Today's academic librarian is frequently called upon to function as a subject specialist, with or without advanced degrees in other disciplines. One method of monitoring trends within a given field is to study its literature; another is to attend conferences in the discipline. Discipline-specific conference attendance by academic librarians provides opportunities to interact with faculty in their disciplines that result in an increased communication with faculty, improved reference expertise, and more focused collection development. This paper describes the Texas A&M University Libraries' support for conference attendance and examples of the resulting benefits.