Dear CALL Members,
By the time this issue reaches you, we will be at or near the end of another calendar year. For many of us, this quiet time offers a period of rebirth and reflection marked by new vows and new learning opportunities. It is in that spirit that we offer the2011 Winter CALL Bulletin. For this issue we decided to pause and focus upon what is new in terms of legal resources in our common jurisdiction, Illinois.
This issue offers arrange of perspectives on recent changes in the world of Illinois legal research and what law librarians today are currently working on. Jean M. Wenger from Cook County Law Library offers her thoughts on what county law libraries do today and on what their future might hold. Borrowing from his work for the Illinois State Bar Association, Tom Gaylord offers look at some recent changes to Illinois official government website. Michael Robak weighs in with an insightful article on researching Illinois workers’ compensation claims.
With reference to changes in technology and new resources, Todd Ito provides insight into AALL’s National Inventory on Legal Resources as it relates to Illinois resources. Patricia Scott recounts her group’s experience with the recent Illinois State Library’s ILEAD U (Illinois Libraries Explore, Apply and Discover) program to assist librarians in implementing new technologies to reach new generations of library users. Finally, Claire Willis and Tom Keefe summarize recent projects to digitize important Illinois historic and legal material and offer examples as to how these may be used for future legal research projects. As always, the CALL Bulletin is pleased to supply information from our excellent team of columnists. In Tech-Buzz, Therese Clarke Arado recaps a presentation that she and fellow CALL member Sharon Nelson gave at the annual Mid-America Association Law Library meeting on their efforts to create a current awareness source portal. In Working Smarter, Sharon Nelson compares and contrasts two of the leading time and life management books, Julie Morgenstern’s Time Management from the Inside Out and David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Last but not least, for the first time in this issue we sent our new roving student reporter, Loren Turner, out to assess the differences among Illinois library schools, the schools from which most of us graduated.
We aimed to produce an issue that provides reading of interest for all members and hope we have achieved this goal. This issue is anchored by the thoughtful and inspired words of our president and by loyal members like Denise Glynn and Valerie Kropf who help members keep track of the daily work—meetings, budgets, job changes etc. –that form the better part of our Association’s daily existence. We thank all of our contributors for their efforts in making this CALL Bulletin issue a record of our lives, or at least a slice of it.