Legal History and Rare Books at AALL

The blog of the 2010 annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries includes a post from Legal History & Rare Books section on its programs and activities at this month’s AALL meeting. Among the panels is Mapping Uncharted Terrains: Introducing Archival Best Practices to the Management of Law School:

Librarians in small and mid-sized law libraries are forced to wear many hats, and one is that of the parent institution's "archivist." Many librarians thrust into this role are not trained as archivists and have a hard time discerning the accepted standards for accessioning, processing, preserving, and providing access to these collections. Often these supposed archives are actually a mixture of documents, print ephemera, photographs, digital media and even works of art. This program will introduce the rudiments of archival best practices, giving practical advice on what is an archival collection, what to keep, and how to describe and provide access to archival materials. It will also provide concrete solutions for managing the non-archival materials often lumped into these institutional collections.