AboveTheLaw: “At AALL’s annual meeting, the research profession searches for its war footing. Librarians don’t come across as folks who storm the Bastille. But when the 118th annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries met in Portland this week under a banner exhorting the group to “Be Bold,” deep thoughts about the Dewey decimal system [ummm, we use LC] gave way to revolutionary resolve. In his keynote address, Roosevelt Weeks, the Fort Bend County library director, reaffirmed the core values of the profession to serve the public and preserve knowledge. And that calling requires librarians to be both “strategic and subversive,” prompting a cathartic release from an assembled body battered by an assault of budget cuts and book bans. Step outside the comfort zone to make sure the money people understand the library’s importance and make sure the customer gets the knowledge they seek at a time where powerful interests keep throwing up roadblocks. It sparked the librarian equivalent of running through a wall after a locker room speech: filing out of the room in an orderly fashion. The attendees needed this sort of a pep talk to heal some cracks in solidarity. Rumbling under the buzz of the vendor hall, some public-side librarians harbored some frustration toward their private-sector counterparts. It’s a professional conference and not Real Housewives so I never had the opportunity to Andy Cohen my way through the dispute, but the folks suffering the brunt of DOGE-fueled haphazard budget cuts and “wokeness” crackdowns orchestrated by grandstanding politicos feel a little abandoned by Biglaw and private school librarians keeping their heads down. If it’s a professional organization, where’s the professional support? It’s a dicey situation though. When Biglaw managing partners cower in fear whenever Trump talks, a Biglaw firm librarian doesn’t necessarily enjoy the freedom to stand up in righteous indignation. That’s how authoritarianism works: atomize communities to divide and conquer. Forcing rifts within the guild is the whole play. It’s also further support for the need to be “strategic and subversive.” Recognize that not everyone can fight the same fight the same way, but those who can’t fight can’t forfeit their obligation to find creative avenues to support their colleagues. Because, as the experience of Biglaw surrender firms shows, the machine can and will come for the private sector soon enough…”