Imagine you're at the AALL 2050 Business Meeting in San Francisco, CA:

A librarian no one in 2010 has met, because he hasn't started his career yet, presides as president. After the treasurer's report, it's time to award the president's certificates of recognition. Among those called to the stage: a wizened Jenny Westlaw, honored for 40 years of service to the law library community. As Jenny makes her way to the stage, the librarians spontaneously rise to their feet and give her a standing ovation.

Yeah, right.

I've been trying to figure out something (polite) to say about Ms. Westlaw and her counterpart Johnny since I discovered their existence a couple months ago. (Incidentally, via a site with a url that revealed Thomson Reuters is outsourcing some of their marketing--sloppy, but not a huge surprise.) Since that discovery, the Westlaws have been easy targets for private jokes and mockery.

So here's the thing: the scene described above happened just as I described it this year, except with Cathy Lemann presiding instead of some unknown whipper snapper. And in place of Jenny Westlaw, it was HeinOnline's Dick Spinelli being honored for his 40 years of good work.

And I'm not sure why it took me so long to figure out, but that's when it really struck me: the reason some of us have such a strong negative reaction to Johnny and Jenny is that they are fake people. Characters. Dick is real. And he's got his own, non-scripted personality and has taken time to get to know us over the years, and isn't going to disappear when corporate HQ decides on a different marketing direction.

I like Dick Spinelli. When I visited the Hein booth at SEAALL as a baby librarian, he made me feel welcome and also made it clear that he had a working relationship with my director, mentioning her name without any prompting or guessing. And it's not a problem of old vs. new ways of doing business, because I also like Fastcase's Ed Walters, who let his personal passion for design shine through in the session he spoke at, especially as compared to the more corporate Lexis and Westlaw speakers. I even like my local Lexis and Westlaw reps.

Beyond being merely fake, there's also something a little creepy treehouse about Johnny and Jenny--like we're supposed to pretend it's normal for a legal information vendor to hire actors for us to interact with. (I think I heard that J&J were already Thomson Reuters employees, but the point remains since they're not playing themselves.) I don't know about anyone else, but if that's something I want to do, I'll go to a dinner theater show or visit the Plymouth Colony reenactment, thanks very much. I'm at a loss as to whom they are supposed to appeal to. Maybe students, but definitely not librarians young or old. And I doubt students love them either--they're usually even better than us at detecting fakes.

Sure, it's harder for Westlaw as an entity to connect with us because it's part of a giant corporation. Giant corporations like to be uniform and careful about their public presences, which often results in bland, personality-free communications. No surprise, but I'd rather have bland than fake.

I had a boss in my pre-library life who used to stress to the account reps that ours was a relationship business, not a transaction business. I've come to believe that outlook is valuable across many fields, including our own. I'd bet Spinelli and Walters might even agree with it. Unfortunately for Westlaw, it's pretty hard to have a relationship with a fake person.

So, how about that annual meeting? Law librarians have been talking, just a little. Here's the recap, followed by my two cents:

• Caren Biberman: Some thoughts on Programming at the AALL Annual Conference
• Mark Gediman: A Modest Proposal on Programming at AALL
• Caren Biberman: Dream Big or Comments on “A “Modest Proposal on Programming at AALL” and the Report of the AALL Annual Meeting Review Special Committee
• Mark Gediman: Programming at AALL – A Modest Follow-Up…
• Nina Platt: My Experience in Participating in the AALL Programming Process or AALL Educational Programming Needs to go Back to School
• Jason Eiseman: A defense of AALL (sort of)
• Tracy Thompson-Przylucki: AALL Conference - How About a "Less is More" Approach?
• Tom Boone: Three suggestions for improving AALL program selection
• AALL: Annual meeting program planning – FAQs July 2010
• Richard Leiter: Time for change at AALL?

First, an observation: as I mentioned on Twitter after the first couple posts in the list above, I'm not entirely happy with the AALL annual meeting--content, process, and format--so I'm amused by the implication that we academic librarians love it just as it is. I know there's a longstanding assumption that AALL is academic biased, but that doesn't mean we don't have just as many suggestions on how the meeting could be better.

How many times have you heard someone say (or said yourself) the best parts of the meeting happen between sessions or after hours? After attending the meeting for just a few year (Denver will be my fifth), I know I was saying it as early as after my second meeting. And we usually say it like it's a good thing, although there is an element of putting down the programming sometimes.

I'm not going to say much about the content of programs other than to say I've been to good and bad sessions that have been both targeted and for general audiences. Some of the best programs I've attended have been those not in my general area of interest (if you go by my job description), or those that might appear frivolous (the fabulous program last year about comic books). So I'm not sure that changing the focusing or targeting will do much to improve the programs. My biggest complaint about the content has to do with accuracy in labeling of beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels, and wanting more intermediate and advanced programming--something I know is being worked on.

