May Business Meeting: Diane Rodriguez (AALL Vice-President)

Our final business meeting of the year was held over Zoom. In addition to our CALL award winners, recognized below, President Lindsey Carpino also acknowledged CALL members that won AALL awards this year:

  • Stacia Stein won the Joseph L. Andrews Legal Literature Award
  • Matt Timko won the AALL/Lexis Nexis Call for Papers Award in the New Member Division
  • Mandy Lee won the Minority Leadership Development Award
  • Clanitra Stewart Nejdl won both the Emerging Leader Award and the AALL Spectrum Article of the Year Award!

DEI Initiatives & Strategic Plan

Lindsey also covered our ongoing work on the CALL Strategic Plan, the implementation of which has been extended to 2023.

Our work on DEI initiatives this year included signing a solidarity statement with Black Lives Matter, signing onto the Asian American Law Librarians Caucus “Statement on Anti-Asian Incidents,” donating to Asian Americans Advancing Justice and the DuSable Museum of African American History, and offering bystander intervention training to CALL members.

Other strategic plan initiatives involve promoting CALL and planning for our 75th anniversary, which will be next year.

Meeting Speaker: Diane Rodriguez, Vice President/President Elect of AALL

Vice President Jamie Sommer introduced our guest speaker, Diane Rodriguez. Ms. Rodriguez is the current Vice President/President Elect of AALL and serves as the Assistant Director of the San Francisco Library.

Jamie Sommer
Jamie Sommer introduces Diane Rodriguez

Ms. Rodriguez opened by stating how crucial AALL chapters are for staying connected, and congratulated our award winners and thanked CALL for being a dynamic and resilient group that has continued to through the pandemic. She singled out our focus on DEI in our updated strategic plan as well as our programs throughout the pandemic and the new Careers in Law Librarianship page on our site.

Diane Rodriguez
Diane Rodriguez (AALL Vice President Elect)

AALL Updates

Ms. Rodriguez then covered recent AALL Board activity—the Board Book from the April board meeting is available here. The Board is working on Nomination Committee appointments, a revised budget and budget guidelines for 2021-22, and updating AALL’s strategic direction and action plan. Further, they’ve approved reduced SIS fees for unemployed members, revised the charge of Minority Development Leadership Award, and approved the dissolution of DET-SIS to merge with LIT-SIS.

AALL is committed to DEI efforts as evidenced in part by the work of the Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Awareness Special Committee. The charge is available here, and a recent report by that committee can be found at page 227 of the April Board Book.

Annual Meeting & Professional Development

The AALL Annual Meeting is coming up from July 19-23, which will be more dynamic than last year, when the meeting had to pivot to a virtual format on the fly. AALL has also worked to create new programming, including a self-paced course on budgeting that has proven to be popular.

The Continuing Professional Education Committee is considering ideas for similar courses. The Management institute had 82 registrants this year and was a success, and less formal coffee chats on various issues have also been successful. You can look at the calendar to see what opportunities are coming up.

AALL Advocacy

Regarding legislative advocacy, Government Relations has prioritized efforts on equitable access to legal information (including improvements to the U.S. Code and PACER), balanced copyright laws, and funding to support the legal information industry. Their page covers these and other efforts in more depth and provides ways to get involved with these efforts.

Membership renewals for 2021-2022 are now open, and Ms. Rodriguez entreated members to consider rejoining, noting a lower cost for unemployed/furloughed members. She pointed out resources including a new career center, monthly and weekly newsletters with opportunities to engage and participate, and the week-daily KnowItAALL newsletter.

Ms. Rodriguez concluded with some updates on other AALL content. An updated State of the Profession Report should be out in June, and the biennial salary survey is slated to release in November. While AALL archives have been held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for 40 years, AALL is working to digitize these materials, which include materials from chapters and SISs. The physical archives will soon move to the Pritzker Legal Research Center at Northwestern.

Q&A

Q: Is AALL planning for a return to in-person annual meetings?
A: AALL is planning on having an in-person meeting in 2022 in Denver. We may have to opt for a hybrid meeting because virtual meetings have really taken off and we can reach more members with a virtual component. It’s nice to be able to increase access and extend a virtual opportunity to everyone.

Committee and Award Announcements

Jamie Sommer thanked the Public Relations Committee for drafting a new social media policy, which will be posted to the site.

Lucy Robbins
Lucy Robbins

Lucy Robbins, Community Service: We encourage donations to Chicago Books to Women in Prison (CBWP). CBWP is a local group that meets every Sunday to get donated resources to incarcerated women. There is an online wish list, and CALL members can donate books or money.

Todd Hillmer, Continuing Education: On May 26 Continuing Education will offer a session, “Scams, Schemes and Cyber Security,” presented by David Williams, Supervisor in the Special Prosecutions Bureau of the Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney’s Office. Look for announcements of other sessions from the committee soon.

Clare Willis, Membership: Membership renewals have begun. If you haven’t renewed yet, look for email from Jamie Sommer sent on May 16. If you have questions about this, reach out to clare.willis@law.northwestern.edu. Note that once the renewal period is over, the listserv will be reconciled with the membership roster. If you don’t renew, you’ll be removed from the listserv.

Jessie LeMar and AALL Raffle
Jessie LeMar spinning the “Wheel-O-Grants”

Jessie LeMar, Grants and Chapter Awards: CALL is raffling 25 grants to attend AALL, and we have a registration from AALL to award as well.

Presentation of Chapter Awards

Congratulations to our 2020-21 CALL award winners!

Matt Timko
Matt Timko – Outstanding In-House Publication Award
Gretchen Van Dam
Gretchen Van Dam – Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Law Librarianship Award
  • Outstanding Lifetime Achievement: Gretchen van Dam
Jean Wenger
Jean Wenger – The Agnes and Harvey Reid Award for Outstanding Contribution to Law Librarianship
  • Agnes and Harvey Reid Award for Outstanding Contribution to Law Librarianship: Jean Wenger and John Klaus (posthumous)
John Klaus sister at May 2021 Business Meeting
John Klaus’ sister Kate, on his behalf – The Agnes and Harvey Reid Award for Outstanding Contribution to Law Librarianship

We were joined by John Klaus’s sister, Kate, who discussed John’s lifelong love of librarianship.