By Sara Witman
Research Librarian
Gordon Feinblatt, LLC

Recharged.

If I had to put how I felt after the LLAM conference on March 20 into one word, it would be “recharged.”

The Full Disclosure conference was successful, not just because there were more than 100 attendees, but because of that invigorating feeling at the end of the day. “Five hour energy” has got nothing on the recent LLAM program.

You would think seeing ten or more presentations in one day might be exhausting, but it was just the opposite.  Apparently, fifteen or twenty minutes is just the right amount of time to learn something new without feeling overwhelmed.

If you didn’t have a chance to attend the conference, or if you’d like to read about presentations you missed, this issue of e-News contains short reviews of most of them.  You’ll see that the presenters (who took a real chance on this one) hit it out of the park.  The keynote speakers – ALA president-elect Maureen Sullivan, AALL president-elect Steve Anderson, and MLA president Lucy Holman – also deftly tackled some pretty heavy topics (eBooks and publishers, anyone?).

The conference committee should be very proud of themselves!  Conference chair Mary Jo Lazun and the rest of the gang — Katherine Baer, Pat Behles, Joanne Colvin, Susan Herrick, Kate Martin, Kirstin Nelson, Jenny Rensler, and Bijal Shah – are all conference planning pros!

It’s a good thing we’re charged up, because the year is certainly not over.  There are two programs in April alone.  On April 11, Scott Meiser will talk about how they are tackling eBooks at Lexis. Scott has promised some exciting news from Lexis on the eBook front, so I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next there.  That program will be held at the University of Maryland Law Library.

Also at the University of Maryland Law Library, Kathy Bayer and Ashley Dahlen from GPO will give an in-depth training session on FDSys on April 19.  If the reaction from the class Kathy and Ashley gave in Annapolis at the Maryland State Law Library in February is any indication, you won’t want to miss this one. And given that GPOAccess is gone for good now, the timing couldn’t be any better!

On the afternoon of May 10, Jane McWilliams, the author of Annapolis, City on the Severn: A History will speak about the research that went into her book and about Annapolis history at the Maryland State Law Library.  Jane is a captivating speaker, so this one should be a lot of fun.

And – yes there’s more – you’ll want to save the date for the Spring Fling, of course!  My personal favorite LLAM event of the year will be held on Friday May 4 at Nick’s Fish House in Baltimore.

I’d also like to thank Joan Bellistri for spearheading LLAM’s testimony in opposition to HB998, a bill that would allow counties to publish their codes online and just notify institutions of the update rather than send a print copy of the code.  The bill had many problems with respect to authentication and permanent public access, and, thanks at least in part to our efforts (we hope!), it was withdrawn earlier this month after an unfavorable report from the House Environmental Committee.