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AALL Annual Meeting: But Is It Generative?
By Meg Kribble - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - 5:08pm
Meg Kribble
meg kribble (dot) net

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

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 learning outcomes 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.

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from social networking software on Tue, 2010-08-31 16:49

Great post! I really liked the content and disposition in your topic!

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from social networking software on Fri, 2010-08-27 09:29

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from Megkribble on Mon, 2010-08-02 11:33

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2 comments
aall, Conferences, hve, law librarians
Three suggestions for improving AALL program selection
By Tom Boone - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - 5:18pm
Tom Boone
tom boone dot com

The last week or so has seen a flurry of discussion about the AALL Annual Meeting's educational program and suggestions to improve it. I won't rehash the discussion here. Instead, have a look at:

(If I missed anyone in my list, please post links in the comments.)

To some extent I heartily agree and vehemently disagree with each in one way or another. Rather than pick apart what others have written, I'll simply offer my three suggestions on how AALL can improve the program selection process.

1) Create tracks by library type
The idea of conference "tracks" has already been floated by many people over the years, and the Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC) already announced that the 2011 Annual Meeting will have six tracks for programming based on AALL's "Competencies for Law Librarians":

  • Library Management
  • Reference, Research and Client Services
  • Information Technology
  • Collection Development and Cataloging
  • Teaching
  • General or Core Programs

Problem is, every one of these tracks remains a one-size-fits-all approach, meaning programs related to providing reference service to public patrons at a court library will be on the same track as ones about service to attorneys in a law firm. As is often the case with the non-track approach to the Annual Meeting, many coordinators will still include both types of presentations in the same session as a way to spread their programs' appeal to a wider audience and increasing the likelihood of its acceptance by AMPC. Unfortunately, programs that try to meld disparate audiences become half as useful to their audiences.

Last year I moderated a program on adding Web 2.0 tools to the library catalog. The panel included both academic and firm librarians, each speaking on the tools used in their respective libraries. The academic librarians' portion of the session kept academics in the audience interested, but had little to no applicability to the firm audience. When the firm librarian spoke, the opposite was true, with firm librarians suddenly engaged and academic librarians uninterested.

While we are all law librarians and work with legal information resources, the truth is that crossover appeal between what we work on and are professionally interested in is rare. A commenter to Jason Eiseman's blog post about the programming debate wrote, "Personally, I find the sessions presented by law firm librarians to be above and beyond the best of the conference." With all due respect, she only feels that way because she is a firm librarian. I, personally, find those sessions to be sleep-inducing and think programs presented by academic librarians to be the best, but this has nothing to do with who the best presenters are. It's simply a reflection of our professional interests.

To summarize the problem with the Annual Meeting's programming as deficient in programs for firm librarians is myopic. The real problem is AALL's well-intentioned push to appeal to all of the people all of the time, which results in watered-down programming that has limited applicability to everyone but inspirational functionality for no one.

For these reasons, I don't see the six tracks announced for 2011 being a solution to the problem. They simply reshuffle the schedule without resulting in any difference in the programs themselves. Instead, the tracks need to be based, at least in part, on librarian types. This means a track for academic librarians, one for court librarians, another for firm librarians. But this doesn't solve every problem, as reference librarians in an academic environment have little in common with technical services librarians in the same institution, so these tracks need to be split into additional mini-tracks. In the end, we could continue splitting until there are 100 or more tracks, but even with only one or two splits, the tracks become far more applicable to individuals than the current ones. Does this mean more than six tracks? Yeah, probably, but maybe every track doesn't have to be represented in every time slot. Or maybe having more, smaller programs is a good thing. Convention center meeting rooms can usually be split into smaller rooms, right? Not every session has to have 100+ attendees to be valuable. I'd rather sit in a room with ten people discussing academic library reference and technology concerns than in a huge room with 150 people discussing non-specific reference and technology concerns.

