The CALL Bulletin Committee had a very productive year. Our wonderful CALL volunteer committee members successfully moved the Bulletin to a new WordPress format and published four issues in a timely fashion. We found a Bulletin Historian. And we won the 2015 AALL Excellence in Marketing Award for Best Newsletter!
Bulletin Committee 2014-2015
Co-editors/chairs: Kevin McClure & Lyonette Louis-Jacques (Fall 2014 -Winter 2015 issue)
Co-editors/chairs: Lyonette Louis-Jacques, Lindsey Carpino, & Scott Vanderlin (Spring 2015-Summer 2015 issue)
Members: Emily Barney, Kara Dunn, Debbie Ginsberg, Michael Verderame
First WordPress Publication of the Bulletin
We published the CALL Bulletin in the new WordPress format for the first time with the Fall 2014 (No. 233, October 2014) issue. We also launched the new Bulletin splash page at the same time:
http://bulletin.chicagolawlib.org
Based on the fantastic feedback from CALL members, the change has been a great success.
Committee Activities & Achievements
Kevin McClure, from the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law Library, and Lyonette (Lyo) Louis-Jacques, from the D’Angelo Law Library at the University of Chicago Law School, served as co-chairs of the Bulletin Committee until Kevin left Chicago-Kent in November 2014. They were co-editors for the Fall 2014 and Winter 2015 issues. Lindsey Carpino, Kara Dunn, Debbie Ginsberg, and Michael Verderame served on the Bulletin Committee. Emily Barney and Scott Vanderlin came on board as Bulletin Committee members with the Winter 2015 issue.
After Kevin left, the CALL Executive Board approved Lindsey Carpino (Sidley Austin LLP) and Scott Vanderlin (Chicago-Kent) as co-editors with Lyo. This year is the first time that the Bulletin Committee has had three co-chairs/editors. Lyo and Scott are Content editors; Lindsey is Production/Layout editor. Clare Willis served as CALL Executive Board liaison to the Bulletin Committee.
Lindsey Carpino, our library school student columnist, graduated, and started a new column from a private law firm librarian perspective. She also investigated archiving the Bulletin with AALL (University of Illinois) and Northern Illinois University (NIU). Lindsey also successfully produced spiffy PDF, paginated version of the WordPress-formatted CALL Bulletin, so that it can be easily archived, checked in, and read by CALL members who prefer that format.
Kara Dunn, also a library school student, continued her new CALL member interview column and also was lead curator of the very well-received Spring 2015 special issue on CALL library artwork. All Bulletin Committee members contributed an article to the Winter 2015 issue, and got experience blogging using WordPress.
New Bulletin Historian
CALL was founded in 1947. A special issue of the CALL Bulletin was published in 1997 in celebration of its 50th anniversary. In anticipation of CALL’s 70th anniversary in 2017, the 75th anniversary in 2022, and pursuing publication of a full run of the CALL Bulletin in HeinOnline, the Committee chairs decided a Bulletin historian was needed. The CALL Board was notified about the Bulletin historian role.
In April 2015, Annie Mentkowski agreed to become the first CALL Bulletin Historian. Annie is on the CALL Archives Committee and works at Northern Illinois where CALL’s archives are currently located.
“Moving to WordPress” Meeting
Bulletin co-editors Kevin and Lyo met with Emily and Debbie (wearing their CALL PR Committee hats) (with Clare Willis attending ex officio) at Chicago-Kent on July 24, 2014 to discuss creating a blog version of the CALL Bulletin that uses WordPress. The blog format would enable us to make the articles more discoverable and accessible (an objective announced at a meeting last year) by making “links to individual CALL Bulletin articles in social media communications.”
Without the blog format, one can only link to the PDF of the entire issue of the Bulletin. We discussed stakeholders, costs, resources available, requirements, and benefits and risks. Debbie’s notes on the meeting are available on Google Docs: Moving to WordPress.
The three committee co-chairs, Lyo, Lindsey, Scott, and Clare later met on March 6, 2015 to review Bulletin editorial and production procedures with the new publishing format via WordPress.
Leadership Training Meeting
Co-editors, Lyo and Kevin, attended the CALL Leadership Training on August 7, 2014. During the meeting, CALL President, Margaret Schilt, and CALL Vice President, Julie Pabarja, had great suggestions for the CALL Bulletin which the Bulletin Committee is seeking to implement.
Board Meetings & Communications
Lyo and Kevin attended the CALL Executive Board meeting on September 9, 2014 and discussed their plans for the coming year, including the feasibility of a “revolution” / format change for the Bulletin. They also discussed whether or not contracting for layout would be needed after a change to blog publication of the Bulletin. Besides the cost savings to CALL of not paying for layout, the new format would give us other benefits and opportunities. They also discussed whether there was a need for continuing the role of the Bulletin Business Manager.
