I don’t know if all of you know, but LLAM has an Archive.  Well, it’s actually a collection of boxes filled with LLAM stuff and housed in a storeroom at the University of Maryland Law Library. The Archive was previously maintained by Beverly Rubenstein and housed at the Attorney General’s Office.  I recently went through the collection in order to migrate the materials into archival boxes.  I updated the inventory, put like items with like items, and I did do some tossing.

The collection has quite a variety of materials.  There are chronological files that were contributed by each LLAM president.  These make up the bulk of the collection and vary in terms of depth and breadth.  They start back when LLAM was still BLISS (Baltimore Law Information Specialists Society).  Going through these chronological files will be one of the next tasks for the Archives Committee.  The Archives also has materials on LLAM’s incorporation and its Constitution. Then there are all the newsletters and files on special events such as the anniversary celebrations, AALL in Baltimore, County check-lists, and the Legal Research Institutes.

There are some real archival challenges in the collection.  When going though I found floppy discs, VHS, cassette tapes, CD-Roms, photographs, and even a foam crab hat.  We still have some drives that play floppies at the State Law Library, so this will be one of the first things I work on migrating.  I have also set-up a test flickr account that can be used to house all of the digital photographs that have been taken in the recent past.  We will be asking for all of your help in trying to match faces and names in some of the photographs. There will be more information on that later.  I also have a request for all LLAM members: if you have any materials that you think would make a nice addition to the Archives, please contact me at Katherine.baer@mdcourts.gov