The current goals of Leadership, Education and Advocacy are relevant today and we foresee them to be in 2013. Moving forward, we need to retool and update. Name at least one objective or initiative for each: Leadership, Education and Advocacy that you would like to see in the new plan. Objectives answer the “how” question: What actions must we, as an Association, take to accomplish our goals?
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I credit the Strategic Directions Committee, and AALL’s leadership, for planning “strategic directions,” and for engaging robust, if controversial, opinion from members like me. Thank you for your initiative and dedication.
I express my view without affiliation. I would, of course, welcome a reply.
I hope that the leadership will consider renewed focus of “leadership, education, and advocacy” on law libraries as consumers, and seize the opportunity to completely rethink AALL’s relationship with legal publishers. Law libraries need enforceable legal protections against unfair business practices among the three companies that control over 90% of the U.S. legal publishing market. Among the worst offenses, legal publishers, like the railroad tycoons of the 19th century, believe that they can – with impunity, if not also complicity – “charge all that the traffic will bear.”
Without federal consumer regulation, nothing will stop practices that imperil the survival of all types of law libraries. Unfair and anti-competitive business practices will continue to undermine not just the range and quality of services law librarians provide, but our commitment to expanding access to sources of the law. The model of “voluntary partnership” and “collaboration” has had a dismal history since President Patrick Kehoe and the AALL Board embraced it in 1996, at the time of the Thomson-West merger. I don’t fault the honorable intentions of Kehoe or the Board. I rather fault the consequences of the AALL Board’s decision to reserve concerns about the merger without objecting to it. These consequences are now plain to see, and warrant a commensurate response – nothing short of a complete overthrow of the “partnership” model. I would propose “neutrality” in our day-to-day relations with the publishers, but vigorous lobbying for federal regulation, starting with FTC oversight.
Again, I appreciate and admire the willingness of the leadership to solicit candid opinion from members like me. I also appreciate the wonderful work that CRIV does. I am hopeful that the Committee and the Board will match its initiative with the courage to make a bold decision about how AALL will pursue consumer advocacy, even if that entails the risk of litigation.