by Cheryl L. Niemeier, Bose McKinney & Evans LLP, Indianapolis, IN

 It's October and Fall - my favorite time of the year - is clearly upon us! The leaves have been hard at work changing their colors to beautiful shades of red, gold, and orange! Likewise the PLL Board has been hard at work on a number of change initiatives. The board will be working with Jennifer Brand of Brand Consulting to help us uncover solutions that will shift perceptions, not only internally (within the membership and law library community) but also externally with the fellow influencers in the C-suite and others in the legal industry. She will also help us with drafting a membership survey on the name change initiative that all PLL members will be encouraged to complete so that we can better gauge the pulse of members thoughts and ideas on a name change as well as your input on a new name for PLL. Additionally, the board is working with the AALL Economic Status of Law Librarians Committee to revise the Private Firm/Corporation Libraries job titles and job descriptions for the 2015 AALL Salary Survey going out early next year.

Last but not least, as Chair of PLL, I encourage each of you to consider nominating a PLL member for the 2015 AALL Emerging Leader Award. We have many wonderful and hardworking newer members and no doubt many of them qualify for this wonderful award, but if we don't nominate them they won't have a chance to win. Following are the details and instructions for nominating a deserving PLLer.

The AALL Leadership Development Committee calls for nominations for the 2015 Emerging Leader Award.  The award recognizes newer members in their first 10 years of law library experience who have already made significant contributions to the Association and/or to the profession and have demonstrated the potential for leadership and continuing service.   The Emerging Leader Award is presented to the recipient at the AALL Annual Meeting.  The Award is given in the name of the Association and includes a $500 cash prize. 

A full description of the award, the selection criteria, application information and past recipients are available  on AALLNet.   

Nominations must be received by February 1, 2015, and the selection process will be completed by March 21, 2015. 

If you have any questions, please contact Michele Finerty, chair of the Leadership Development Committee.

Sarah Mauldin, the inaugural winner and nominator of the second winner, will be happy to talk to anyone who hopes to be nominated or would like some pointers on writing a great nominating packet.

As always please feel free to contact me directly to share your thoughts and ideas on the PLL name change initiative or salary survey work in which the board is engaged as well as other issues of concern to PLL.

The Blogosphere and Beyond

 This is Real Law blog recently queried law librarians across the country on a variety of issues they face and compiled the Q & A results in post titled  The State of the Library: Taking the Pulse of Law Librarians. The post lays bare the proof of the seismic changes occurring in our profession and also includes a cool selfie composite of many of our members. You may recognize some of them, as I did!

Will robots soon be a feature in your law library? The Wall Street Journal article  Coming Soon to the Library: Humanoid Robots They Can Speak in 19 Languages and Even Do Tai Chi details the Westport, Connecticut Library's plan to introduce two robots that will assist in providing instruction in programming and robotics.

Did you know that 49% of sources cited by the United States Supreme Court no longer link to the original content or page? That is indeed a sobering statistic! Jean O'Grady's blog post Law Firms Listen Up: Link Rot and Reference Rot Present Serious Risk Management and Associate Training Issues delves into the clear and present risks this presents for law firms and law librarian training.

Do you like to write? Have a burning desire to blog, but don't want to create your own blog? Want to share your ideas, tips, and knowledge with other AALL members? If so you'll be excited to know that AALL recently revamped and moved the AALL Spectrum Blog inside of AALLnet. AALL members who request permission by email to Ashley St. John will be granted rights to post blog articles. Even if you don't wish to contribute posts, it is definitely a blog worth following.