AALL Competencies of Librarianship

Approved by the Executive Board March 2001, Tab34A

On April 20-24, the Continuing Professional Education Committee held a moderated listserv discussion on the AALL Competencies of Law Librarianship, approved by the AALL Executive Board in March, 2001. The purpose of the discussion was to discover if the Competencies are still relevant or whether modifications are needed.  CPE would like to offer those members who did not have a chance to participate in the listserv discussion another opportunity to comment and share their thoughts on the competencies.

The core competencies and specialized competencies are listed below.  Feel free to comment on them.  In order to post a comment, you will have to create an account and sign in up in the right hand corner.  There are questions provided that will help you get started on thinking about the competencies.

If you would like to review the comments from the listserv discussion, click on the link below to gain access to the archives.

http://share.aallnet.org/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=aall-cpe

Your comments are very valuable to us as we go through this review process of the competencies.  Thank you for taking the time to contribute your input on them.

The American Association of Law Libraries seeks to define the profession of law librarianship and its value to the legal field, today and in the future, by identifying, verifying, and actively promoting competencies of law librarianship. Competencies are the knowledge, skills, abilities, and personal characteristics that help distinguish superior performance. [1] These competencies may be acquired through higher education such as library and information science programs [2], through continuing education, and through experience.

Core Competencies

Core Competencies apply to all law librarians and will be acquired early in one's career.

Specialized Competencies

Specialized Competencies relate to specific areas of practice. Some law librarians may have multiple responsibilities and need to be proficient in more than one of the Specialized Competencies. Other law librarians may specialize in just one area or subset of one area.

Library Management

Reference, Research, and Client Services

 

Information Technology

 

Collection Care and Management

Teaching