CALL Public Relations Committee 2020-2021 Annual Report

In 2020-2021, the CALL Public Relations Committee had the following members: Shari Berkowitz Duff, Debbie Ginsberg, Lyonette Louis-Jacques (Chair), Sharon Nelson, and Sarah Sherman. Megan Butman served as CALL Board Liaison.

The PR Committee started working with an introductory/welcome email from the Chair, Lyo Louis-Jacques, on June 29, 2020, and started working via email exchanges shortly thereafter. The Chair attended CALL leadership training, August 5, 2020, and responded to requests from the Board liaison for updates and questions from the Board prior to their Tuesday meetings throughout the year. The Chair met with the CALL Board on, December 8, 2020, via conference call to speak about the Committee’s public relations-related plans for the upcoming year. The PR Committee met on March 17, 2021 to brainstorm ideas for meeting one of this year’s goals – discuss ways to expand our external PR efforts. During the year, the PR Committee promoted and announced CALL business meetings, CALL Chapter and AALL award winners, CALL Bulletin issues and individual articles, and other activities via social media – Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn., and supported the work of other CALL committees.

Specifically, Lyonette Louis-Jacques, Sarah Sherman, and Debbie Ginsberg live-tweeted events and posted announcements on @CALLChicago. Various CALL PR Committee members attended the CALL business meetings and events, tweeted, and posted photos on Twitter. Sharon Nelson posted CALL news on Facebook and LinkedIn. Debbie Ginsberg maintained the CALL website. The CALL listserv/discussion forum was maintained by Britnee Cole. Among other activities, the PR Committee designed an e-Holiday greeting card at the request of CALL President, Lindsey Carpino. Sarah Sherman took the lead and the card was posted by the CALL Board as a New Year’s greeting. Sarah also volunteered to draft a social media policy for CALL upon Lindsey Carpino’s request for CALL PR Committee assistance in creating one. Other PR Committee members pitched in their ideas on both projects. We were again asked to promote the dynamic, web-based version of Finding Illinois Law (2d ed., 2021) when it became available, and we agreed to do so. Shari Berkowitz Duff posted a list of CALL members presenting, along with their topics, at the AALL Annual Meeting in July 2020 to the CALL listserv. Sharon Nelson volunteered to work on press release templates (one of our PR ideas generated from our meeting on how to reach non-CALL members). The CALL Board approved the press release idea with announcing the results of CALL elections as an example. We responded to the CALL Board request for social media login information for institutional memory – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr.