CALL held its second Business Meeting of the year at Tortoise Club, 350 N. State St. on November 20, 2014.  President Margaret Schilt called the meeting to order at noon and praised the Meetings Committee for finding a great new venue.  Margaret then welcomed several new members.

Meeting Sponsor

Vice-President/President-Elect Julie Pabarja then introduced and thanked our meeting sponsor, Boomberg BNA.  Kevin Skrzysowski, Regional Director, Bloomberg BNA, thanked CALL and introduced his colleagues present.  He noted some new material on BloombergLaw including the Privacy Center and a new bankruptcy treatise that is updated daily.

He also pointed out some improvements to existing content including broader docket coverage and data analytics tools to visualize data from across Bloomberg’s content.

Meeting Speaker: Professor Lori Andrews

Julie then introduced the meeting speaker, Lori Andrews, Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.  Julie said that Prof. Andrews was described by the ABA Journal as “a lawyer with a literary bent who has the scientific chops to rival any CSI investigator.”

Speaker Background

Professor Andrews teaches a law school class on the Law of Social Networks and is the author of the book I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy (Simon and Schuster, 2013). She has written 13 other books, including three forensic mystery novels and a biography, Black Power, White Blood: The Life and Times of Johnny Spain, which explores a criminal case involving the Black Panthers.

Her pro bono litigation involving emerging technologies caused the National Law Journal to list her as one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.” She received her BA summa cum laude from Yale College and her JD from Yale Law School.

Online Information

Prof. Andrews spoke on “Privacy’s Dying Gasp and How Librarians Can Resuscitate It.”  She started the talk by sharing her life-long appreciation for libraries, including the law library at Yale.  She pointed out that online sources allow her to research things that could not have been found in a bricks and mortar library.

But even though there is more information online, she added, it comes at the cost of the tracking and aggregating of private information online.  Prof. Andrews gave several examples of how information posted online can be used against the person who shared it.

In one instance, the consultancy firm Deloitte encouraged a group of life insurers to look to an applicant’s social network pages, especially for evidence of such personal characteristics as being an avid reader, eating fast food, commuting to work, and having friends who are skydivers, to determine if the applicant is a bad underwriting risk. When asked why an avid reader might be a risk, she speculated that the insurer might believe that avid readers have more sedentary lifestyles.

Prof. Andrews explained that the information collected online goes to advertising and, while she believed that most people would not mind a coupon, other advertisements can be more intrusive, especially those that use someone’s name and/or likeness.  For example, two work colleagues could both “like” drugstore.com on Facebook and that affinity could produce a Facebook advertisement that tells their mutual Facebook friends that the two “like” a brand of personal lubricant.

Right to a Fair Trial

Prof. Andrews explained how social media can infringe on the right to a fair trial.  In one example, she noted that criminal penalties may be enhanced if there is evidence that a defendant wore gang colors in a picture on social media.  She pointed out that the Los Angeles Police Department considers plaid and black, otherwise benign patterns or colors, to be gang colors.

She also noted that jurors find it difficult not to Google the facts of a case or tweet about being a juror.  She told of a librarian who was charged with contempt of court for conducting her own online research into shaken baby syndrome when she was a juror in such a case.

Privacy of Place

Prof. Andrews emphasized that technology could lead to unexpected invasions of privacy, including privacy of place.  As an example, she told the group about a Pennsylvania high school that gave laptops to students but did not tell them that the school could turn on the laptop camera remotely.  A student was accused of taking drugs because the camera caught the student with what looked like pills, even though the “pills” were, in fact, Mike and Ike’s candies.

Prof. Andrews then confronted the common argument that, “Privacy is dead.”  She noted that other technologies, including portable cameras and wiretapping, were once declared the death of privacy.  She pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the privacy concerns of all of those technologies and can continue to do so with new technologies.

Ninja Librarians!

Finally, Prof. Andrews encouraged librarians to live up to the American Library Association principle that people need privacy before they can have freedom of expression.  She explained that libraries could fight against the invasion of privacy by teaching people that surveillance is not acceptable and by putting software on library computers to make activity on those computers anonymous.  She ended her talk by encouraging the group to be “ninja librarians,” and assuring them that she “has their back.”