The process of proposing and coordinating programs is getting closer to where my concern is. First, proposals have typically been due within weeks of the previous meeting. The proposal deadline was pushed back this year, which is great, but not enough. Information, technology, and library trends are changing too rapidly to have the entire program save a handful of hot topics decided on so far in advance. When I go to a session, I want to hear more of what people are working on this year, and less about what they did last year.

The process also feels mired in a time when we relied on post office and the AMPC members meeting live to discuss it. It wasn't easy to distribute proposals to more than a handful of people. But that hasn't been the case in a long time. AALL did a great job of explaining the rating and weighting process in the program planning FAQ, but it's time to have more content decided on by direct vote of members. Others have mentioned and I have long (well, okay, two years) been a proponent of doing the selecting for, say, half the sessions by a system like SXSW's panel picker. Are there sound alike sessions? Let us decide which one sounds better. Are there trends or topics that the 7-member committee is missing? Let the membership find them. That said, if people are unhappy now, it might be complete chaos if AMPC didn't exist to provide some checks, but the balance in the process could nevetheless be shifted a few more notches from oligarchy toward democracy without danger.

The format of the meeting is where most of my concern is. Those in-the-hallway, between-sessions, after-hours moments when solutions are shared and new ideas are sparked? Let's figure out a way to have more of those during the meeting.

The majority of AALL presentations fall into the broadcast format: many people listening to one person or panel for the majority of the session, followed by a small question and answer period, but not much interaction among the attendees. I've seen intra-audience interaction happen during both main and feedback segments of programs, but it's rare.

If we're all going to the trouble and expense of getting ourselves together, wouldn't it be great if we could find more ways to facilitate more generative programs? Check Roger Martin's definition of generative meetings:

a meeting designed for the participants to generate through the dialogue something that didn't exist before the meeting and wouldn't come into existence except through the dialogue. Generative meetings have always been extremely valuable because, in a sense, they generate new intellectual property that comes about because of the real-time interplay between the minds of intelligent people.

That sounds a little like Lawberry Camp, doesn't it? The Camp is happening again this year, but I was disappointed when AALL decided not to accept it as an official workshop. Sure, the explanation that workshops require measurable learningoutcomes makes sense rationally, but "learning outcome" is not the only valuable outcome. I appreciate the statement that the association believes the unconference and PLL summit should be held and supported, but as a member of the sponsoring SIS on the former, it didn't feel supportive when we heard how the program was accepted--especially when there was a snafu that initially led to it not getting a room assignment on the schedule or the requested AV equipment.

What would I most like to see change in the annual meeting? More open and practical support of non-traditional programming. Not just Lawberry Camp, but unconference sessions in other programming slots. More variety and creativity in formats. To toot the CS-SIS horn again, sessions like the Cool Tools Cafe that got people moving around the entire room. I'm not sure about everything that needs to change to make that happen, but I do know we need more support from AALL/AMPC and a willingness to be flexible on what constitutes an outcome. On the other side, maybe we need to do stuff like encourage Sarah and Jason to list outcomes from previous instances of Lawberry Camp as potential learning outcomes, or focus on the types of problems that attendees can expect to work on solving.

Here's what I don't want to happen: new, creative, innovative sessions just stacked on the existing, already overflowing program schedule to compete with the main stage(s). Like Tracy said, less is more. Many people are overbooked already. I'd love to see the dominant but deprecated broadcast format give up some space to opportunities to generate new ideas, solve problems, build relationships, and make the annual meeting a must-attend event. Here's Roger Martin again:

most meetings are still run on the tried-and-true broadcast platform and that is why the majority of people think that meetings are generally a waste of time. They don't have to be, but they generally are.

Need evidence that law librarians love generativity? Don't listen to the haters; check out the thriving law librarian community and conversations--serious as often as silly--that happen on Twitter.

Yesterday there was uproar in the law library community over this charming ad Westlaw sent to some of its subscribers:


Yes, I agree. It's insulting and offensive. But beyond the outrage, I'd love to see it lead to more discussion of the positive things we as law librarians are going to do to change things so that next time a major legal publisher makes such a blunder, we all just laugh it off. And more important than discussion, action. What do we, the legal information experts, do to take more control of legal information back from vendors?

Do we start at home, encouraging our in-house reviews and journals to publish in accordance with the Durham Statement (have you signed yet?): commiting "to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats"?

Do we continue to advocate for better and easier access to government information that ought to be free anyway? How many law librarians have signed the Improve PACER petition yet? There are definitely more than 682 of us.

Do we get more active finding creative ways around such shortcomings, like creating RECAP?

Do we help come up with more tools like handy LibX, the brainchild of a Virginia Tech librarian collaborating with a VT computer science professor?

