Reflections on AALL 2025

A new blog deserves a timely first post, so here are some musings on my fist time attending the American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting.

For those outside law librarianship, this conference was fairly typical of others that I’ve attended (regional association and consortial meetings, and the national Association for College and Research Libraries – a division of the American Library Association). There was an exhibitor hall featuring vendors who make software and publish books and journals that libraries subscribe to, a keynote speech, round-tables for informal discussion about specific topics, business meetings of various chapters and committees, and presentations on current topics from folks who work in different types of libraries (academic, government, law firm) or in different areas of librarianship (public service, teaching, technology, etc).

My first impression on arriving at the conference center was that the event had been placed into a space that was much too large for it, but as more people arrived and the exhibitor hall opened up it started to fill in. I arrived in the afternoon on Saturday to attend the new member welcome. I’m not exactly new to AALL but since this was my first time attending the conference I figured it was a good idea. It was a nice gesture but not as helpful as I’d hoped it would be.

The opening reception was interesting – it was held in the exhibitor hall, and they offered a cash bar and free food stations. This conference had less overall food than in years past, I heard a few people complain. My only criticism was they didn’t have enough dietary diversity (hardly any gluten-free or dairy-free choices for most of the snack stations). However, they were serving local beer and wine at the bars, a nice touch.

I was planning to head back to my hotel after the reception (at this point I’d been up for 24 hours). My hotel was about a mile away from the conference center and I wanted to walk, but not necessarily by myself, so I asked a group of 3 women who were leaving at the same time if they were going back over “the bridge”. They were, but it was a different bridge. Too embarrassed to say anything, I stuck with them on the walk to their dinner spot. Turns out they all work for law firms, and I was fascinated to learn about that side of the profession. Unlike academic or government librarians, who are trained to give anything that smells like legal advice (or could be construed that way) a wide birth, law-firm librarians are tasked with research assignments that take them right up to the brink of practicing law, and, one might argue, over that brink – depending on how much the lawyers trust their librarian’s findings and base their actions on them. It’s too much riskiness and stress for me, but the rewards (primarily monetary) are there for the type of person who thrives under pressure and likes being part of real-world legal action.

The first full day of the conference was Sunday, starting with the keynote address from Mr. Roosevelt Weeks, Director of the Fort Bend County Libraries, Texas. His talk centered on the conference theme, Be Bold, emphasized not giving up or getting complacent during tough times (as we know libraries of all types and in most sectors are now facing). His enthusiasm, love of our profession, practical reminders, and encouragement to keep working to our strengths for the benefit of all people was a refreshing message.

The other sessions I attended on this day had similar themes around marketing library collections and services, emphasizing value using specific examples (i.e. we bought X database to support our new degree in Y subject; without the library spending money on A you’re not going to have access to B which you need to run your new initiative). In between sessions I spent time roaming the vendor floor, checking out the selection of freebies and entering as many bingo-card giveaways, raffles, and scavenger hunts as I could find. Top level prizes included a laptop and a $1,000 gift card – worth the effort to collect stamps.

On Monday I attended a tour of Lewis & Clark’s Boley Law Library, located at the law school campus in the southern part of the city. Unassuming and almost un-findable due to clever architecture and abundant foliage, the inside of the main collection and reading room is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Apparently the building was constructed from the inside out so that only a minimum number of trees had to be removed from the site. From the back of the reading room you look out floor-to-ceiling windows directly into the forest, where woodpeckers, songbirds, and deer regularly make appearances.

Our very well-prepared tour guide, Meredith Kostek, gave us many interesting facts about the history of the law library in Portland (before and since its affiliation with Lewis & Clark) while showing us around all the beautiful and not-so-beautiful parts of their building. Like any library that evolves with time and trends, the space has been reconfigured to accommodate new ways of working, new services, and variable collections. The lobby and public areas have beautiful cantilevered wooden ceilings, the rare book room was more formal but comfortable, and the study rooms were functional and familiar. I appreciated that Meredith took us to their version of “the scary basement” – a hidden mezzanine that encompasses building innards (HVAC / plumbing), compact shelving for special collections and archives, superseded materials, and the all-important jigsaw puzzle collection.

Like Vermont Law School, Lewis & Clark has strong environmental and animal law programs, which explains their mascot, Bacon the pig. Bacon was commissioned by the law school and sits in the pass-through between the original library building and a later addition that houses an open reading/events space, faculty offices for the animal law program, and the study rooms. Students can pat Bacon on their way by for a bit of extra luck and support, and they often leave tributes to him in the form of other swine swag, treats, thank-you notes, and poetry. It’s a great way to make the library feel more personal and friendly. (I’m thinking we should commission a bronze of our own library mascot, Paige Turner, the VLGS Swan.)

