CALL Placement and Recruitment Committee 2019-2020 Annual Report

The committee was Chaired by Diana Koppang. The committee members were Julie Pabarja, Debbie Rusin, and Debra Denslaw and Sandy Qiu.

The Placement & Recruitment committee met twice during the 2019/2020 year. The committee pursued a number of initiatives to recruit new members to CALL and develop the Association’s outreach to students and new members. Nineteen jobs were posted to the CALL website and advertised on the CALL Listserv.

Addressing the Committee’s charge of mentoring and outreach to new members, the committee attended the University of Illinois School for Information Sciences Career Fair in November, 2019. They met with students interested in law librarianship, and shared information about CALL and career prospects. For this event, the committee created informational flyers about careers in law librarianship, job search and interview tips, and upcoming CALL events. The committee representatives also directed interested students to join an email list to keep abreast of future events and networking opportunities presented by CALL. The committee also hosted a team to attend the CARPLS Trivia night in October 2019, which provided an opportunity to network with other professionals in the legal community. The Committee Chair participated in a panel discussion at the University of Illinois iSchool in March 2020 to discuss careers in law librarianship with on-campus students, and through the broadcast of the event to virtual attendees as well.

Working with the Mentorship Committee, the committee promoted a Panel Discussion on A Day in the Life of a Law Librarian in February. The panel spotlighted panelists from a variety of law librarianship positions, and provided a discussion of law librarianship careers and roles. To that end the committee also reached out to area library schools to invite library science students to attend. The committee has started a library school contact list that can be used to invite library science students to future events.

The committee created a new page on the CALL website that provides information on careers in law librarianship, and tips and sources for job searches and interviews. This page has been recommended by the AALL Law Librarianship as a Career Guidance Review Special Committee as a model to AALL in furtherance of developing a similar recruitment and career guidance page within aallnet.org.

Committee members also volunteered their time to collaborate on a data gathering project for the AALL Law Librarianship as a Career Guidance Review Special Committee. The AALL Committee was tasked with documenting law librarianship course offerings at iSchools in the U.S. in furtherance of the Special Committee’s charge to assess and develop resources for law librarianship careers at a national level.

KopThe committee will continue to coordinate with Mentorship & Leadership to find new ways to engage with new members to the chapter and profession in 2020/2021.