As a result of our successful transition to a new format, the CALL Executive Board decided not to renew the Bulletin layout contract. They also decided that the Bulletin no longer needed a Business Manager.
Subsequently, the Board also issued a policy supporting the continued need to produce a PDF of the Bulletin.
The Board also asked the chairs to review the Bulletin Committee charge in the CALL Handbook . In response, Lyo, Lindsey, and Scott, along with Clare Willis, met on March 6, 2015 to discuss the CALL Handbook Bulletin charge language and submitted suggested changes via Clare to the Board.
The editors consulted the Board about a CALL member request that personal information be removed from an old CALL Bulletin issue published online. We accommodated the member’s request. Protection of privacy will be something for the Bulletin Committee to consider in the future as more of our issues are digitized and archived online.
Collaboration with the CALL PR Committee
Throughout the year, the CALL Bulletin Committee collaborated with the CALL Public Relations (PR) Committee. Debbie Ginsberg and Emily Barney, members of both committees, helped move the CALL Bulletin to the WordPress format. Emily trained Bulletin Committee members on the use of WordPress. Emily also created an editorial manual for the Bulletin.
Debbie wrote a feature article, What Happened Here? How CALL Bulletin Moved from PDF to WordPress, about our changed format, that was published in the Spring 2015 issue of the CALL Bulletin. PR Committee members publicized the CALL Bulletin and its articles at AALL, at CALL Business Meetings, and in social media.
At the February 6, 2015 meeting of the PR Committee, Debbie mentioned that she’d nominated the CALL Bulletin for the AALL Excellence in Marketing Award for Best Newsletter. And in April, we found out we’d won the Award!
Bulletin Editing & Publication
The Committee published four issues of the Bulletin in 2014-2015: Fall 2014, Winter 2015, Spring 2015, and Summer 2015.
The Fall 2014 issue, No. 233, was published on October 9, 2014. This was the first issue published in the new WordPress format. The issue included the annual reports of CALL committees, summaries of CALL Executive Board meeting minutes, the September 2014 CALL Business Meeting Round-Up, and a report on CALL Leadership Training Day by Claire Gaynor Willis.
Also featured were Scott Vanderlin’s article on his award-winning “CALL-er I.D.” display, two CALL grantee reports, and a report on CONELL at the 2014 AALL annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas.
The issue also contained an interview with new CALL member, Clanitra Stewart, a history of the CALL Corporate Memory Committee, and great news about the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) being signed into law in Illinois.
The Winter 2015 issue, No. 234, was published on December 19, 2014, and featured articles on empirical legal studies, link rot, Facebook algorithms, text-to-speech/speech-to-text, privacy, and FOIA. The issue also reproduced CALL’s Resolution of Appreciation to the Illinois Library Association (ILA) for helping pass UELMA in Illinois. It included reports on several meetings that took place in Chicago – the MAALL 2014 “Fast Forward” meeting and the American Society of International Law (ASIL) Midyear Meeting and Research Forum.
The Spring 2015 issue, No. 235, was published on March 26, 2015. It is the first issue with three co-editors: Lyo, Scott, and Lindsey. In addition to the usual array of articles containing news about our members (including what CALL-ers will be doing at the AALL annual meeting in Philadelphia), technology tips (Microsoft Lync, LinkedIn), and event announcements, this issue of the Bulletin featured a themed section edited by Kara Dunn and Scott Vanderlin highlighting artwork in CALL member libraries.
This issue announced the 2015-2016 election results, included an interview with new CALL member Miriam Heard, reported on the CALL Bylaws change to include “gender identity”, and detailed the CALL Bulletin’s move to the WordPress format.
The Summer 2015 issue, No. 236, was published on July 13, 2015. This issue included Margaret Schilt’s last President’s Letter, Lindsey Carpino’s article on legal research apps, summaries of CALL committee annual reports, and CALL grantee reports – Jona Whipple’s on Law Repositories: Shaping the Future (the first such conference) and Kara Young’s on the 2015 ABA TECHSHOW.
Clare Willis summarized the CALL Executive Board’s March, April, and May 2015 meeting minutes and did a wonderful roundup of the May 2015 Business Meeting, with a full write-up on speaker, AALL President Holly Riccio, and CALL award winners.
Sam Wertime reported on CALL Institute Day which featured Hit Your Stride’s Steve Hughes on ways to become a more effective and dynamic communicator, and panelists on career advancement.
Sheri Lewis wrote about the D’Angelo Law Library’s Judith M. Wright Fellowship program for new law librarians. 2015 Wright Fellow, Kara Dunn, contributed an article related to her project on best practices for library research guides.
And Julie Pabarja wrote a timely article on CALL members’ activities at the AALL annual meeting this summer and CALL-ers in leadership positions in AALL and SLA generally.