American Association of Law Libraries Research Agenda

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) recently made public its Research Agenda 2013-2016:

"AALL's 2013-2016 Strategic Plan envisions that AALL and its members will be the recognized authority in all aspects of legal information. AALL's Research Agenda seeks to make that vision a reality by stimulating a diverse range of scholarship related to and supportive of the profession of law librarianship (...)"

"The Research Agenda is not comprehensive. It will evolve as research projects are completed and conditions warrant. The AALL Research and Publications Committee invites law librarians and other interested researchers to explore the items listed in the Research Agenda, and looks forward to working with them to develop research projects and publicize their results."

The Research Agenda is broken down into a number of broad topic areas:

• AALL's Role in the Profession of Law Librarianship
• Advocacy by Law Librarians
• Law Librarians' Professional Status
• The Library as a Social Institution
• Law Library Management
• Teaching by Law Librarians
• Technology
• Technical Services
• Catalog(ue)s and Metadata Services
• Preservation
• Acquisitions and Collection Services
• Digitization
• Empirical Methods
• Biographies, Local Histories, Publishing Histories
• Case Studies
• Bibliographies, Legislative Histories, Directories

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) does not have an official research agenda but its Committee to Promote Research has compiled a List of Issues Facing Law Librarians Which Require Research in the following areas:

• Planning for the mix of materials that will be required to meet future legal information needs
• Improving access to information and increasing user satisfaction
• Providing high quality service in the face of financial restraint and increasing costs
• Participation in resource sharing programmes
• Maintaining professional standards in the face of conflicting demands and perceptions
• Technological issues that have an impact on the provision of electronic information
• Recruitment and education of new law librarians.