• IALL 2012
• NELLCO Buyer's Guide

Happy autumn! I hope everyone has settled back into their post-summer routines, whatever they may be. We're busy preparing for the NELLCO Board of Directors meeting, being held at Cornell Law School on Oct. 11-12. The NELLCO Board consists of the 25 library directors from our Full Member libraries. The Board sets the strategy and direction for NELLCO and keeps us on track in the pursuit of our mission. We meet twice a year, in the fall and spring.

Our meeting at Cornell follows on the heels of the IALL 2012 meeting which was held in Toronto in early Oct. The conference theme was Canada: The Cultural Mosaic and International Law, and the conference organizers did an outstanding job drawing knowledgable and compelling speakers. I tweeted my favorite quote of the conference, but repeat it here as it bears repeating! Prof. Kent Roach, University of Toronto, spoke on anti-terrorism. In his opening remarks he told the group, "I agreed to speak immediately upon being invited, as I could not have written my books without law librarians!" 

NELLCO was a first-time exhibitor at the IALL conference, and Theresa McCue and I enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with some of our current members and talk with non-members about  the benefits of International Affiliate membership.

At IALL, I also had the pleasure of putting faces to names for a number of the vendors we work with at NELLCO.  In speaking with Susan Foote, of Trade Law Guide, I learned that many of our members are unaware of the NELLCO Buyer's Guide! So I'm taking this opportunity to raise your awareness.

The Buyer's Guide, a recent initiative of NELLCO as part of our ongoing effort to develop sources of non-dues revenue, is an ongoing service that is hosted for us by a third-party, called Directory Solutions (DS). NELLCO populates the Guide with vendors and service providers that we think may be of interest to our members. Before we could launch the directory DS required that NELLCO provide a minimum of 500 vendors with contact information for them to build on. Theresa and I committee many hours to that project!

Suppliers in the Guide include the expected, like electronic resource publishers and vendors, and the unexpected, like architects, furniture suppliers and librariana. We provide the supplier information to DS and they reach out to them to offer enhanced advertising opportunities in the Guide. The profit from any advertising that DS sells is shared with NELLCO. That revenue goes right back to serve NELLCO's mission.

So I hope you'll use the Buyer's Guide, share it with your colleagues, and most importantly, let us know how we can improve it! 

Yours In Collaboration,

Tracy L. Thompson-Przylucki

Executive Director