All posts by Caitlin Archer-Helke

Decorating with Discards: The Case of the Rolled Pages

A book with folded and rolled pages that looks a little like a seashell
An outdated deskbook in Caitlin’s office

If you’ve ever worked with print materials, the chances are quite good that you’ve also found yourself surrounded by discards. The old, the out-of-date, the so-old-it’s-obsolete, the battered into uselessness: most of them will be destined for the circular file, unless someone has the energy to slide away the binding and recycle the loosened pages. Legal deskbooks and their kin outdate even faster than science books, with which I have also worked; they leave us with a lot of books ready to go out…and also a lot of books to use, if we feel like it, for impromptu art projects.

Continue reading Decorating with Discards: The Case of the Rolled Pages

CALL Goes to the Friendship Center

5 CALL members in front of a brightly colored mural

Five CALL members volunteered at The Friendship Center on Nov. 2. The Friendship Center is a full-choice food pantry serving neighborhoods on the northwest side of Chicago. The Center also provides dog and cat food, as well as other pet supplies.

CALL volunteers sorted donations to stock the pantry and helped prepare for The Friendship Center’s pet food pantry next week. The total amount of food added up to 1,440 meals.

Thank you to all CALL members who donated their time.

We Want Your News!

Young Victorian ladies waiting for callers
Like Winslow Homer’s young ladies waiting for callers on New Year’s Day, your editors are waiting to hear from you! Image from the Smithsonian.

Happy New Year, CALL!

As CALL and the Bulletin move into 2025, we’d like to remind you that the Bulletin is yours–and is here for you! Do you have ideas you’d like to share? Columns you’d like to write? Let us know!

Are there changes in your life you’d like to share? We’d love to hear those as well! Please don’t hesitate to reach out to your editors. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Turning over a new leaf

Welcome to this new season of the Bulletin! While this first issue of 2024-25 includes content you have seen before, including committee reports from the 2023-24 year, we are also bringing something new: Rachel Ford’s Why think about web accessibility will get us started with something new and exciting.

And we’d like to bring you more new and exciting materials throughout this Bulletin year! Do you have an idea for a column? Is there a topic you’d like to see discussed in the Bulletin? Are you interested in reviewing library-related materials, or in exploring all the oddities in popular culture depictions of legal work? Let us know–we would love to hear from you! Email Bulletin editors Caitlin and Stacia at the links on the left sidebar.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Stay tuned for more from the Government Relations Committee!

The Government Relations Committee is hard at work to curate programs and information of use to librarians in Illinois. Stay tuned for exciting opportunities, including the following:

  • A special guest appearance from Illinois Secretary of State and State Librarian Alexi Giannoulias at the May CALL meeting
  • A webinar on effective advocacy for libraries and libraries
  • Updated information on the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act in Illinois

The committee is chaired by Eugene Giudice and includes members Ross Prolic and Sally Holterhoff.

Interested in prior years of the Government Relations Committee? Take a look at annual reports and other materials on the Bulletin.

Archives Committee Annual Report 2023-24

Chair

Joe Mitzenmacher

Committee members:

  • David Heusel
  • Sally Wise

Committee Projects

The 2023-24 CALL Board charged the Archives Committee with exploring cloud storage options for the organization’s digital media assets, such as digital photos taken during CALL events and Zoom recordings of CALL events (as our Zoom account was approaching its maximum allowable storage level).

The Committee landed on Google One, which can be tied to the existing CALL Gmail account, for the cloud storage solution. CALL President Mandy Lee downloaded all Zoom recordings from the start of 2020 through March 2022 into CALL’s Google Drive account, which freed up space for storage in our Zoom account.

Looking ahead, next year we will be aiming to post our videos on a CALL YouTube account with a “private” listing and making them available on a members-only page of the CALL website. Keep an eye out for more information on that in the upcoming CALL business year.

Thanks to our committee members and to Board Liaison Todd Hillmer for their great work this year!

