The Legal Division is proud to be featuring Marilyn Bromley for its June Profiles in Law Librarianship.
A Little Bit About Marilyn:
Marilyn Bromley is Library Director at The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. and has been active in SLA since joining in 1978. She was president of the Washington D.C. Chapter in 1992-1993, and served twice as chapter treasurer. She was program planner for the Legal Division for the 2007 Denver conference, bringing the Division’s conference to a close with a healthy surplus. She has been the DLEG Awards & Grants chair since 2009, expanding the travel grants program with additional funding and world-wide member outreach. Prior to joining BNA, Marilyn managed a one-person library for five years at ICF Incorporated.
Marilyn is currently Past Chair of the Social Science Division, and a candidate for the SLA Board of Directors.
Marilyn’s professional interests include copyright issues, competitive intelligence, and the use of return-on-investment tools to demonstrate the value of the corporate library. In 2002 she was named a Dialog InfoStar. She has a BA in Religion from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, and a MSLS from The Catholic University of America. She gives back to her local community by serving as a citizen member of the board of the Alexandria Law Library, a public law library in the city of Alexandria.
A Few Questions for Marilyn:
What brought you to the legal information industry?
During my time in library school I interned at the American Bankers Association and first learned about legal resources there – the collection contained both business and legal materials. I began using Lexis and Westlaw in 1983 when I started at BNA, since at that time the Library staff did all the online searching for editors and reporters. I have always enjoyed my job’s unique blend of legal research and legal competitive intelligence responsibilities; there is a natural synergy between the two.
Where do you see our industry in 10 years?
I think that it’s inevitable that more authoritative legal source material will be available on the open web and in easy to use legal research tools, which makes our job as information professionals more important rather than less. We must continue to play a key role in helping our users and clients separate the “wheat from the chaff” while increasing our efforts in training and high quality source selection. We know what is relevant to our organizations and we know how to find it. By filtering out the non-relevant and providing context to the content, we can stay strategically aligned as key players in our organization’s success.
What are you doing to get Future Ready?
As I wrote on the SLA Future Ready blog, the BNA Library now has an iPad which we’re loading with legal apps – apps from our competitors and those produced by BNA as well. We use the iPad to demo these apps to editors and product development staff. The Library is responsible for BNA’s intranet, and this year we will begin to work on a complete redesign. The first step, of course, will be to seek user feedback in multiple ways: surveys, interviews, focus groups, elevator encounters, and more. I’m happy to see the establishment of the new User Experience Caucus; I will definitely add that to my membership.
Do you have any advice for people looking to break into the legal information industry?
The best advice I can give is: join SLA, get involved in your local chapter and especially, get involved in the Legal Division. DLEG members are extraordinarily generous with their time, and are always happy to provide insight and guidance to anyone interested in a legal information job. DLEG members work in so many different legal settings and organizations, in both traditional and non-traditional information jobs, that you are sure to find someone who has excelled in your chosen career path.
