Tag Archives: AALL Annual Meetings

It Was All About AI…..Or Was it? – AALL 2023 Grantee Report

I wish to start this article by thanking the 2022–2023 Grants and Awards Committee for providing me with resources to attend this year’s conference.  I would encourage all CALL members to avail themselves of the opportunity that the Grants and Awards Committee offers each year to help subsidize attendance at the annual AALL conference.  This article aims to share my reflections on some of the sessions I sat in on.

As the title of this article implies, I went into this conference thinking the hot topic that would dominate all the conversations would be generative AI and its impact on our profession.  While it is true that there were many substantive discussions on this topic, as the conference progressed, it became clear to me that another topic became a very dominant undercurrent for me, and that was the idea of the invitation, how we offer it and maybe most importantly, to whom do we offer it. Continue reading It Was All About AI…..Or Was it? – AALL 2023 Grantee Report

Wikidata – a New Tool to Enhance Access to Law Library Collections

This was a fascinating program explaining Wikidata to those who weren’t sure why they should use it. Then the speakers discussed projects they were working on or had recently worked on, summarized below.

Although the program title said “Law Library Catalog” collections, they also discussed IR projects.

Continue reading Wikidata – a New Tool to Enhance Access to Law Library Collections

Grantee Report from CONELL & AALL Annual Meeting 2019

Attending the AALL Annual Meeting and Conference can be a worthwhile – and fun! – experience for law librarians at any career stage. The two of us, as newer law librarians, found this year’s meeting to be especially rewarding. It made us feel good about our profession and the people who have chosen it.

We are both relative newcomers to this career–Sarah at the Illinois Supreme Court Library and Leslie at DuPage County Law Library. We met at a CALL Mentorship and Leadership Development Committee lunch last year.

Six months later, with the help of generous grants from CALL, we headed off to Washington, D.C. for our first AALL Annual Meeting.  We both want to thank CALL for the grants and support which allowed us the opportunity to attend AALL. Continue reading Grantee Report from CONELL & AALL Annual Meeting 2019

Another Successful AALL Lobby Day and Rewarding CALL Participation – July 12, 2019

“…[A] government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”  – Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

Heidi Kuehl at the Committee on Foreign Affairs office in Congress for AALL Lobby Day

Whenever I think I’m quite impossibly too busy to add another conference or professional development item to my “to do” task list, I am pleasantly reminded of how rewarding it is to continue to engage with all of the tremendously talented members of CALL/AALL and dig deeper with expansion of professional experiences.  AALL Lobby Day 2019 in D.C. was a perfect example of an extremely worthy and rewarding event.

Continue reading Another Successful AALL Lobby Day and Rewarding CALL Participation – July 12, 2019

Looking Back at AALL in Austin

The only things I knew about Austin were what most people probably know . . . it’s home to great barbecue, the University of Texas, the state capitol, and the South By Southwest Festival. But I knew there must be so much more to Austin than that, and how can you not love a place where the city’s slogan is “Keep Austin Weird”!? It had always seemed like it would be an interesting place to visit someday, so when I saw the 2017 Annual Conference was being held there, I was excited. Being a first-time member of the Annual Meeting Program Committee made me more determined than ever to attend. Receiving a CALL grant was instrumental in making that possible. Continue reading Looking Back at AALL in Austin

Heading Back to Austin for AALL

In July I had the pleasure of returning to my hometown of Austin for the AALL Annual Meeting, which was made possible by a CALL grant. I attended educational sessions on topics that ranged from directly relevant to my current position in reference to others that were considerably less so (in a good way). Suffice to say, the programming was as spicy as the Tex-Mex, so I thought that I would highlight three sessions in this report and mention a few others that were of particular interest. Continue reading Heading Back to Austin for AALL

Grants and Chapter Awards Committee Annual Report

The 2016-2017 Grants and Chapter Awards Committee was charged with selecting grant recipients based on established criteria for CALL members to attend professional meetings as well as selecting recipients of the chapter awards.

The Committee started the year by reviewing the CALL Grants Application for any ambiguity and modified the language in order to ensure the requirements were clear. Continue reading Grants and Chapter Awards Committee Annual Report

HOLY COW! A Parallel History of Law Librarians and the Chicago Cubs

If there was ever a time to celebrate Chicago’s place in the law library and baseball universes, it was 2016.1 In law libraries, AALL held its 109th Annual Meeting in Chicago, and both the president and a new recipient of the Gallagher Distinguished Service Award hailed from the Windy City. And in baseball, well here’s what a die-hard White Sox fan tweeted at 1:03 a.m. on November 3, 2016: “It happened: @Cubs win World Series. That’s change even this South Sider can believe in. Want to come to the White House before I leave?”

Given my research and writing interests in both law libraries and baseball,2 it’s not surprising that Richard Leiter’s invitation to speak on a topic of law library history during the November 2016 episode of his “Law Librarian Conversations” podcast led to an essay that offered a parallel history of Chicago’s place in the law library profession and the city’s favorite team (at least in 2016), the Chicago Cubs. Since it seemed like Chicago law librarians who did not listen to the podcast might enjoy the essay, I offered the slightly edited version which follows to the editors of the CALL Bulletin.

Before beginning, one caveat. Since I only had about ten minutes of air time on the podcast, it was impossible to do justice to either the Cubs or all those who have contributed to the Chicago law library scene in the past century. So I offered only a few highlights of both, apologizing in advance for all the people and events I was forced to omit. Particularly on the library side since so many of them are professional colleagues and dear personal friends. With that proviso in mind and with apologies to the late, great Harry Caray for stealing his catchphrase,3 here is “HOLY COW! A Parallel History of Law Librarians and the Chicago Cubs.” Continue reading HOLY COW! A Parallel History of Law Librarians and the Chicago Cubs

Behind the Scenes at AALL – Grantee Report

This past meeting I had the privilege of serving on the local arrangements committee as the registration co-chair along with Joe Mitzenmacher. I was excited to help show off the Windy City to out-of-town AALL members from around the country, but I also had no idea about the level of detail that went into planning the annual meeting and I was a little bit nervous because event planning is not my forte. But, with Maribel Nash and Megan Butman leading the helm, we were in excellent hands and I had nothing to be nervous about. This report is intended to give you an idea of the work that goes into participating on a local arrangements committee. And it will hopefully encourage you to get involved in planning an association or chapter event, big or small—especially the upcoming 2017 MAALL meeting in Milwaukee (hint, hint).

Continue reading Behind the Scenes at AALL – Grantee Report