Clare Willis

President’s Letter

Happy fall, CALL members!

In October, I had the pleasure of attending one day of the 2017 MAALL, LLAW, MichALL, MALL, and CALL Joint Annual Meeting up in Milwaukee. For a one-day visit, I managed to pack in some great networking and education. As usual, CALL was what made it really special. I presented a poster with fellow board member Scott Vanderlin, which we designed with CALL member Debbie Ginsberg and CALL Bulletin co-editor Emily Barney. I saw an excellent presentation from fellow board members Lindsey Carpino and Annie Mentkowski, and CALL Archives co-chair Clanitra Stewart Nejdl. I got to catch up with several other CALL members and reach out to members of the other regional associations. I am grateful to MAALL for giving CALL members the opportunity to participate in such a great event.

What I would really like to highlight for this issue of the Bulletin is a project that I think truly shows the benefit of being involved with CALL. I mentioned before that I attended a program presented by our own Lindsey Carpino, Annie Mentkowski, and Clanitra Stewart Nejdl. In the program, Lindsey mentioned that she gave a talk to a legal research class at Loyola on legal research in a law firm environment. My ears perked up immediately. I teach an Advanced Legal Research course at Northwestern. One thing I always struggle to teach students is how to understand and anticipate how legal research will be different when they work at a law firm. I realized what my colleagues at Loyola clearly already knew; academic librarians can and should call on law firm librarians to help us teach! Lindsey has created two videos for my class, and I am very excited to share them with my students. In the process, she and I discussed what I teach my students.

From this collaboration, Lindsey and other librarians at Sidley can learn what their incoming associates are learning in law school. Ultimately, my current students will be better researchers and my former students will be better attorneys because CALL brought Lindsey and me together. Being involved with CALL gives all of us the opportunity to learn from each other and enhance our careers in ways we never could on our own. And when librarians are better, those we serve always benefit.

Happy Holidays,

Clare