All posts by Emily Barney

September Business Meeting with Steven Schwinn

CALL held its September 2023 Business meeting at Maggiano’s on Wednesday, September 20, 2023.  President Mandy Lee welcomed three new members to the meeting: Andrew Ellison, Kathleen Mance, and Rachel Tomei.  

Meeting Speaker

Vice-President/President Elect Philip Johnson introduced our speaker, Steven D. Schwinn, professor of law at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, where he teaches constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, human rights, civil rights, and legal writing. Continue reading September Business Meeting with Steven Schwinn

President’s Letter

Dear Chicago Association of Law Libraries Members,

At the Chapter Presidents’ Training during the American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting and Conference in Boston this past July, our chapter stood out among chapters for our strategic plan. Not only was our plan well-thought and clearly articulated, the mere fact that we had a strategic plan was an achievement in itself. 

Special thanks to our 2020-21 Strategic Plan Committee for all of the hard work that you put into crafting our plan. It lights the way forward as we embark on the 2023-24 year, and progress toward our centennial in 2046 in order to place CALL in the best possible position, technologically and with respect to our structure. Continue reading President’s Letter

Claire Toomey Durkin & Bill Schwesig – 2023 Lifetime Achievement in Law Librarianship Honorees

The Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Law Librarianship Award is presented annually to a librarian for an outstanding lifetime achievement in law librarianship.

The 2023 Honorees were Claire Toomey Durkin and William “Bill” Schwesig. Continue reading Claire Toomey Durkin & Bill Schwesig – 2023 Lifetime Achievement in Law Librarianship Honorees

Emily Byrne – 2023 Outstanding In-House Publication Honoree

The Outstanding In-House Publication Award is given to an individual or group who created in-house library materials (print or online) that are user and staff oriented, are relevant for law libraries, and are outstanding in quality.

Emily Byrne, Chapman and Cutler LLP

Each year, the library at Chapman and Cutler celebrates National Library Week with daily emails that include short puzzles, a compilation of recommendations in a column called Off-Hours, trivia, book recommendations, prizes and “Did you know…” style research tips. Emily creates the emails and puzzles and each year they get better and better.  Continue reading Emily Byrne – 2023 Outstanding In-House Publication Honoree

Shari Berkowitz Duff and Jessie LeMar – 2023 Agnes and Harvey Reid Honorees

The Agnes and Harvey Reid Award for Outstanding Contribution to Law Librarianship is presented annually to librarians who have provided outstanding service to the chapter during the previous year or for contribution to law librarianship.

This year the honorees are Shari Berkowitz Duff and Jesse LeMar: Continue reading Shari Berkowitz Duff and Jessie LeMar – 2023 Agnes and Harvey Reid Honorees

Bulletin Committee Annual Report 2022-2023

Co-Editors:

  • Emily Barney
  • Lindsey Carpino, through Winter 2023
  • Matt Timko

Members

  • Stacia Stein
  • Shannon Conder
  • Rachel Ford

Committee Charge

The Bulletin Committee produces 4 issues of the CALL Bulletin each year. The Bulletin will contain information concerning the governance of the Association, including summary minutes of Board and business meetings as well as committee reports and other items of interest to the Membership. Issues will be published in Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. Continue reading Bulletin Committee Annual Report 2022-2023

Summer 2023 Letter from the Editors

First of all, I want to say how very thankful we are for Matt Timko and all he has done with the Bulletin since 2018 in his role as editor. Moving forward, Emily Barney will continue on as a “corporate memory” editor to provide tech training and access to the new team and Stacia Stein has stepped up to a new role as co-editor of the Bulletin.

For this issue, we hope you’ll take the time to review the work so many CALL members on committees and in the Executive Board were busy with in the 2022-2023 fiscal year.  Here are a few of the highlights:

AALL 2023

This summer, of course, included the AALL 2023 Annual meeting. In Mandy Lee’s inaugural President’s letter, she highlights how CALL stood out at the AALL 2023 meeting. Eugene Guidice shares his own take on the conference in his grantee report titled “It Was All About AI…..Or Was it?”

CALL Webinars & Business Meeting

If you missed any of the 4 events hosted by Continuing Education 2022-2023, be sure to check their Annual Report where they’ve shared links to the Zoom recordings and some slides from events focused on recent IL legislation, ABA policies,  and specialized legal research strategies.

Thanks to Clare Willis for her recap of the September CALL Business Meeting with Steven Schwinn and his discussion of SCOTUS trends with the administrative state and the implications of recent cases for the separation of powers.

CALL Award Profiles

While the 2023 Honorees were announced back at the May 2023 Business Meeting and shared in the Bulletin, we’re glad to include more details about each person in this issue:

More CALL Work

Of course this is just the tip of the broad ranging work done within CALL in the last year, as you can find in the 16 more articles in the Table of Contents for Issue #268, with more details from the CALL Executive Board and our standing committees.

As we reflect on all the work done in the last year and what’s to come, we’re looking forward to working with Caitlin Archer-Helke, Shannon Conder, and Rachel Ford on the Bulletin  committee.

Seeing so much great work done across all the CALL Committees makes us eager to bring in more examples throughout the year to highlight opportunities for members to connect and learn throughout our organization. With this current team, we are looking for ways to make the Bulletin editing more collaborative.

As I mentioned at the end of our last virtual CALL Business Meeting, we’d also like to help CALL members find what they’re interested here: if you have topics you’d like to learn more about from fellow CALL members, feel free to reach out to Stacia and me with “writing prompts” we can use to find and share the expertise available within our membership.


featured photo is Chicago Skyline Sunset from Promontory Point,
an older summer photo Emily took back in 2016

Diversity and Inclusion Committee Annual Report 2022-2023

Fiscal year 2022-2023 was the first year for CALL’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee (“D&I”). The committee co-chairs were Ariel Scotese and Julie Pabarja, and Jonathan Hawkins, Lucy Kelly, and Juanita Harrell served as members.

The committee met a few times each month to discuss their charge and set goals for the year. Our initial meetings focused on what diversity and inclusion meant to the committee. There were good discussions around this topic and the challenges libraries face when trying to be inclusive.

D&I tried identifying opportunities with other CALL committees and collaborating with them on projects, and we had some success. Continue reading Diversity and Inclusion Committee Annual Report 2022-2023