Community Service Committee Annual Report 2023-24

2023-24 Annual Report

Committee Co-Chairs

Beth Schubert and Leah Whitesel

Committee Members

  • Mike McMillan
  • Nan Norton

Volunteer Opportunities

We successfully coordinated the following three volunteering opportunities from September 2023 to May 2024:

Fundraisers at Business Meetings

Additionally, in conjunction with each of the quarterly CALL Business Meetings, a specific organization was selected that met the charitable organization selection criteria created by the Executive Board. CALL membership was encouraged to make monetary donations to the following entities:

This approach of direct donation did not permit us to track the total number or dollar amount of donations made by CALL membership to each organization.

However, each organization could accept donations via credit card and/or PayPal, so we are confident that CALL members who wished to make donations were able to do so quickly and conveniently.

Meetings Committee Annual Report 2023-24

Co-Chairs:

  • Carrie Port
  • Mike McMillan

Members:

  • Jesse Bowman
  • Amy Tomaszewski

Committee Accomplishments: 

The committee coordinated 4 business meetings. Two were virtual, and two in-person meetings.

Business Meeting Logistics

  • In-person versus Zoom/virtual. Committee suggests First and Last meetings to be in person due to weather and celebratory events. Middle two meetings on Zoom.
  • Meeting dates. We recommend setting the dates for all Business Meetings at the beginning of the year. This makes it easier to plan and coordinate with venues and should also make it easier for Vice President to coordinate with speakers.  Tuesdays tend to work best as it tends to accommodate more people with hybrid office/remote schedules.  Always best to avoid Mondays and Fridays.
  • Food/meeting cost for members. Meeting costs for members increased to $30 for 2023/2024.  Would a bump to $35 be tolerable and help CALL with associated costs and perhaps expand venue options with slightly higher price points?
  • In-Person Meeting Materials. Name tags and check-in sheets is always something to consider for in-person meetings.
  • Dietary restrictions? We didn’t hear any complaints. Neon does have option for “dietary restrictions” along with the vendor opt-out option, but not something that we used. Carrie and Mike tried to consider vegetarian options when making menu selections.
  • AV Equipment. Good to try figuring this out on front end when coordinating with venues. Do we have a budget?
    • Some venues seemed to lose some of their capabilities during Covid, but have maybe rebuilt those options. For a previous meeting, we used Craig Schultz at AV Pro Connections (craig@avproconnections). He was great helping accommodate us last minute, but was a bit expensive.
    • Projectors add extra challenges. Some folks have them at work and can bring them, but it can be hard to coordinate. Are there any low-cost very portable options already within CALL or something to invest in maybe?
  • Guest speakers. Make sure to include them in luncheon headcounts. It’s definitely nice to have speakers, but it’s probably OK if we don’t get anyone. It allows for more time for CALL business and networking. We’re not totally clear on how much time speakers have and/or if that should be enforced somehow.
  • Zoom testing for virtual meetings. Some technical issues getting things set up on Zoom, partly due to login/password issues. We recommend running test runs a few days ahead of time, including any guest speakers and/or others who might have presentations they want to include.
  • Event Registration. Neon can be difficult to figure out when setting up events. It’s not always super-intuitive and finding certain settings (vendor opt-out, dietary restrictions) seems to be tricky.
  • We had a few sponsors who asked if they could make sponsorship payments with credit card. We were able to create a separate event in Neon for 1 attendee and the sponsorship cost to facilitate. This system seemed to work well.
    • Sponsor/vendor reps. We need to know how many are coming. What is the policy and how flexible is it?
    • Raffle prizes. Bridget MacMillan at Lexis has been great about keeping an open invitation for these and we then coordinate with the winners via e-mail. Someone mentioned that Blythe McCoy at Westlaw also threw the idea out there that they would be interested at some point, but that’s hasn’t been explored.
  • Other committee members. Mike wishes he would have done a better job keeping the other committee members (Jesse and Amy) involved. It might be good to suggest that other members feel free to proactively insert themselves along the way. This committee is also a good option for newer members as they could help out at sign-in/welcome table and get to know other people.

Other Meetings

  • The committee suggests that the monthly happy hours are hosted by different committees. That way there is always someone that will attend and the different committee chairs can choose a venue/time convenient to them. Also, these would not be canceled last minute causing issues for members’ schedules.
  • Mandy, as President, tried to coordinate some less formal gatherings (lunches, happy hours, other?) that seemed like a great idea, but not sure how successful those gatherings were.
  • Other meetings have fallen to the wayside a bit as it seems a bit much for Chairs to coordinate on top of meeting planning duties. Book/Media clubs have been suggested.
  • The happy hour at 320 S. Canal in August was very successful – maybe this could be run by the board to kick off the year?