Do we go continue to call for better user interfaces from vendors? How about going beyond critiquing the vendors to become expert interface designers on our own, making more useful library websites, less sucky OPACs, and engaging institutional or regional repositories?

Do we support our local legal information institutes and figure out ways to make them even better for research?

There's obviously not any set answer here, just lots of possibilities we need to get serious about exploring and implementing so we don't have any reason to get freaked out next time a vendor encourages users to make an end-run around us.

I'm not big on sports metaphors, but in his AALL 2009 keynote, Jonathan Zittrain mentioned the concept of library defense. Even I know enough about sports to know that you can't win only playing defense. So what's our offense?

Three years ago this month, I went to my first day of work as a law librarian, then headed the next day to my first AALL.

I've always appreciated that my anniversary in the profession coincides with the annual meeting; it's a nice chance to reflect on my career so far. Not going to navel gaze here, but suffice to say I am satisfied, and looking forward to many more years of gentle law librating.

There are a few things, however, that stand out.

Before I became a librarian, I had an absolute dread of networking. The thought of it made my skin crawl. So I was surprised to find that it wasn't actually so bad when law librarians were involved. In fact, I didn't really mind it at all, and it's only gotten better from there. I think it helped a lot that the CONELL committee does such a great job of helping newbies get started.

The other thing that helped early on was walking into my first (the first, in fact) meeting of the Gen X / Gen Y Caucus. It feels incredibly corny to say, but it was a thrill to walk into a room with about a hundred people my age who were just as excited to be law librarians as I was. (I suspect part of the excitement was that I didn't really know anyone in library school let alone anyone younger who was also interested in law librarianship.) The first thing we did was re-arrange all the chairs in the room into an enormous circle. It was great. That was a highlight, but my whole first annual meeting made me feel like I'd found my people.

Fast forward three years to my fourth annual meeting. I got to work the CS-SIS booth at CONELL's exhibit hall this time. It was worth getting up for the early flight. I met a lot of the cool new people and began to feel more like an old conference pro. Someone handed me a slip with the URL to sign up for the mentoring program, and I think suggested I do so as a mentor. I guess I'm really not a newbie anymore.

Meanwhile, I've been on the Gen X / Gen Y social planning committee for three years, and this year's event was mind-blowing. We made a reservation for 20; I counted at least 53 people at one point. Yeah. It's just one indication of the group's success. We're taking all necessary steps toward becoming an SIS. Our members represent on SIS and chapter boards, and on national committees; and present multiple times at conferences. They're also behind creative new things like the first annual Lawberry Camp. (Got ideas for next year? Help with the proposal.) I have a lot of loyalties within the association, but ask me which group I'm most proud of, and it's the Caucus.

In addition all that, I've made some really amazing friends in the profession, especially over the past year or so. People I like to think I'd be friends with if we met outside of the law library sphere. I've found not only my people, but my pack.

Two other mentionable-but-not-really-related highlights:

• This year's opening even in the halls of the Library of Congress was phenomenal. The mild thunder and lightning storm added a little locked-in-the-library magic to the evening. As I commented elsewhere, it's a shame the place isn't more portable, because it sure beats convention halls and hotel ballrooms.
• CS-SIS karaoke outing. Last year when I went for the first time, there were fewer than a dozen people and it was fun, but low key. This year? I'm not sure what happened (nor which year was more unusual), but there were over 70 people. And since Connie Crosby has video anyway, I'm just going to say it: looking out into a room full of law librarians and realizing that everyone else was also belting "Don't Stop Believin'" is something I'll never forget. Though perhaps I should. :)

And with this post, I hope to get blogging here a little more often. I've been waiting till I get around to switching to WordPress, then Tom Boone and Jason Eiseman convinced me at CALIcon that I too can handle Drupal--but I'm unlikely to make any kind of platform switch until I get a new computer this fall.

Meredith Farkas has completed posting the results to her 2007 survey of the Biblioblogosphere.

Among other things, she has a page of results filtered by various categories, including age, gender, type of library, type of position, and degrees held. Nineteen law librarians took the survey, and their results can be viewed here [pdf].

Some interesting factoids:

• 77% of us write at more than one blog.
• None of us chose venting of our frustrations as one of the top three reasons we blog!
  
• One blogger earns revenue from licensing blog content.
• Two-thirds of us have been published in some type of professional literature.
• We range from somewhat to definitely happy at our jobs. No one chose the "barely" or "not at all" options. (As reported previously, law librarians were one of the top three subsets of the profession reporting the highest levels of job satisfaction.)
  

Thanks for doing the survey, Meredith, and thanks for the nice filtration!