We were overdue for lunch so I suggested to a couple folks on the tour that we grab a quick bite before heading back to the conference center. By this point I’d realized that most of the value and interest for the AALL conference was in making and strengthening personal connections. And I must say everyone I met was so kind and willing to engage with me, whether we were standing in line to speak with a vendor, sharing a ride, leaving the venue for the day, or asking questions after a session. It was also valuable to have engaged conversations with vendors. As someone who works with more than 30 of these companies and organizations, having a personal rapport with reps and seeing them in person, getting a live demo of their latest innovations, and having the opportunity to ask questions about new products was so helpful and gave me a lot of good information to bring back to our team.

The sessions themselves seemed to be under-attended and of average quality, which was a bit disappointing. I’ve been accustomed to conferences where people were showing off their groundbreaking work, innovative ways they’ve been using tools, and constructive suggestions for tackling common problems. The Electronic Resources & Libraries annual program, for example, has been so helpful over the past two years as I’ve settled in to e-resources management, and has informed many of my recent projects and goals. I was hoping to get this type of inspiration at AALL, too, but I came away from most of the sessions thinking that we’re already doing what the presenters were suggesting, and in a few cases, that we were more up-to-date with best practices or newer tools.

Monday evening I had signed up for a reception with the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section. I wasn’t sure if this would be a structured meetup with folks getting introduced to others that serve on the same committees, but it was more of a casual free-for-all – with a great taco bar! At this event I finally connected with academic librarians; somehow I had been meeting mostly corporate and government folks at other events. It was great to be back among “my people” and I made one especially memorable connection. Eli Edwards is a reference librarian at UCLA Law Library and it was engaging to talk to her about the similarities and differences in our work, and the scale of our libraries and schools (UCLA is much larger). One program she runs, that I would love to see at our library, is a more formal training program and matchmaking service for research assistants. The students and the faculty they work with could get more out of the experience with a bit more support, but it’s also a lot to coordinate. (Understanding just how this program works would be a great example of a session to offer at AALL!)

Tuesday was the final half-day of the conference. I attended a session on working as a law librarian without a J.D. degree, and the presenters were very forthright about how they were hired, what skills they had when they first started and what they lacked, and offered tips for expanding one’s knowledge and keeping up with the profession without the pressure of getting a law degree. I appreciated their honesty and practicality.

Since I had the whole afternoon before my evening flight, I invited Eli to join me for some shopping downtown, and thankfully she was free. Vermont doesn’t have much in the way of mid or high-end retail or specialty shops, so it’s a treat to visit a city with access to products I’d usually have to buy online. Before meeting up with Eli, I went to MUJI, which, if you’re unfamiliar, I liken to “Japanese IKEA”. It’s not as huge and overwhelming as IKEA, but it has a wide selection of products, from home, bath, and kitchen, to casual clothing, travel, stationery, and Japanese snacks, even a little café with a robot barista. From here, I walked to Oblation Papers, a specialty letterpress and fountain pen shop. After perusing their hand-printed cards and testing out some $400+ fountain pens, Eli and I visited another stationery shop around the corner, Ecru Paper, and then stopped for a coffee and gelato break to get off our feet. From there we wandered a bit further and decided to have dinner at Zab Pinto, a casual Thai place that served amazing duck dishes. It was such a treat to hit it off with a new friend and spend more than 10 minutes chatting about our work and our overlapping personal interests.

After dinner I beat feet back to my hotel where I repacked all my shopping and conference swag into my luggage, now at 110% capacity, and headed to the MAX station to catch the train to the airport. Portland has very good public transpiration and the airport is beautiful – it reminds me of an L.L. Bean store, in a good way.

I had a great time in Portland. Overall, I would say that AALL was worthwhile, but I wouldn’t go every year. The cost is high compared with other conferences of this scale ($900 per attendee, plus additional fees for certain workshops, luncheons, and add-on events). And, there isn’t as much of a long-tail value for information-sharing: many of the presentations were not recorded, even though they overlapped with other events like the tours of Lewis & Clark, Powell’s Books, and the court library. (Regional conferences are typically a fraction of the cost and offer much more in terms of idea-sharing.) We send one person per year from our library to keep up with the latest developments in law librarianship and new products. I made a lot of great connections, and I’ll be happy to go again when it’s my turn, but I’ll wait until the conference is back in a city I want to visit, to maximize the personal benefit.