Committee Coordination

  • Community Service. Mike also served as member on the committee and tried to coordinate for community service and donations messaging to go with meeting announcements.
    • Speaker Connections: It’s nice for Community Service to know our speakers so they can consider charities/organizations that speakers might be connected to for fund-raising, and/or avoid possible conflicts.
  • Secretary provides write-up for Bulletin. Should photos be included?

Outreach

  • Surveys. What do members want? We ended up skipping on surveys. Should Meetings Committee be doing them? Are they useful? It seems that a fairly simplified version might be advisable to make the feedback easier to consume and implement.
  • Communications/Social Media.Besides e-mails, where else do we post meeting information and who is responsible for making the updates?  I know that previous years, there was confusion caused by info posted on the website, but we can’t recall who was updating that info. Carrie posted the information on the website but a new committee member should be trained on WordPress.
  • New Members. Talk to membership coordinator prior to the May in-person meeting for the list of new members for the year. Either Meetings or Mentorship committee sends email to new members letting them know about their 1 free meeting perk. Members who accept are entered manually into the event (same as speakers and sponsors) and given free admission to the May meeting.

2023-2024 Meeting Details

CALL Meetings organized between August 2023 and May 2024:

  • August 8, 2023– Happy Hour at The Green.
  • September 20, 2023– Maggiano’s Little Italy with Steven Schwinn.
    • 56 registered.
    • Great food and service and good general venue for meetings and they had the A/V equipment we needed.
    • Sponsors: Trellis and TRG Screen
  • November 16, 2023– virtual Business Meeting with breakout rooms in place of speaker who had to cancel.
    • 50 registered.
    • Breakout rooms seemed to work out OK, but something we had to scramble on a bit due to speaker cancelation.
  • February 22, 2023 – virtual Business Meeting with Justices Aurelia Pucinski and Cynthia Cobbs.
    • 63 registered.
  • May 16, 2024– Wildfire with AALL President June Hsiao Liebert.
    • 67 registered
    • Great food and service and decent space for our event with accommodating A/V equipment for our needs.
    • Sponsor: Thomson Reuters

Considering Venues

The committee gathered costs and/or minimums at the time, which are also available.

  • Lettuce Entertain You is a great option as they have lots of great restaurants and a form for entering meeting criteria and selecting multiple restaurants. The restaurants still have to be dealt with individually, but it does help streamline things a bit.
  • City Winery– probably too expensive for our budget.
  • Il Porcelino– nice looking space, but looks like 50 max so maybe not flexible enough. Additional cost per person to add dessert.
  • Osteria Via Stato– worked out great for previous meeting.  Lots of good feedback from members.
  • Carnivale – $32 a person – could be an option for the future
  • Hub 51 – 65 max.
  • Lil’ Ba Ba Reeba– can check out space. Tapas charged per person. Maybe a decent option.
  • Harry Caray’s Italian Steak House – might be fun – was booked for our dates, so we didn’t pursue pricing info.
  • Beatrix River North – 65 max with a $3000 minimum.
  • Tallboy Taco– 40 seated, 50 reception style. Probably not flexible enough sizewize.
  • Ema– space looks decent and food yummy. Additional cost per person to add dessert. 60 max people for space.
  • Petterino’s – now has a magic show in their venue room – no longer an option.
  • Berghoff – only venue has bench seating.

Read about prior years on the Meetings Committee here on the Bulletin.

Public Relations Committee Annual Report 2023-24

Chair

Eugene Giudice

Membership

includes Jesse Bowman

Report

The committee was fairly inactive in the 2023-24 CALL year except for periodic updates to the CALL website for events like CALL meetings and meet-ups.

Eugene would especially like to thank Jesse Bowman for his continued stewardship of the CALL website, including all updates during the 2023-24 season.

Recommendations for the forthcoming year

The committee recommends to the CALL board that the charge of the Public Relations Committee be reviewed such that it can be better utilized as a resource for all CALL committees and a more effective external voice for CALL.