CALL Member Activity at the AALL 2015 Conference in Philly

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) holds its 108th Annual Meeting & Conference (Twitter hashtag #AALL15) in Philadelphia, July 18-21, 2015. The theme is “The Power of Connection”. Many CALL members will attend, with several participating as speakers, moderators, or coordinators of educational programs. CALL members will chair or attend meetings of councils, committees, caucuses, and special interest sections (SISes), while others will attend meetings for CALL and AALL officers.

CALL Leaders at AALL

Keith Ann Stiverson (Director of the Library, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law) will be finishing her term as Vice President of AALL and will be take over as AALL President at the close of the annual meeting in Philadelphia.

Julie Pabarja (DLA Piper) will attend AALL Leadership Training as CALL President in July. Vice-President-Elect, Todd Ito (University of Chicago D’Angelo Law Library) will attend as well. Diana Koppang (Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP) will chair the Intellectual Property Caucus for 2015-2016 at the AALL annual meeting. And she is on the Planning Committee for the PLL Summit, a workshop on the first day of the AALL conference, July 18, 2015.

(In 2016, when AALL is in Chicago, CALL members will be even more involved in leading programs and events at AALL. CALL member Pat Sayre-McCoy is on the 2016 Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC). Julie Pabarja is a 2015 Content Area Team Member, and will be a Team Leader on the 2016 AMPC. And Maribel Nash and Megan Butman are serving as AALL Local Arrangements Committee co-chairs.)

AALL 2015 Philly logo

Educational Programs at AALL in Philly

Julie Pabarja will be coordinating a one-hour program, Finding Legal Opportunities Through Forensic Business Development Research, taking place on July 21 at 2:30 p.m.  Julie says that the program will introduce “the critical role law librarians can play in monitoring the unusual business activities that can indicate a company is potentially in need of legal services. ”

Debbie Ginsberg (Educational Technology Librarian, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law) will speak as a member of a panel discussing Technology Skills Law Librarians Need to Thrive – A Group Discussion.  This one-hour program is scheduled for July 19 at 1 p.m.

The panelists will address questions such as the following: “What skills do all librarians need? What skills are not as reasonable to expect from everyone? Which advanced technology skills does the business world value? How do technology skills in law libraries differ from technology skills in other industries? How do libraries manage technology skills training and development?”

Debbie will also team up with Emily Barney (Technology Development & Training Librarian, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law) on another hour-long tech-related program, In the Wake of the Kia Audit: Training Law Students and Lawyers on Legal Technology Skills, on July 20 at 11:30 a.m.

Another CALL member, Kara Young (Digital Services & Emerging Technologies Librarian, Northwestern University School of Law), will coordinate the Cool Tools Café on July 20 at 10 a.m. This deep-dive session is scheduled for 2.5 hours. Participants will learn about practical applications of technology in law library settings.

Pat Sayre-McCoy (University of Chicago D’Angelo Law School) will participate in the AALL OBS-SIS panel discussing Migrating to Open Source: Koha and Kuali OLE in Law Libraries.

Using Succession Planning and Knowledge Transfer to Connect the Generations is a program with several CALL connections. Deborah Rusin (Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP) is one of the speakers and Genevieve (Jenny) Zook, former CALL member now at University of Wisconsin Law Library, will serve as Moderator. Sally Holterhoff (Valparaiso University Law School Library) is Co-Coordinator for the program (along with Susan Catterall of Charlotte School of Law Library).

Sally describes the topic as relevant for attendees in all career stages (from newly-hired to baby boomers), because “planning for succession and transfer of organizational knowledge is important for everyone involved in a workplace shift or generational transition, whether he or she is stepping up to assume a new role or completing a long career.” This one-hour program is scheduled for Monday, July 20 at 10 a.m.

Philly 2015 Buttons PRESENTING

The newly-elected CALL Secretary, Diana Koppang (Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP), is presenting a program on the Best Practices for Client-Ready Deliverables. This one-hour program is scheduled for Monday, July 20 at 2 p.m.

The program description states:

“Promoting the librarian’s value within the corporate or law firm setting cannot stop with management; librarians must seek to deliver their value to the client level. By creating branded, client-ready deliverables, librarians raise their value in the eyes of their employers and in the eyes of the employers’ clients. Don’t just be the wizard behind the curtain – step into the spotlight!”

CALL members are also sharing their knowledge and expertise in other venues. For example, Jill Meyer (Dykema) will speak at the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington, D.C., April 27-29, 2015. Her talk, titled Finding Info When You Can’t Just ‘Google’ It, concerns access to electronic resources, using her firm library as a model for the transition from print to electronic resources.

If you’re interested, register to attend these conferences. Several sources make grants available to help defray the expense of attending. If you can’t attend, hope everyone reports back from their conferences so we can reap the benefits of their participation!