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Lead, Innovate, Transform: a report from AALL 2024, Chicago

Written by Marilyn Clarke, IALS Librarian |
Cloud Gate public sculpture by British artist, Anish Kapoor, nicknamed ‘The Bean’.

The 117th Annual Meeting & Conference of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) took place in downtown Chicago, Illinois, July 20-23, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, on the banks of the Chicago river, and not far from Lake Michigan.  The theme of the conference was Lead, Innovate, Transform.  It was by far one of the biggest gatherings of law library workers with around 1,800 attendees from academic, law firm, and government law libraries.  AALL has over 3,500 paid members and many special interest sections (SISs) ranging from Government Law Libraries, Library Systems and Resource Discovery to Professional Engagement, Growth, & Advancement and Legal Information Services to the Public.

Close up view of tall buildings in Chicago with the title and date of the conference listed in a box toward the bottom of the picture
The poster for the conference. (credit: AALL)

Chicago – the third largest city in the US - is home to a number of top law schools, the highest ranked being the University of Chicago Law School, ranked 3 in the US, and was established in 1902.

The conference keynote speaker was Cory Doctorow, a science fiction novelist, journalist, and technology activist as well as a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards, and treaties.  Doctorow coined the term "Enshittification" in 2022, to describe the degradation in online platforms and services in order to maximise profits for shareholders.  His talk focused on globalisation and the dominance of big businesses like Amazon, Facebook, and Google, mopping up smaller businesses and taking competition away.  He ended by pointing to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) as one of the first regulatory tools to control the gatekeeping powers of large digital companies.

A session on partnerships to increase access to the profession focused on internship programmes at law libraries as a means to diversify the profession and as a means to allow participants to gain law library experience due the lack of opportunities offered by Library Schools’ curricula that focus on law librarianship and legal research.  One such programme - the Arizona Law Library Fellows Program - is led by the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library, University of Arizona.  Since 2000, it has been training leaders in law librarianship offering Fellows a tuition remission to cover the M.A. in Library & Information Science coursework, as well as a salaried Graduate Assistant positions for 20 hours per week in the Law Library.  Another speaker, from the University of Colorado Law School, spoke of the need to increase the number of people of colour within the law library profession and the power of a diverse presence in the classroom.  They also highlighted the importance of affinity caucuses such as the AALL Black Law Librarians SIS (BLL-SIS) to provide a community of support and opportunities for collaboration.

The Diversity & Inclusion Committee Symposium: Stand Up Fight Back: How Libraries Keep Momentum on Their DEI Work Under Local Restrictions, focused on the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equality (DEI) (read, EDI if UK-based) legislation enacted by states to restrict DEI activities like DEI training, or recruitment adverts with DEI statements.  The Chronicle of Higher Education has been tracking legislation that prohibits higher education institutions’ (HEIs) DEI activities, such as: the establishment of DEI offices and staff, mandatory DEI training, DEI focused recruitment adverts and diversity statements.  Since 2023, it has found that there have been 76 bills introduced to limit or prohibit such activities.  Funding for DEI initiatives has also been removed or repurposed. One speaker highlighted how a new law in Texas prohibits HEIs from running DEI offices and staff or contractors to carry out DEI duties and initiatives.  Also, highlighted were the increased risks around what is termed ‘First Amendment Audits’, where individuals use video cameras in places like public libraries to record what they believe are Constitutional violations.  The American Library Association has written guidance on how address filming and photography in libraries.  In the US, it is now not unusual for libraries and school library board meetings to be confronted by flashmobs and accused of being ‘groomers’.  
Additionally, there were sessions that focused on the growing number of book bans libraries are experiencing which tend to target LGBTQ+, and books with social justice themes.  There are various ‘most banned books’ lists in circulation, with the most frequently banned book listed by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), being “Gender Queer: a memoir” by Maia Kobabe.  The Library of Congress also shared its recent report Book and Media Censorship in Selected Countries which describes the regulation of written materials in relation to the legal frameworks of 22 countries.

The scale of the AALL conference is huge and the organisation and programming were very impressive.  Alongside the conference sessions, there were plenty of opportunities to engage with other library workers, with bucketfuls of genuine hospitality.  Evening events were also on offer, with some sponsored by the large vendors, including Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis, allowing for more informal socialising in some beautiful Chicago locations.  Next year’s event takes place in Portland, Oregon.

Marilyn Clarke

Marilyn Clarke is Librarian at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library.

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