I don't know exactly what the structure of this multi-layered track system would be or what the specific tracks are. All I know is, trying to appeal to everyone at once in the same program rarely results in information I can take back to my library and put into action. In order to be useful to anyone, the tracks need to focus first and foremost on the type of library attendees work for. Only then will all constituencies find applicable programming.

2) Replace the AMPC with a separate committee for each track
If focusing program content on specific types of audiences is a desirable thing, it then follows that the content should be designed by the very people it is designed for. If there is a track for academic reference librarians (which is the category I fit into), the content should be solicited by, vetted by and scheduled by academic reference librarians. A committee made up of academic, firm, court and public librarians lacks in specialized knowledge what it gains in professional diversity. Instead, each of those librarian types should be involved in creating the track that fits their own qualifications and interests, not someone else's.

Under the current structure, where wide appeal is the goal, a committee with a sampling of all constituencies makes sense. With a move to specialized tracks, even the one announced for 2011, the committee makeup should shift to specialization as well.

Perhaps this would make AMPC membership less prestigious since there would be multiple committees instead of one centralized cabal, but firm librarians shouldn't be subjected to a program selected by academics and vice-versa. Embrace our differences and allow us to get the most out of the conference. This only happens if the committee itself reflects and embraces the differences, not through homogenization, but through specialized programming created by specialized committees.

Of course, the influence of the committees themselves becomes less important if we...

3) Crowdsource the program proposals within each track
In the last year or so I've had a lot of private conversations about crowdsourcing AALL programming. One of the commenters to Jason Eiseman's post also mentioned this, citing the SXSW PanelPicker as a model. The extreme example of this would be to post every proposal online and allow the AALL membership to vote. The top vote-getters then become the educational program. This model is problematic because it allows the largest constituency to dictate the program, leaving little or no content for specialized groups. This would also probably lead to the same problem with the current program in which sessions with the widest possible appeal, and perhaps highest likelihood for being watered-down, receiving the most votes.

Another suggestion I've heard is having AALL crowdsource one session, perhaps posting all the remaining proposals after the rest of the program is selected, allowing the membership to vote for the last slot. I find this problematic on two accounts. First, it sends a message that AALL only views member preference as worthy of consideration for a single session, preferring the machinations of a committee working in secrecy over the voice of its members. Second, it makes all the rejected proposals public, subjecting AMPC to an onslaught of "How could you have picked this session over that one" complaints. Both of these would be valid complaints, but the ensuing chaos might lead to obnoxious flame wars that would annoy everyone but the rabble-rousers.

With program tracks defined by clear member constituencies, however, crowdsourcing becomes a workable option. If there is a track for firm librarians (or some sub-category therein) already defined with a set number of session slots, a proposal can be submitted to that specific track where it will be voted upon solely by firm librarians. Proposals for academic tracks would be voted upon solely by academic librarians. This ensures that each constituency gets a program that reflects its current interests and needs.

This doesn't mean AMPC (or the various tracks' AMPCs) doesn't have a role. Crowdsourced voting should be the top consideration in selecting a program, but scheduling, speaker availability and other issues will still have to be dealt with by the committee(s). Again, this might make AMPC a less prestigious committee appointment, but prestige shouldn't be why AMPC exists.

These three changes to program selection are not small. They would involve major alterations to how the Annual Meeting's content is selected, requiring personnel, administrative and technological overhauls to be implemented. So what? AALL is our organization, and if we don't shape it and the Annual Meeting into something that meets our needs, we have no one to blame but ourselves. This is really just an "off the top of my head" summary of various conversations I've had over the last year, so it's by no means intended as an end all, be all solution. Your mileage will vary. But hopefully as more people enter the conversation and the various suggestions are weighed, we can come up with something that results in a more valuable Annual Meeting for everyone.
2 comments
aall, AALL Annual Meeting, aall2010, Conferences, Library
Sturm und Drang and Strategic Directions
By Sarah Glassmeyer - Sunday, August 30, 2009 - 3:32pm
Sarah Glassmeyer
Sarah Glassmeyer (dot) com

I’m starting to wonder how  many times I can say to myself “…so that happened.” in a week.

