AALL PRESS RELEASE
HEADLINE: AALL to Host Electronic Roundtable on the Future of the Law Firm
Library
CONTACT: Roger H. Parent, Executive Director, 312/939-4764
April 30, 1996. The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) will host
its first-ever electronic roundtable discussion from May 6 through May 24,
1996, on "The Future of the Law Firm Library."
AALL Member Mark Folmsbee (Associate Director and Head of Public Services,
Washburn University School of Law Library, Topeka, Kansas) will manage the
roundtable as a closed list of invited participants. The discussion will
begin with participants responding to questions organized around three
separate themes: 1) the library's place within the law firm, 2) technology as
it relates to the law firm library, and 3) outsourcing or downsizing the
library. For those interested in monitoring the discussion, the coordinated
responses and subsequent comments will be available on AALLNET, the
Association’s World Wide Web site:
http://lawlib.wuacc.edu/aallnet/aallnet.html
At the end of the roundtable, the questions, responses, and comments will be
prepared for publication as an insert in the AALL Newsletter and for wider
distribution. The participants will comprise a diverse group, representing
law librarians, attorneys, vendors, consultants, journalists and will include
representatives from the Association of Independent Information Providers and
the Association of Legal Administrators.
The "Future of the Law Firm Library" roundtable is a project being conducted
by the Task Force on the Value of Law Libraries, a standing committee whose
objective is to demonstrate the essential nature of law libraries and
librarians to the cost effective provision of quality information services in
the for-profit setting. The
Task Force members are Patricia Patterson (Director of Legal Information
Services, Schiff Hardin & Waite, Chicago, Illinois), Chair, Austin Doherty (
Director of the Library, Hogan & Hartson, Washington D.C.), Mark Estes
(Librarian, Holme Roberts & Owen LLC, Denver, Colorado), Alice McKenzie
(Director of Practical Information, Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, San
Francisco, California), Alvin M. Podboy (Director of Libraries, Baker &
Hostetler, Cleveland, Ohio), Kay Moller Todd (Legal Researcher, Paul Hastings
Janofksy & Walker, Atlanta, Georgia), and Geoffrey Trigger (Law Librarian,
Tenzer, Greenblatt, Fallon & Kaplan, New York, New York).
The roundtable, along with other upcoming publications and events, is a
grass-roots effort designed to focus the legal community's attention on the
importance of trained legal information professionals. Task Force member Kay
Moller Todd says, "The roundtable offers an opportunity to bring together the
several constituencies that are concerned with the future of the law firm
library. The electronic format offers several distinct advantages. In
particular, it permits longer, more considered responses than a real-time
panel discussion, facilitates follow-up responses, and, most significantly,
has enabled us to assemble a blue-ribbon panel that would've been difficult
to achieve as a real-time colloquium."
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