I had a great experience at the American Association of Law Librarians 2023 Conference. Since this was my first time attending, I was able to start my experience off at one of the dine-arounds that were put together by the CONELL committee on Friday night. One or two more experienced law librarians took a group of five to six CONELL attendees to a dinner which gave us an opportunity to start the conference off by networking on a much smaller scale. Some of the people I met at this dine-around I spoke to frequently throughout the conference and I was thankful I’d been able to start my trip off with such great connections that benefited me for the days to come.
I didn’t stay out at the dine-around too late as we had an early day ahead of us for the first official day of the conference at CONELL. This was a seven hour event for new law librarians who were attending the conference. We started CONELL with a breakfast where I walked into a large room with a plate of food and had to decide whether I should sit by myself or introduce myself to a new group of people and sit with them. Since this was the beginning of the conference, I was feeling more outgoing but luckily I spotted a coworker who I knew to sit with that had already done the hardest part and sat at a table with two strangers. I chose to sit with her as it was the best of both worlds.
After breakfast, we heard from a panel of leaders within the law librarian field from a variety of different sectors, including academic, government and private law librarianship. After that, we broke up into two groups and went to a speed-networking event before a roundtable discussion with another veteran of the law library field. As an introvert, the speed-networking was overwhelming to say the least. I haven’t spoken to that many people in such a short period of time in a while. This meant that when I got to the round-table event, I was “networked” out and wish I’d had a panel or something to sit in to recharge my social battery. With that being said, it was a great experience to speak to a wide variety of different people and even met a few people I was able to pass my business card along to. We then had more networking while we sat to eat lunch. I could definitely tell the room full of librarians were all feeling burnt out after so much networking. CONELL was concluded with a duck tour where we were able to have an opportunity to be tourists as we were driven around in a DUCKW boat and given a history lesson by a retired local historian who calls himself Captain Run a Muck.
We then had a break for a few hours before the HOST program kick off event. This was a first for the AALL conference. It involved matching new attendees to the conference with a host who was a more experienced attendee, and they would be there to answer any questions we may have. Even if I didn’t speak to my host again after this session, I did meet a few other new people there that I saw throughout the conference so once again, I’m happy I went! We then walked over to the exhibit hall together where the conference officially kicked off. I only spent about an hour here as I was exhausted from all the “people-ing” I had participated in thus far.
The next day, Sunday, was started bright and early with a breakfast social hosted by PEGA-SIS. It was nice to see some familiar and new faces at this event. However, I couldn’t stay long as I had to make my way to the convention center in order to find a seat for the opening keynote speaker, Charles Vogl. He spoke to us all about making connections which I found very relevant especially at a conference for a group of librarians who are stereotypically more introverted than most other professions. There are quite a few things I learned from this presentation that I look forward to implementing both at work and in my personal life. Sunday was packed full of educational sessions I was interested in and looking forward to. These included ‘Which World? Using Far-Fetched Scenarios to Map out the Future of Librarianship’, a roundtable hosted by LISP-SIS, GLL-SIS and SR-SIS about brave spaces and what this means for the law library, ‘Pronouns, Best Practices and Gender Inclusivity in the Law Library’, and it concluded with a symposium on diversity and inclusion. One of my favorite things about the AALL conference was how many educational opportunities they had on diversity, equity, and inclusion in this profession.
Monday I took a bit of a break from the conference for lunch after attending a few sessions in order to do a Witch Trial Trail walk. Since I couldn’t make it to Salem I was excited to find AALL promoted this tour to us in their app. It was a great history lesson and I enjoyed learning a little bit of history unique to this area that I’ve never been to. Unfortunately, the educational offerings on Monday weren’t exactly what I was looking for as a government law librarian. If I had one critique of the conference this year it would be that I wish the education sessions were spaced out differently. I felt there were quite a few on DEI topics that took place all at once, which forced me to choose between a few education sessions one hour and have nothing to go to the next. However, I understand that it’s all dependent on when the speakers can attend so I completely understand. I ended Monday learning a little bit more about generative AI though this was a highly attended session it unfortunately wasn’t entirely relevant to me as the speakers did only talk about what this can do for both the private and academic law librarians. I finished the day with a quick walk through the exhibit hall to admire the posters.
Tuesday’s educational sessions were the two I was most looking forward to. After leaving Wednesday unsatisfied about how generative AI might impact the government law librarian profession, I was even more looking forward to Tuesday morning’s session on the impact of generative AI for access to justice. While this didn’t exactly answer the questions I’d hoped it would when I went into the session, it was still great to hear the speakers speak about how they were utilizing AI to help those in need. The conference finished with a panel on how we can improve legal information services to those who are incarcerated. I was most looking forward to this session and it didn’t disappoint. I learned so much about how we can potentially start assisting incarcerated patrons which is something I’ve wanted to do since I learned we occasionally receive mail from incarcerated people. After this, I became well acquainted with the Boston airport as our flight was delayed five hours and finally made it back to Houston at 2:00 am.
Despite any aforementioned drawbacks, I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to attend this conference. It truly inspired me to continue making connections within AALL and the law library profession.