Margaret thanked Prof. Andrews for her talk.

Committee Announcements

Bulletin

There were several committee announcements.  Kevin McClure and Emily Barney presented the new WordPress format for the Bulletin on behalf of the Bulletin Committee.  Emily noted that it would be easier to share individual articles, easier to search, and would allow the Committee to embed slides and videos.  She also added that the Committee would be able to see which content is being viewed and how many viewers it is getting.

Farewell to Kevin McClure

Secretary Clare Willis then spoke to thank Kevin McClure for his service to CALL.  Clare explained that Kevin, as co-editor of the Bulletin, has been instrumental in switching the Bulletin to its new WordPress format.  She also thanked Kevin for his service as co-chair of the Community Service Committee and for promising to continue to be a part of CALL as Bulletin co-editor through the Winter 2015 issue.  She ended her remarks by wondering if Kevin might write a column for the Bulletin about being a librarian in Qatar.

Kevin then took a minute to thank CALL and name himself as the Middle Eastern Bureau Chief.

Community Service Committee

Next, Valerie Kropf spoke on behalf of the Community Service Committee.  She thanked the membership for their donations to Open Books.  She also thanked her committee members and Kevin for his service on the committee.  She announced that donations collected at the February Business Meeting would go to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

Grants and Awards Committee

Jesse Bowman then spoke on behalf of the Grants and Awards Committee to recognize Lauren Odom for her grant to attend the Mid-America Law Libraries Association (MAALL) Annual Meeting and to encourage CALL members to apply for grants.  Jesse noted that the AALL Management Institute and ALA Midwinter meeting were both coming up soon, but added that anything library-related was eligible for a CALL grant.

Public Relations Committee

Debbie Ginsberg then spoke on behalf of the Public Relations Committee to remind committee chairs about the website training at Chicago-Kent on November 21st.

Bylaws Amendment Vote

Last, Margaret announced an election to amend the Bylaws on behalf of Frank Drake, chair of the Bylaws Committee.  She announced that the membership would vote on an amendment to CALL’s Bylaws to bring them into conformance with the antidiscrimination provisions in AALL’s Bylaws.

She explained that CALL’s antidiscrimination provisions must reflect those in the AALL Bylaws. Previously, the antidiscrimination provision in the AALL Bylaws read:

“Membership in the Association, or participation in any activity of the Association, shall not be denied or abridged to any individual on account of race, color, religion, age, national origin, disability, or sexual orientation.”

AALL amended their Bylaws to add:

“or gender identity.” 

Margaret told the members present that the CALL Executive Board passed a resolution in spring 2014 expressing intent to amend the CALL Bylaws.  Margaret noted that she sent a notice to the membership 30 days ago proposing an amendment to the CALL Bylaws.

She said that the notice requested that anyone with comments or discussion to send comments to Frank Drake.  Margaret reported that Frank has not received any feedback and asked those present for any discussion or comments.  There were none.  A CALL member moved to submit the proposed amendment to a vote.  The motion passed by a voice vote.

Margaret then told the members present that they would receive notice in a few days via email with a link to an online election to approve the amendment.

Slate of Officer Candidates

Margaret then announced the slate of candidates for the Executive Board for CALL’s 2015-2016 year and asked them to stand and be recognized:

Vice-President/President Elect:

• Joseph Mitzenmacher, Loyola University Chicago School of Law Library
• Todd Ito, D’Angelo Law Library, University of Chicago

Secretary:

• Diana Koppang, Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP
• Eugene Giudice, Latham & Watkins LLP

Director:

• Kara Young, Pritzker Legal Research Center, Northwestern,
• Konya Lafferty, Supreme Court of Illinois.

Margaret thanked the slate for accepting the nomination and thanked the Nominations and Elections Committee for providing a “great slate.”  She announced that the election would run from February to March.

To close the Business Meeting, Julie announced that the next meeting will be February 26, 2015 at Morton’s Steakhouse, and the speaker will be David Mendellsohn, Managing Partner at DLA Piper.  Margaret and Julie drew the door prize.  The meeting adjourned at 1:25pm.