Attending the AALL Annual Meeting and Conference can be a worthwhile – and fun! – experience for law librarians at any career stage. The two of us, as newer law librarians, found this year’s meeting to be especially rewarding. It made us feel good about our profession and the people who have chosen it.
We are both relative newcomers to this career–Sarah at the Illinois Supreme Court Library and Leslie at DuPage County Law Library. We met at a CALL Mentorship and Leadership Development Committee lunch last year.
Yaama.* A CALL grant facilitated my attendance at the 38th Annual Course of the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) held in Sydney, Australia, October 27-30. “Law Down Under: Australia’s Legal Landscape” drew 132 delegates (attendees) from 21 countries with 48% being first-time delegates.
On October 1, 2019, Gretchen Van Dam, CALL member and Northern District of Illinois Court Historical Association Vice President and Archivist gave a presentation on the topic, “Creating a History Program for Your Organization: Lessons Learned from the Northern District of Illinois Court Historical Association.” The event took place at the Northern District of Illinois Court History Museum on the 21st floor of the Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
I received my master’s degree 30 years ago: where has the time gone? For those born with technology in your hands, you may wonder how past law librarians survived and thrived. This question makes me want to reflect on being a new librarian in the pre-internet, pre-flat rate contracts era.
In the pre-internet-days printed materials ruled supreme. Westlaw and Lexis were not on every device imaginable In fact, at Clausen Miller where I started my career as a newly minted librarian we had one red Lexis UBIQ terminal with tiny chicklet shaped keys. The printer was a tall device with only one function, print cases on paper with holes running up the sides and perforations between the pages. Nightmares ensued when the paper was not fed correctly. Westlaw was loaded on only one computer which used a dial up modem to connect. Use of electronic services was a luxury. Continue reading A New Decade: A Librarian’s Reflection→
Newsletter of the Chicago Association of Law Libraries
