LLAM has a newly designed membership form this year. It includes a question requesting permission to use photographic images. The need to include this arose out of the use of photographs in newsletters, communications and the website.  Thanks for working with us and filling it out this year.

Almost everyone has renewed or joined this year!  It looks as if our numbers will be around 85 which is consistent with the last few years.  We have some new members, about 10 since last January.  Look for profiles in upcoming newsletter editions.  And several of our newly retired members have opted to keep in touch by taking advantage of our retired member category.

Several of you indicated a willingness to volunteer.  Someone will be contacting you early in the fall to put you to work!  With the prospect of our Legal Research Institute in the spring, there is a need.

The directory will be updated and an e-mail will be sent to the membership list with the password when it is complete.

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

The current chair of LLAM’s Placement Committee is Tonya Baroudi, Law Librarian at the Prince George’s County Law Library. Tonya has served admirably in this capacity for several years.

The Placement Committee serves to communicate career and volunteer opportunities to members by posting announcements to LLAM’s discussion list.   Responsibilities include monitoring national and regional law library association websites and listserves, and state and federal government websites, for appropriate job announcements, then forwarding them to LLAM members in a timely fashion.  Several re-posting requests are made and handled accordingly.   Job listings are free and are also accepted from employment agencies.  Revisions and additions to committee procedures are made as necessary as well as updates to the placement brochure.  Placement brochures are forwarded to local campus job fairs and LLAM’s incoming President.

To date in 2010, 170 jobs have been posted.  See statistics below: