The American Association of Law Libraries

THIS YEAR,THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION of Law Libraries is 57 years old. In light of this fact, if age alone could be used as a criterion for durability and accomplishment, then the AALL holds a seniority among the major professional library associations in this country, second only to that of the American Library Association from which it originally emerged. That the AALL has been durable is the object of this writing, With its accomplishments to date for both law librarianship and lawyers, there is no sign that it is growing old. Sometime prior to the 1906 annual conference of the American Library Association, a small group of men trained chiefly as lawyers and managing the libraries of a variety of political units decided among themselves that their work in a highly specialized research discipline called for the formation of an association which could more effectively represent their problems and the solutions to them than could a general library organization concerned primarily with public library administration. More practically speaking, there was also the matter of a needed compilation similar to the Jones Index to Legal Periodical Literature, which had last been supplemented in 1899. In addition, although there had been law libraries since the time that a collection of books could call itself that, there was nothing in print concerning their organization or management, nor was there any means of regularly exchanging the lessons of personal experience or training. In each instance, the AALL was to stimulate a solution to these problems, first with the start of publication in 1908 of the Index to Legal Periodicals and the Law Library Journal. Within the next few years, a noteworthy amount of writing by various members of the Association was to be done in an attempt to come to terms with the problems of organization and management, Thus, the American Association of Law Libraries was given life in