By Mary Jo Lazun, Maryland State Law Library

I hope that everyone had an enjoyable summer and found time for a vacation or at least a bit of time to relax. Although I think most of us thoroughly enjoy our work and are devoted to the profession, finding a bit of time away from email, phone calls, and meetings is well deserved and important.

This year marks the 30^th Birthday of the Law Library Association of Maryland and LLAM has a number of special events scheduled. First, please be sure to mark your calendar for December 14 of our Birthday and Holiday Party.  This will be an extra special event at the National Electronic Museum.  Tonya Baroudi has found us a fabulous venue that will include tours of the museum and a LLAM retrospective. We will formally toast Steve Anderson, incoming AALL president, and Chief Judge Bell, who will be retiring in 2013.

We are starting  our birthday year in style with a with a AALL Presidential Visit on October 16th with Jean Wenger, who has graciously agreed to participate in our first fall program a Slice of Full Disclosure on October 16^th the University of Maryland Carey School of Law.  Although Jean’s plans are still tentative, we expect her to visit local law libraries and chat with LLAM members. On November 15 at University of Baltimore School of Law, Bloomberg BNA will show us the latest additions to BLaw. Maybe the Tax and Accounting model will finally be available J

The LLAM Board and Committee Chairs are going to be very busy this year. The Board decided in August to review and possibly revise the LLAM committee structure and update LLAM’s strategic plan. LLAM may also be having a serious discussion regarding allowing “vendors” to be full LLAM members. The Board decided that if in October AALL membership votes to allow vendors to be full members of AALL than LLAM would formally consider the issue as well.  If the vote is in favor of membership, I envision a series of discussions for members to explore this important issue.