The future of the Law Library Journal continues to concern me. I
personally think LLJ is much more important to me and to our members
than is our Washington Affairs office. I even question whether our
organization can afford to have a Washington Affairs office. The
Washington Affairs office next year (10/95 - 9/96) is budgeted for
$77,625 for the salary and benfits for our full-time assistant to
our Representative, and for her travel, office equipment and supplies.
Included in this amount is a $10,000 honorarium for the Representative
himself (currently Bob Oakley).
I note that the AALL Board views our Washington presence as
critically important. This certainly hasn't been proven to me.
The net annual cost to AALL of the Law Library Journal is
$99,000.
One cost area that troubles me a bit are the honoraria paid
to the editors of the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals ($10,000),
LLJ ($2,500 per issue though apparently LLJ will only be published
twice next year), and our Washington Affairs representative. A very
important part of an academic law librarian's job is service. Thus,
while an honorarium may be in order (considering the amount of work
involved), I think $10,000 (or $2,500) per issue) is on the high
side. A law professor friend of mine was the editor of Journal of
Agricultural Taxation & Law (a quarterly which is now ceased but was
published by Warren Gorham Lamont) and was paid $1,000 per issue.
Clearly, when our organization is struggling financially,
everything should be looked at. Our organization needs to tighten
its belt and look at expenses in all areas. However, LLJ deserves
to survive and under its new editor I look for it to be particularly
relevant and interesting.
Fritz Snyder, Univ. of Montana Law Library
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