to update the Agenda as speakers and panels are formalized.
Not a private law librarian? You may still find it helpful to see the issues facing law librarians in the private sector. As an academic or court librarian, this will help you prepare your students and interns for life in the law firm.
The PLL Summit is $145 and the fee includes a reception Friday night, breakfast, lunch and a day full of exciting programming! We hope to see you there.
by Crystal Sherman Norton
Have you read the Velvet Chainsaw Report? (“Observations & Recommendations, American Association of Law Libraries” / Velvet Chainsaw Consulting). The nickname of the Report alone piqued my interest – picture it – a velvet chainsaw, cutting and carving oh so softly! The Report came out in October 2011 and I’ve just gotten around to downloading it thanks to my involvement with the Seattle 2013 Local Arrangements Committee. I’ve been reading it during my ferry commute this past week, digesting a little bit at a time. It’s really fascinating!
If you’ve ever attended an AALL Annual Meeting & Conference, or ever intend to, you should read this Report in its entirety. It is an analysis of AALL’s AM&C start to finish, including comments as to what’s working, what isn’t working, and specific recommendations for change, beginning with the whole process of submitting program ideas. The Report is backed-up with some very interesting attachments, such as “Defining education, information & learning” and “Three types of adult learners”. Ok that might sound a bit dry, but it’s really not, IMHO. The Report is well-done, thorough, and honest. Check it out here:
http://www.aallnet.org/Documents/Leadership-Governance/Committees/vcc-report.pdf
Continue reading 'President’s Message'»
by Amy Eaton
An advanced AALL PLL/SIS PERSPECTIVES article
This 30 minute PLL program quickly reviewed the fee-based and free resources we may consult to help us determine the best resources for reliable patent statistics. Amy Wisinski, of Winning the Case, sped through a number of resources which I will briefly summarize.
The USPTO has added a new Patent Dashboard to their statistical analysis page. This is visually appealing but summarizes only recent activity. The USPTO continues to offer statistical analysis based on calendar or fiscal year in html or pdf. The EPO provides patent filing statistics back to 2001 in a downloadable spreadsheet. WIPO also provides access to filing statistics such as the number of filings, granted, in force and intensity. The WIPO data is particularly dense and in some cases goes back as far as 1883. Continue reading 'Damn Lies and Patent Law Statistics: Getting Data to Identify Trends in Patent Legal Actions'»
by Crystal Sherman Norton
The first thing we noticed when stepping off the plane in Philadelphia was the heat. Did I say “notice”? Better put, when we stepped off the plane in Philadelphia, we were hit with a blast of heat that remained with us for several days. Someone in the airport told us it was 101 degrees, and this was around 4:30 p.m. You know how they say “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”? In Philadelphia it’s both. Enough about the weather already (but trust me, it was memorable!).
What a great conference this year! I divided my time between Chapter Leadership Training, the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section Summit: Change as Action, and some really great programs. Saturday morning the Council of Chapter Presidents put on a Chapter Leadership Training session for newly-elected Chapter Presidents and Vice Presidents/Presidents Elect. This meeting covered all that a Pres/VP needs to know in order to navigate his/her way through the 3 year commitment to an AALL Chapter. Diane Rodriguez, outgoing President of the Council of Chapter Presidents, guided us through the ins and outs of resources available to us and introduced each speaker. We learned about everything from Annual Meeting Programming to Preparing a Chapter Annual Report, and more. We were each given a handbook to go along with the presentations. Continue reading 'President’s Message from “The City that Loves You Back”'»
I am very excited to report that Tina Ching, Seattle University School of Law Library, and Rita Dermody, Public Law Library of King County, have agreed to co-chair the Local Arrangements Committee for the 2013 AALL Annual Meeting in Seattle. Their talent and enthusiasm are the perfect formula for a successful conference. Seattle will be a great location to host an annual meeting with new programming initiatives and exciting social, cultural, and local events. I encourage you to join the Local Arrangements Committee and share your talents and knowledge of your beautiful city with AALL members from across the United States and around the globe. See you in 2013!
– Jean M. Wenger, AALL Vice President/President-Elect
The Grants Committee would like to offer two Early Bird grants to the upcoming AALL Conference in Philadelphia. Please submit your grant application by May 6th to be considered for a grant.
And this year’s Excellence in Marketing Award goes to . . .
The K&L Gates library newsletter, AsktheLibrary!
Ellen Bowman, our intrepid newsletter editor, and frankly the lead writer too, accepted the AALL for Excellence in Marketing Award for Best Newsletter at this year’s annual meeting.
AsktheLibrary, our quarterly K&L Gates library newsletter, is a great medium for communicating our value to our lawyers. Our firmwide newsletter includes news about the firm’s print and electronic resources, free and low-cost resources available on the web, links to our online training guides and other tools for navigating the information landscape. Congratulations to Ellen and the library staff at K&L Gates for winning this award.
by Jennifer Hill
Saturday, July 10, 2010:
Arrive at Sea-Tac after ride with parking lot shuttle driver who spent the entire drive gleefully describing to me all of the explosives he created and
detonated for July 4th. Why he thought I was an explosives kind of girl, I don’t know. Get through long, slow moving curbside check-in line, then security and I’m off to Denver on a comfortable 2 ½ hour flight.
Check in to Marriott City Center and take off for Convention Center to pick up my badge and tote bag. On the way, meet up with some old friends from UCLA Law Library and meet some new UCLA law librarians as well. Make arrangements for dinner with my UCLA friends and head over to Blake Street for a delicious dinner at India House. Stuff myself with a vegetarian’s nightmare, Tandoori Mixed Grill and head back with the group to the Convention Center for the Opening Event in the Korbel Ballroom. The Ballroom was huge, allowing plenty of room to walk around and sample all of the different desserts available without knocking into people along the way. I’m not a big dessert person so instead I visited the bar stations which were well-stocked with beer, wine and even a signature cocktail: “The AALL”, a yummy peach martini. By 9:00 p.m. I was running out of steam and ready to call it a night. Back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep. Continue reading 'Jennifer's AALL Diary'»
by Tina Ching
It is an excellent time to be involved in AALL policy related activities. Various events held at the AALL annual meeting in Denver highlighted some of the issues that are important to us as law librarians and demonstrated how at the state level you are needed to help advance the objectives of our organization.
AALL Vision 2010-2013 states, “Law librarians, possessing unique education and training, have the special responsibility to promote permanent public access, authentication, and preservation of public domain government information.” There were several programs at the annual meeting this year, related to this part of our organization’s strategic direction that reflected the movement in this area and the need for involvement from our members. Here are just some of the highlights: Continue reading 'Our Future is Mapped: Join the Ride'»
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