This is my second report as President of the IALL. It covers the period between the Buenos Aires Conference of 2014 and the final days preceding the Berlin Conference of 2015. Among other matters, I will highlight two important issues for the current state of the IALL: the new Constitution and the International Journal of Legal Information.
The Board
The Board consists of President: Jeroen Vervliet, Peace Palace Library; First Vice President: Ruth Bird, Bodleian Law Library, University of Oxford; Second Vice President: Bård Tuseth, Department of Public and International Law Library, Domus Bibliotheca, Oslo; Secretary: Barbara Garavaglia, University of Michigan Law Library; Treasurer: Xinh Luu, University of Virginia Law Library; Kristina Alayan, Georgetown Law Library; Daniel Boyer, Nahum Gelber Law Library, McGill University, Montreal. Kurt Carroll, Library of Congress, Washington; Lily Echiverri, University of the Philippines; David Gee, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London; Kerem Kahvecioglu, Istanbul Bilgi University; Ivo Vogel, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; Mark Engsberg (ex-officio), MacMillan Law Library, Emory School of Law, Atlanta; Marci Hoffman (ex-officio), University of California, School of Law Library, Berkeley,; Immediate Past President: Petal Kinder, High Court of Australia.
Sadly, Pedro Padilla Rosa of the University of Puerto Rico passed away in 2014 just a few weeks preceding the Annual Course in Buenos Aires. Pedro had already withdrawn from the Board of IALL in 2014 and had retired from his job in San Juan, suffering from health problems. The IALL Board has expressed its grief on several occasions and mourns his untimely death. Pedro was an industrious contributor to the work of the IALL; the Association owes him a great deal for his many contributions and his service. On behalf of the Association, I thank Pedro Padilla Rosa for his unrelenting enthusiasm for IALL, as a conference organizer in 2008, for his activities as a Board Member and as Board Liaison in Barcelona and Buenos Aires.
Board Meetings
The IALL Board met on Saturday 27 September 2014 in Buenos Aires and on Friday 3 October 2014. Annually returning items were discussed as well as strategic issues (the Board's former separate tri-annual Strategy Meetings have been discontinued and are now connected to ordinary meetings). The two chief subjects discussed at the Pre- and Post-Conference-Board-Meetings in Buenos Aires are amendments to the Constitution and the status and future of the International Journal of Legal Information.
The new Constitution
Mainly because of the introduction of new categories of membership and the pending disengagement of memberships and subscriptions to the International Journal of Legal Information, the IALL extensively revised its Constitution in 2015. The new Constitution addresses the size and shape of the IALL Board; the number of Board Members has been diminished and their roles have subsequently changed. In an effort to increase the transparency of IALL elections a new nominating and election procedure of Board Members launched in autumn 2015 – winter 2016.
International Journal of Legal Information
During 2015 the IALL has searched for a new publisher of the International Journal of Legal Information. A formal tender was launched and a handful of potential candidates were approached.
The IALL is pleased that Cambridge University Press (CUP) has been willing to accept the International Journal of Legal Information in its portfolio. The International Journal of Legal Information now appears next to its “sister” journal, BIALL's Legal Information Management and other prestigious journals, such as International and Comparative Quarterly, Cambridge Law Journal and Leiden Journal of International Law. The future of the International Journal of Legal Information has been satisfactorily settled.
The Institutional Membership of the IALL will change into a CUP-subscription in 2017, although individual members will continue to exist as a category. These members will receive the International Journal of Legal Information as a benefit of their membership. International Journal of Legal Information will also be published as an electronic journal for members and subscribers.
Representation
I accepted an invitation to attend the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) annual conference in Philadelphia. It took place in July 2015, where I spoke briefly at the General Business Meeting and at the International Attendees Joint Reception (of AALL, IALL and FCIL-SIS).
On invitation I also attended the German Association of Law Libraries conference in May in Nuremberg; the meeting coincided with the framework of the national libraries days. I addressed the 75–100 members of the German Association of Law Libraries gathered in Nuremberg and promoted the IALL and its Annual Course in Berlin in September 2015; I also visited many publishers' booths at the fair in an effort to raise interest for the Berlin conference.
The annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries was attended by IALL First Vice President, Ruth Bird. I have not been at the Australian Law Librarians' Association. Nor did I come to the IFLA-conference in South Africa; Board member and 2nd Vice President, Bård Tuseth, was IALL's representative at IFLA.
33rd Annual Course of IALL in Buenos Aires
The Buenos Aires conference was prepared by the Local Planning Committee consisting of Gloria Orrego Hoyos and Andrea Saladino (Max Buch Library, University of San Andrés), Mariana del Carril (Supreme Court Library) and Analía Trouvé (Cancilleria). Unfortunately, Analía Trouvé passed away in the summer of 2015, she was already ill as the Annual Course started in 2014, and she was obliged to miss many of the conference eventrs. Analía Trouvé contributed enormously to the planning and development of the Annual Course in Buenos Aires. We celebrate her life and miss her unique sense of humour.
In Buenos Aires, IALL enjoyed a highly interesting Annual Course, titled “Libraries and the Rule of Law”. A variety of Argentine law topics was taught. A clear emphasis was on Human Rights, Women's Rights and the Right of Access to Libraries and Information (and its breach by the Dictatorship between 1976 and 1983). More than 100 delegates participated.
For the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 Annual Course IALL enjoyed the hospitality of the Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina, where Rare Books and Manuscripts were shown. The Biblioteca de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación (Library of the Supreme Court of the Nation) arranged for a visit. Annual Course delegates went on a tour to the Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada (ESMA), the Archivo mational de la Memoria (National Archive of Memory. The Optional Day took place in the countryside during which the International Law issues of Argentina were addressed. Before the actual start of the conference the yearly pre-meeting on Information Literacy was held, for the second time, organized by the Education Committee within the IALL Board.
Regular bursary recipients in 2014 were Michel Fraysse, Elisabeth Schrecklinger and Erika Pino Tirado. Special bursary recipients were Alicia Altamirano, Elena Altomonte, Maria Andrade, Marcela Dottori, Maria Ines Olmedo, and Maria de las Mercedes Sal de Sciaini.
Many exhibitors and sponsors were present at the Buenos Aires conference: Wolters Kluwer-KLI, William S. Hein & Co., Inc., Thomson Reuters (from Buenos Aires), Brill-Martinus Nijhoff, InvestorStateLawGuide, Law Business Research, TradeLawGuide, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, ElDial (from Buenos Aires). Their contributions to the success of the IALL conference is deeply appreciated.
Annual General Meeting (AGM)
The AGM was held on 1 October 2014. Bursary recipients were announced. Regular reporting took place. The most important question and main critical remark from the membership concerned the International Journal of Legal Information and the extent to which the Journal had been freely available to any readership and the strategic view of the Board on future publishing of it (general Open Access or dedicated free access for IALL-Members or through a publisher, in print or electronic).
Current and future locations for IALL's annual course
In 2013, Berlin was selected as the site for the 2015 IALL conference. The Berlin State Library (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) hosted IALL in 2015. The Local Planning Committee consisted of Ivo Vogel, Christian Mathieu, Angela Pohl and Katrin Spitzer. David Gee, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, served as Board Liaison Officer. David Gee and I made a pre-conference-visit to Berlin in February 2015.
The 2016 IALL-conference “Common Law Perspectives in an International Context” is planned for Keble College, Oxford (31 July – 3 August). The Philippines, will host IALL in 2017 in Manila.
