In early April, I had the privilege of attending the American Association of Law Libraries’ Leadership Academy. The most profound and interesting takeaway from the conference was the idea that we can all be leaders, even if we are not the boss.
Tag Archives: AALL
President’s Letter
Dear Colleagues,
Another year for CALL has ended and a new Board will take over soon. It has been a great honor being your President and working with so many of you to ensure that CALL provides value to its members. Thank you for your support this past year!
CALL’s success is due to the dedication and commitment of so many of our members. I would like to thank the Executive Board members (Margaret Schilt, Todd Ito, Diana Koppang, Stephanie Crawford, Robert Martin, and Konya Moss) for their time and dedication to CALL. These 6 amazing people are true leaders and great representatives for CALL. Continue reading President’s Letter
AALL Chapter & SIS Publications
As a co-editor of the CALL Bulletin, I often get e-mails from the Council of Newsletter Editors (CONE) regarding AALL chapter newsletters that have recently become published. After reading the newsletters of other chapters, I began wondering if there was a list of all the chapter publications. I could not find one, so I decided to create one. I wanted to easily share with everyone the great content that our fellow chapters and AALL Special Interest Sections (SISes) are putting out for us to enjoy and learn from. It is really inspiring to share in such a wonderful and thought-provoking community! When you have some time, check out the newsletters and blogs of our peers. Enjoy! Continue reading AALL Chapter & SIS Publications
AALL Honors CALL’s Judith Wright with 2016 Gallagher Award
CALL is thrilled to announce that Judith M. Wright, who directed the D’Angelo Law Library of the University of Chicago for over thirty years, will receive the 2016 Marian Gould Gallagher Distinguished Service Award by the American Association of Law Libraries. Ms. Wright will be recognized at the AALL Annual Meeting in Chicago this summer.
Continue reading AALL Honors CALL’s Judith Wright with 2016 Gallagher Award
AALL Government Relations Office Legislative Advocacy Efforts
In the Winter 2016 issue of the CALL Bulletin, Tom Gaylord provided us with information on AALL and ALA advocacy tools. If you are looking for a way to put those advocacy tools to use, Emily Feltren, the Director of AALL’s Government Relations Office (GRO), gave an online advocacy training session on March 9 which highlighted some of the GRO’s legislative priorities for the remainder of the 114th Congress. While election year politics and the limited time remaining in the current Congress make passing any legislation a tricky matter, Emily focused on the following pending bills which the GRO has identified as particularly worthy of our legislative advocacy efforts.
Emily Feltren Continue reading AALL Government Relations Office Legislative Advocacy Efforts
2015 AALL Business Skills Clinic Attendee Report
There may have been a time, a long time ago, when all librarians had to worry about was “technical competency.” If they had good skills, knew their sources, work would come their way because, well, they were the librarian, the keeper of knowledge and the passkey to the sources of wisdom.
Those days may have existed at one time, but in modern librarianship, technical skills are only one side of the coin. Now, librarians are being asked to look at what they do with the eyes of business professionals. That means additional skills are needed, skills that transcend the library and get to the heart of the modern library. Namely, what does it mean for a library or a librarian to deliver value?
The 2015 AALL Business Skills Clinic is one way for librarians to start to develop the necessary skills that will aid them in thinking not only as a librarian but as a business professional. This year’s Clinic was held in Chicago on October 16 – 17 and I was fortunate enough to be able to attend with a grant from CALL. The intent of this article is to offer for your consideration some of my key takeaways from each session.
Continue reading 2015 AALL Business Skills Clinic Attendee Report
Volunteer Opportunities at AALL Chicago 2016
Do you like to greet visitors and make them feel welcome? Do you like to guide others to local restaurants? Do you like to staff the hospitality booth? Or do you prefer to help out behind the scenes with fellow librarians?
Chicago is the host city for the American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting and Conference in July 2016 and there will be a variety of opportunities for you to help out. We will be sending more specific requests in the new year but, in the meantime, if you want to get on our VOLUNTEERS list now, please send your name to either Carolyn Hersch (chersch@ngelaw.com) or Claire Toomey Durkin (8durkin@jmls.edu).
Advocacy Tools from AALL and ALA
One of the charges of CALL’s Government Relations Committee includes monitoring other associations and their advocacy work and, from time to time, informing CALL’s membership of those activities. In this column, rather than focus on a specific issue, let’s take some time to look at some of the advocacy resources provided by some of these associations, specifically AALL and ALA.
AALL Annual Meeting and Conference 2015: A Newbie’s Journey
Being a novice at something can create at least some degree of apprehension. Someone who, for example, has never piloted a plane would probably be pretty nervous about his or her first takeoff. And it goes without saying that a singer’s first concert ever likely creates at least one or two beads of sweat. In my case, apprehension hit me while preparing to attend my first American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Annual Meeting and Conference.
Continue reading AALL Annual Meeting and Conference 2015: A Newbie’s Journey
A New Librarian Goes to AALL
As someone new to Chicago and new to law librarianship, I was somewhat surprised to find myself, a mere two months into my new job as a reference librarian, jetting back to my home state of Pennsylvania to participate in the 2015 AALL conference.
It would be my very first conference, and I had no idea what to expect—of the programs and workshops or of my fellow librarians. In library school, we had felt the effects of an ongoing tension between researchers and practitioners. We had all been frustrated by endless discussions of the true meaning of information and were tired of climbing the data-knowledge-wisdom pyramid. A classmate had gone to a conference in Vancouver and returned bearing tales of irate practitioners berating researchers over the irresponsibility of small sample sizes. I wondered if those debates were what awaited me in Philadelphia.