I’ve just survived my first week of the fall semester.  And if you’re one of my students reading this, let me assure you that the first week back transition is just as hard on law school faculty and staff as it is on you. I’ve had tons of ILLs to process, longer Reference Desk hours, lectures to prepare (oh, yeah, turns out I will be teaching 1L legal research this fall…there’s some sturm und drang about that too, but I”ll wait until another post to talk about the *dramatic pause* laptop ban) and welcoming receptions to attend, all while trying to navigate through a town/campus who’s population seemingly quadrupled in 24 hours.

Adding to the drama of the week, on Monday Westlaw sent out an advertisement aimed at lawyers with the headline “Are you on a first name basis with the librarian?” And then goes on to say, “If so, chances are you are spending too much time at the library.  What you need is fast, reliable research you can access right in your office.  And all it takes is West.”  Screnshot here.

As my Grandpa Heller would say, that went over like a lead Zepplin with the librarian crowd.

There was outrage and pearl clutching on Law-Lib and twitter about it.  I tried to not make too many comments until I saw the actual ad or heard an official response from West but I did get a screen grab of the ad and posted it on Twitter/twitpic in the interest of sharing information. You can’t imagine how freaked out I was to keep seeing “mentions” notifications on Tweetdeck with people all over the country retweeting it and then adding their own commentary. For the record, I never said Westlaw “sucked” or “was evil.”  (Also, at about the 400th view of the pic, I noticed that the other two pictures visible were of me and a squirrel and me and the Butter Cow at the Ohio State Fair.  *sigh* Professionalism! I haz it! )  So, anyway, it turns out it was in fact a real ad, and West feels terribly about hurting our feelings.

Well, okay then!

I’ve mentioned before that I have complicated feelings about the vendor/librarian relationship.  I personally try to not accept vendor swag but I don’t think less of my librarian compatriots that do.  I don’t think that Wexis are evil, nor do I think that there’s anything wrong with running a for-profit business. I do wonder why we rely on commercial vendors for information that tax dollars have already paid for and how much profit is “enough” when libraries and law firms are facing massive budget cuts.

As I tell my Legal Research students, I think of Lexis and Westlaw as the Crips and Bloods of Legal Information.  They’re in it to make money.  And, like drug dealers, they’ll give you the first taste for free while you’re in law school in hopes that you get hooked.  But they’re also engaged in a to-the-death battle with each other over the finite customer base and if any one was clearly better than the other, the other would cease to exist. (And if you think I’m mistaken about the battle part, how many people got sent the West ad by their Lexis rep? )  So, basically, keep your eyes open and try to not be a casualty in the war…look out for yourself.

There’s always going to be tensions between librarians and vendors, especially as they expect people to pay for things that we want to give away for free. (There’s another analogy here that I keep coming back to, but there are some things that even I won’t put in print.)  Here’s the thing…they’re not on our side, they’re not our enemies…we’re all just pieces of the same puzzle.  And as soon as we get rid of worrying about being offended by them or always having to play defense or expecting them to kiss our rings for allowing them access to our patrons, we can start thinking about the future.  I really like the ideas that Meg and Tom put out earlier in the week about the West ad issue.   There are some concrete steps that law librarians, as individuals, can take and things to think about with regards to vendors and the role of librarians.

For better or worse, AALL is currently the major unified voice for law librarians.  If you’re unhappy with the vendor/librarian relationship, perhaps  AALL can be used as a conduit.

