Hi CALL Members,

As I write my first President’s letter, the whole world has changed since our last business meeting in February. While we have been sheltering in place for the last few months, some of us may have discovered a few hidden talents we may never know we had. I hope we can all share our newly discovered talents with each other. We have had to rethink how we look at the world and perform route tasks such as buying groceries. With this change has come a call for creativity and collaboration. Future CALL members might look back at this issue and see what it was like to live through an pandemic. Let’s show future CALL members how resilient we are!

I want to join Jessie in thanking the outgoing Executive Board and CALL committees who worked hard to accomplish great things the past year.  I also want to thank the committees for all their great work last year, and I look forward to another great year ahead.

While this year is going to look much different from the past, we will need to remain true to our core value of “striv[ing] to promote the use of law libraries and the effectiveness of librarians.” We may not be able to have in person gatherings in the first quarter or two of the year, but we can remain committed to continuing education, grant opportunities, community service and virtual social gatherings. I would like to thank Eugene Giudice and Carrie Port of the Meetings Committee for hosting virtual happy hours every three weeks. You can see the virtual happy hour schedule here and also on our CALL calendar. These have been enjoyed by our membership and have been a chance to catch up. I look forward to seeing how our membership can continue to be creative in providing opportunities for growth and development.

The CALL Executive Board has started preparing programming for the year and transitioning into their positions. Our CALL committees for the 2020-21 year have been created and can be viewed here. I would like to thank our members for volunteering to serve CALL and our membership especially at this time. We always have opportunities for more volunteers, please consider joining a committee! The Executive Board is committed to continuing to see through the Strategic Plan from 2019-2022 ((see if this can be behind a password.)) We will ensure all of the goals set forth in the strategic plan our carried out though the committee charges.

The CALL Executive Board continues to be committed to diversity and inclusion and will be making sure these principals are folded into our initiatives. We will continue to strive to do better for all of our members.