Next year the AALL 2005-2010 Strategic Directions come to an end. AALL members with the Executive’s Board Strategic Directions Committee will craft a new Strategic Directions plan. With our exceptional talent, skills, and professionalism, we have the opportunity to move law librarians and the profession in vital and progressive directions.
1. How do we seize the moment and make it our own?
2. Where do we, law librarians, want to be in the next 3 years?
3. What is required of us to create the world that we envision?
aallstrategize.wordpress.com 
To seize the moment, we need to determine how we can best contribute to our organizations and to the world.
In the next three years, we need to know enough to keep up with new developments and knowledge. We need to be current so that we can serve our organizations well. Learning new skills and knowledge is imperative. AALL needs to rev up the education opportunities, which I see AALL already doing–BRAVA and BRAVO!
To create the world we envision, we need perserverance, collaboration, and cooperation. These are qualities I observe in AALL.
IOW, I am optimistic!
1. I don’t believe there’s a moment to be seized. We have always been in control of our future direction. I’m not sure there is a cohesive “our” involved in the discussion of the future of law librarianship. It’s a broad field and lots of different needs. If we are going to grab anything, it may be that we need to find the common threads that will activate more of us into doing something.
2. Three years should be enough for us to better clarify and explain our role outside of any relationship to a physical library or collection. Many of us will still be working in or with both of those, but we should have taken a step at clarifying that a law librarian is a portable knowledge worker. Information is our fuel, but our value isn’t in just opening the door and ushering people into it. This sort of clarification can act as a foundation for bringing new professionals into law librarianship and taking our own careers into new, less traditional directions.
3. We need to be more realistic, more prepared to change, and flexible that the future may not be one that we all want to participate in. And of course, people like me who are happy to put a comment on a blog but perhaps don’t do committee work or anything else that really contributes to the bottom line will need to get ourselves more involved.
I wonder sometimes if any national associations would exist if we were starting from scratch. Whether it’s virtual or in-person, it seems hard for any national associations to come up with a meaningful platform for their members to all agree to. At the same time, our challenges are perhaps more closely tied to the types of libraries we are in. I wonder if we’d be more likely to see associations based on the Special Interest sections if we were starting today.
I would think that it would be set up as a Meet-Up session.
Supposed AALL didn’t exist, and you and a few friends were forming a brand new association for law librarians? What would it look like?