Category Archives: Spring 2014

Issue 231

Eloise Vondruska receives Lifetime Achievement Award

Eloise Vondruska, photo by Emily Barney
Eloise Vondruska, photo by Emily Barney

In February, Eloise retired from the Northwestern University School of Law’s Pritzker Legal Research Center after 25 years of service and active involvement in CALL, AALL, LLMC and LIPA.

Eloise has been a mentor to many librarians throughout her career; and many of her mentees attended the CALL luncheon when she was honored. She has always recognized the importance of maintaining strong connections between law libraries and the greater legal profession. Continue reading Eloise Vondruska receives Lifetime Achievement Award

2014-2015 Election Results

The CALL election of officers for the 2014-2015 year and beyond was held from Tuesday, February 18th
through Friday, March 14th. Of the 266 members eligible to vote, 144 members elected the following candidates:

  • Julie Pabarja,Vice-President/President Elect
  • Stephanie Crawford, Treasurer
  • Robert Martin, Director

Deborah Ginsberg, Valerie Kropf, and Jesse Bowman were wonderful candidates and were exceptionally gracious when informed of the results! Thank you so much to all of you for agreeing to run for a CALL office. I hope to see your names of the ballot again very soon!

I would also like to thank the Nominations and Elections Committee – Denise Glynn, Ramsey Donnell, Joan Ogden, Kathellen Bruner, Lenore Glanz, Lyonette Louis-Jacques, and Susan Retzer.

A very special thank you to Joan Ogden – she is a wealth of information and frankly the knowledge keeper of all things related to the CALL election. We would not have had such a successful election without her wonderful expertise.

This year we had a 54.1% voting rate.
In years past the rates have been:

  • 54.7% in 2012/2013
  • 45.4% in 2011/2012
  • 46.5% in 2010/2011
  • 51.9% in 2009/2010
  • 47.8% in 2008/2009

Hopefully next year we can have an unprecedented turn-out to choose our new Board members from a wonderful slate of dedicated CALL members!

Do.ne, or what to do when your favorite service disappears

This article was previously published in the Law School Ed Tech blog. It is adapted from an Ignite talk given at a Continuing Education session on November 5, 2013 for CALL.

The Chicago-Kent Library Technology Group runs many kinds of projects.  Keeping track of what’s going on in individual projects can be challenging.  We needed a cloud-based service for project management, something that could:

  • Track projects and tasks
  • Let us assign tasks to individual workers
  • Comment on tasks when we had questions or more information.

Continue reading Do.ne, or what to do when your favorite service disappears

Meet New CALL Member George Pike

George H. Pike, Northwestern Law, February 10, 2014George Pike began his new position as Director of the Pritzker Legal Research Center and Senior Lecturer at the Northwestern University School of Law in November, coming to Northwestern after nine years as Director of the Law Library at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

CALL Bulletin Committee member Lindsey Carpino caught up with George to find out how he’s settling in. Continue reading Meet New CALL Member George Pike

Meet New CALL Member Kara Dunn

New CALL member, Kara Dunn, is a graduate student in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and a member of the CALL Bulletin Committee.

Fellow Bulletin Committee member, Lindsey, recently chatted with her so we could all get to know her a little better. Continue reading Meet New CALL Member Kara Dunn

Legal Citation Workshop Review

On Wednesday, February 5th, a sizeable group of law librarians, paralegals, and other CALL members joined the CALL Continuing Education Committee for a “Legal Citation Workshop.”

Clare Willis, Research Librarian and resident Bluebook expert at the Chicago-Kent Law Library, offered useful tips on navigating the Bluebook and locating the most helpful rules on common US citations. She also addressed the Internet citation rules, the white pages, the blue pages, and the index while giving helpful examples.

Be sure to consult her helpful guide to Bluebook citation, which was used as a resource in the citation workshop, at: http://uiuc.libguides.com/law-bluebook

Next, Heidi Kuehl, Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Librarian and Coordinator of Educational Programming at Northwestern’s Pritzker Legal Research Center, gave an overview of the Bluebook rules for treaties, UN documents, international case law, and foreign documents.

Heidi pointed toward free websites for research from the United Nations (http://www.un.org/en/documents/) and EISIL (from the American Society of International Law – http://www.eisil.org/), which guide researchers toward essential elements of Bluebook citation.

Finally, Philip Johnson, Instructional and Student Services Librarian at John Marshall Law School’s Louis L. Biro Law Library, gave a summary of the new Illinois neutral case citation rules (Rules 6 and 23), and fielded questions about formatting from the audience. John Marshall provides a comprehensive tutorial on the new citation rules at
http://library.jmls.edu/reference-tutorials.php.

After the presentations, the attendees discussed nuances of the Bluebook, ALWD, and neutral citation rules, and had an open question and answer period that was enjoyed by all. Keep an eye out for other CALL Continuing Education events!

Hot Library School Topics

When beginning to explore the topics that library students were discussing at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS), I decided to seek student feedback through outlets such as the GSLIS open forum and Facebook page.

While there are a vast array of courses to  take and topics to explore at GSLIS, I began to notice a common theme throughout the feedback I received, and throughout my own personal class experience. GSLIS places a focus on the future of libraries and librarians and keeping relevant in this ever-changing world of technology. Continue reading Hot Library School Topics

IL Legislative Update: Senate Bill 3288

In Illinois, a version of the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (“UELMA”) is currently working its way through the 98th General Assembly (as Senate Bill 1941), but UELMA isn’t the only pending Illinois legislation that could affect the  production and dissemination of government-produced legal information in electronic formats.

In February, Illinois Senator Pat McGuire introduced Senate Bill 3288, which, if enacted, would make two key changes to the Illinois General Assembly Operations Act (25 ILCS 10/10, hereinafter “The Act”). Continue reading IL Legislative Update: Senate Bill 3288

AALL2 go Pick of the Month

AALL’s Continuing Professional Education Committee presents the AALL2go pick of the month: So You Think You Can Teach:Keeping the Audience Awake and Learning Alive.

 

Legal research instruction can be interesting, engaging and fun! Five experienced and dynamic academic librarians present 10-minute mini-lessons, highlighting five different teaching tools to capture the audience’s attention.

The mini-lessons cover such topics as secondary materials, cost-effective case law research, locating federal statutes using popular name, federal administrative materials, and D.C. materials.

The teaching tools that are demonstrated include:

  • showing movie clips that connect a legal research concept with an example from pop culture
  • using imagery to create a personal legal research scenario
  • creating a screencast lesson (with Camtasia and PowerPoint)
  • presenting an interesting or funny example or anecdote to engage the audience
  • utilizing props and games to capture the audience’s attention and to encourage participation.

The five different learning styles and the importance of teaching to those learning styles are also discussed. The mini-lessons are followed by a Q&A session where the panelists discuss in-class assignments, research logs, textbooks, CALI lessons, and the importance of creating relatable research examples.

Everyone from the beginner to the experienced legal research instructor is sure to discover innovative techniques that they can use to engage their audiences.

Find this and more free continuing education programs and webinars for AALL members on AALL2go!