Although she may not be able to publish comprehensive results from the 2007 Biblioblogosphere survey right away, Meredith Farkas has shared some interesting facts from it. Aside from the massive increase in survey takers (165 in 2005 to 839 in 2007!), the point I found most interesting was number six: the three highest scores on job satisfaction came from school librarians, law librarians, and consortium/library system librarians.

SEAALL Institute
Law Librarians and Legal Technologists:
Building Synergies in the Net Age
Thursday April 12, 2007

Dispelling Stereotypes That Affect Services and Users
Speakers: Tom Bruce, Research Associate and Director, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
and Lori D. Martin, Library and Research Services Manager, Bradley Arant Rose & White LLP

Notes:
musical prelude to this session: Dueling Banjos!

TB
prefaced that the session was going to be deliberately provocative

fading topic – lingering tensions

cosmic factors

• different perception of the business
• perceived zero-sum game

LM
lack of connection – no more water cooler
in firm, everyone is below the lawyers
in firms, IT is now the budget with a target on it
IT staff with one year of technology college paid double what MLS librarians get

TB – top five IT complaints about librarians

1. librarians undervalue process
2. librarians won’t experiment (dismissing not-fully-developed and open source technology)
3. librarians demand resources without planning or notice
4. having been a subordinated profession, librarians are looking for someone to subordinate
5. bundle of complaints common to all users seeming worse because more is expected of librarians (in other words: librarians should be more competent)

#1-4 made up 15% of complaints, #5 was 85%

librarians personalize technology problems: “YOUR network is down” (no one ever says “your book has a bad typeface”)

LM – top five librarian complaints about IT staff

1. IT believe that end users can’t do anything right
2. IT inconvenience people for no reason (server shutdowns and upgrades are cruel psych experiments)
3. they hide
4. IT want us to be self reliant, but won’t explain
5. IT staff keep all the good toys

how to respond to those who don’t want to learn?

LM comment on Tom’s list: people DO ask how books work

Thoughts:
Being new to the profession and technically inclined, I can identify with and understand items on both lists.

Ironically, complaint number two about librarians (won't experiment) is an issue--less than a full-blown complaint--I sometimes have with some of our tech staff. Example: groaning that I installed Firefox on the reference desk computer.

Complaint number five about librarians is something I wholly empathize with, having been through library school with quite a few classmates who couldn't open a PowerPoint presentation from a flash drive and switch it to presentation mode, to name just one example. One hopes they will catch up at some point before they graduate, but it is Not Good that there isn't some kind of technology skills requirement for entering LIS programs, or at least a tutorial requirement for those who need it. Ability to work with technology is an absolutely necessary foundation of library and information science.

I've felt mild cases of all the complaints about tech staff, but more as an accumulation over the course of other jobs than anything I feel specifically as a librarian. Here is a good place to say that going into the Institute, I wondered how much value I would find in it, because I don't feel any particular conflict with or resentment of our IT staff, but I did find it quite worthwhile, especially the practical ideas in the first session.

SEAALL Institute
Law Librarians and Legal Technologists:
Building Synergies in the Net Age
Thursday April 12, 2007

New Territory and Technologies: Getting What Our Users Need When They Need It & Working Together to Meet That Need
Speaker: Pablo Molina, CIO, Georgetown University Law Center

Notes:
Educause

Most breakthroughs come in new uses of existing technology, rather than brand new technology

Freakonomics – information as currency

List of technologies: 2.0, blogs, wikis, repositories, electronic casebooks

GU Systems Management Council

• members: university librarian, law librarian, medical librarian, university CIO, law CIO, others

Museum management software [I can't remember why this was mentioned]

GU Campus Web Group

• campus-wide website – input from multiple areas
• co-chaired by publications/ media director and CIO
• annual web plan

Exchanges

• annual presentations to law librarians and law center administration

Faculty and staff technology retreats

• librarians present at these
• sponsored by the dean

Printing charges go back to library/IT dept for computing expenses

• even though charged, students use due to convenience

Technology Reference Desk

• changed name of help desk to technology reference desk
• made location more prominent (not in back corner)
• changed staffing to 9am-6pm, professionals only (no student workers)
• not just help, but instruction (for students, not faculty)
• some resistance from students at first, but they were told tech learning is part of their educational experience
• satisfaction changed from 50% to 80% then 90%

Annual Student Technology Survey

• items like how many students have Macs
• satisfaction with IT dept
• track diffusion of innovation

Conflicting priorities

• distrust of those we don’t understand – too much jargon
• must be bilingual – English/techie

Thoughts:
Molina's session was full of practical ideas.

I especially like the student technology survey, which sounds like a great way to find out what students' actual tech expectations and skills are and what they're using, as opposed to assuming that because they're young "digital natives" they know what they're doing.

Also: the technology reference desk sounds very cool, and I think it's fabulous that they're insisting students accept instruction instead of just fixing their problems. Teach a person to fish...