ABTAPL usually meets twice a year.
A day including a visit to a library in a relevant discipline is held in the autumn, and there is a residential conference held in the spring. In recent years visits have been made to West Malvern, Durham, Birmingham, Rome and Cambridge. These occasions are valuable not only for seeing the wide variety of modern library practice in many different institutions, but also for the opportunities of meeting other librarians in the same specializations. Such opportunities are highly regarded by our members, many of whom work in ‘one-person libraries’ and are not otherwise able to widen their professional education.