February 2019 CALL Business Meeting

February 2019 Business Meeting with Travis McDade

Our February business meeting for 2019 was held at Maggiano’s and was a joint meeting with the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Illinois chapter.

Our SLA guests included David Bender from the Radiological Society of North America (SLA Illinois VP/President-Elect), Daniel Bostrom from RAILS and Leslie LaPlante from Interpublic Group of Companies. Vani Ungapen, AALL Executive Director, was also in attendance and Bridgette Thoma attended as a new member of CALL.There were a total of 74 registered attendees.

The meeting sponsor was TRG Screen and Laura Weidig  gave an overview of a few of their products, including Research Monitor (which tracks resource usage statistics) and Quest (their online ticket system). She mentioned an upcoming client event in March and invited attendees to contact her for more information.

Featured Speaker:

Travis McDade speaking at February 2019 CALL Business Meeting
Travis McDade

Travis McDade, Curator of Law Rare Books at University of Illinois College of Law

Professor McDade is the country’s foremost expert on crimes against rare books, maps, documents, and other printed cultural heritage resources.

He is the author of three books on the subject; The Book Thief: The True Crimes of Daniel Spiegelman, Thieves of Book Row: New York’s Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Ended it, and Disappearing Ink: The Insider, the FBI, and the Looting of the Kenyon College Library.

An article he wrote for the Oxford University Press blog called “The Difficulty of Insider Book Theft” was featured on The Atlantic’s The Week’s Best Pop Culture Writing and The New Yorker’s Page-Turner. He lectures extensively on the subject of rare book crime, and is an active member of the Mystery Writers of America.  See Professor McDade’s biography for more information.

 “A story of insider theft, opioid addiction, and the Old South”

Professor McDade shared the story of Jennie H. Morrill and her thefts from the libraries at the University of Wisconsin and University of Tennessee libraries. Over the course of her graduate work she stole 250 southern history titles, which were discovered at a local warehouse and recovered.*

He was able to recount many details of the story from the personal correspondence between the thief and the sheriff investigating her, along with contemporary news articles and responses from librarians and faculty mentors who were involved in the story.

Q&A with Author

Q: How did you get the correspondence from Jenny Morrill?

A: He researches Proquest and other resources and looks for book thief materials where he found this new case. The Wisconsin Historical Society also sent him materials.

Committee Updates

Seven CALL members shared updates from their committees:

Community Service

Valerie Kropf thanked everyone for the cash donations that went to benefit the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and the food donations for the Greater Chicago Good Depository. The next volunteer opportunity was with the Greater Chicago Food Depository on Saturday, March 9, 2019 from 1:00 PM to 3:45 PM. 

Nominations & Elections and Bylaws

Todd Ito at February 2019 CALL Business MeetingTodd Ito reminded members that the CALL Executive Board election was active until March 15 and that the vote on the proposed changes to the CALL bylaws was also on the ballot.

Joe Mitzenmacher emphasized the need for that vote on the proposed changes from the Bylaws committee.

Mentorship & Leadership Development

Lindsey Carpino mentioned the mentorship and networking event on Monday February 25 from 12-1pm at the AALL Headquarters, with lunch provided. 

Lyo Louis-Jacques is working on putting together a list of CALL member publications and speaking events from the past year, which has been published under the MDLC page on the CALL website. This project will be on going.

Continuing Education

Thomas Keefe at February 2019 CALL Business MeetingTom Keefe invited members to attend the Roundtable on Engaging Active Learning in the Classroom on February 26th at Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP. Clare Willis and Lisa Winkler presented.
They also hosted a Blockchain Technology webinar on March 2 at Quarles and Brady.

Grants & Chapter Awards

Clare Willis let members know they are eligible for a CALL grant, includes continuing education events near and far. These also do not have to be library specific, so go ahead and apply!

Bulletin

Emily Barney received an ABA Tech Show press pass and wanted to invite  CALL members attending the ABA Tech Show to contribute to articles about the show and the information learned.

  • Find all our coverage of the ABATechShow here!

Photos


*Madison, Wis. Library thefts. The Library Journal Volume 31, September, 1906 p. 684-686 [Google Books digitized copy]