(Okay, Gentle Reader, I’m sure bitter laughter just rang out amongst some of you.  I know lots of people that I respect and like have major issues with AALL.  Personally, they haven’t really done me dirty yet, so I’m trying to keep an open mind.  I’ll try to work for change within the system, and if that fails, I’ll go outside of it.  I have no problem with going outside of the system and being a lone wolf and in many ways it’s easier, but maybe not as effective or fast.  Like I said, right now AALL has the body count of law librarians that makes it the best bet to effect change.  Refusing West’s funding for the Annual Meeting becaues they wouldn’t give up pricing information was a great start.  So I’m hopeful, but in the meantime I’ll also keep paying my dues to SLA and the Legal and Academic Divisions.  BUT I DIGRESS…)

Perhaps not coincidentally, in the middle of the West brou-ha-ha on Law-Lib, there was a brief message about AALL beginning the process of revising and planning for new stratgic directions for 2010-2013 since the current 2005-2010 strategic directions expire next year.  They’ve set up a blog for AALL membership to add its comments.  There are three questions that are asked:

  1. How do we seize the moment and make it our own?
  2. Where do we, as law librarians, want to be in the next three years?
  3. What is required of us to create the world we envision?

Okay, those are really broad questions.  And yes, generally “strategic directions” and “mission statements” and things of that sort are often just “feel good” messages that aren’t easily transitioned into action and otherwise set off my BS meter.  But maybe they don’t need to be.  Respond to this call for input.  Add concrete ideas.   I need to think more before I figure out exactly how I want to answer these questions.  When I do figure out what I want to say, I’ll definitely post my answer here and there.  I encourage you to do the same.
1 comment
aall, hve, Uncategorized, vendors
On the Future of Academic Law Libraries
By Meg Kribble - Monday, August 3, 2009 - 3:32am
Meg Kribble
meg kribble (dot) net

While I was in D.C., a library director whom I'd just met wondered why there weren't more younger people at the Academic Law Library of 2015 workshop. I didn't have a ready answer, and I've been thinking about it ever since. There were actually a number of reasons.

First, I confess that my (possibly superficial) impression of the pre-workshop listserv discussion was that many of the issues on it were things that had been hashed and rehashed for years with little action. No thanks. (I have subsequently heard good things about the workshop, so I'm happy my impression was incorrect or that the listserv didn't otherwise accurately preview the workshop.)

My other personal issue with getting to the workshop was working with a shortened travel schedule, because I also went to CALI. The best I could do with that was get to D.C. in time for the late morning CONELL exhibit hall.

Finally, and perhaps most important, I've only now noticed in the workshop description that the target audience is listed as "academic law library senior managers." This does not describe me, nor many of my most talented peers--future directors and AALL presidents certainly among them. Granted, 2015 is not far in the future and there are some young-ish librarians that fit that description, but if one is really interested in the future of libraries, one should make sure that ALL the librarians who will be making and living it are invited.

...

I'm aware there was also some to-do about where the young law librarians were at the business meeting and member forum during the conference. (I'd been planning to go but didn't, because I ended up working the Gen X / Gen Y Caucus booth. Oh, irony.) I do think it takes a few years to figure out the association and gain a level of interest to support attending the business meeting. I went to part of one my first year (and haven't been back since), and it wasn't really clear to me that I was supposed to be there, to be honest. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in having had that experience.

Meanwhile, what I'd like to know is, where are the older law librarians showing an interest in the younger generation? Yes, quite a number support CONELL, but that's for newer librarians, not necessarily younger ones. Bob Oakley was a marvelous supporter of the Gen X / Gen Y Caucus from its first meeting, and I think of him fondly every year during our meeting. Jim Milles attended last year. This year, board member Chris Graesser attended our meeting (and witnessed our first election), and president Catherine Lemann joined her for our social. I may be missing some stealth boomers, but that's not very many.

Like the business meeting, Caucus meetings and socials are open to all law librarians. The former is now a must on my agenda for next year. I sincerely hope there will be some more generational cross-over in the other direction too.
7 comments
aall, aall2009, genxy, hve, law libraries