Dear Colleagues,
As I’m writing this column, the leaves are changing and falling and the air is turning crisp. It reminds me that the season is quickly changing to winter and makes me ponder all of the changes that law librarians confront in our profession. We experience periodic changes in the way that we do business, legal information formats that we purchase, law library facilities that we work in, and ways that we transmit information and communicate with each other.
Heidi Frostestad Kuehl
As law librarians, though, I’d like to think that we are well prepared to handle the various changes in this technology-driven and ever-changing world of legal research and also changing notions of library services in varying types of law libraries. Law librarians always seem to be intrigued about new technologies and ready to address unexpected changes because we are specialists in creating order, so perhaps in this changing season think about a new change in your organization that you would like to take a leadership role in and contribute to making the transition more seamless as a result of your skills as a law librarian. Our profession and all law librarians, in general, have many invaluable skills and expertise to contribute when confronting changes in our workplace. I must thank Sheri Lewis for helping me coordinate the brown bag session last summer at AALL on “Adding Value to Your Organization: Non-Traditional Roles for Law Librarians.” It was an interesting panel of speakers and opened up a nice discussion of the myriad roles that law librarians take on in their different types of organizations.