A Little Help From My Friends

As Connie mentioned, there are a number of us in Calgary sharing good times at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries Annual Conference.

One of the great things about our group, and this event in particular, is the opportunity to get together in special interest groups. Our SIGs, as we call them, are communities of practice whether that be a workplace type, like the Academic Law Libraries SIG or a broader topic like the Access Services and Resource Sharing SIG. The CALL website offers details about all the committees and special interest groups as well as contacts.

The Private Law Libraries SIG meeting this year was very productive. Our visiting colleague, Tracy Maleef (aka @LibrarySherpa), President Elect from the Special Libraries Association, Legal Division shared a tip about a new US federal government resource FDSYS.gov which offers certified pdf copies of government documents, searchable, open source. A great place to go if you need an official portion of the Code of Federal Regulations or the US Code or many other useful items.

Along with the great tip, the PLL group also talked about what we hope will be on the program slate for CALL 2012, May 6-9 in Toronto.

Some of the ideas included:

• What keeps your managing partner up at night
• Keeping current with cutting edge technology
• Responsibility for digitizing information in firms
• Balance in your library budget between print and electronic resources
• the handing it over and taking it over aspects of succession planning

Inspired by a Slaw comment by Verna Miller last week, the idea of a “lunch with the Chiefs” (Law Firm Administrators and Managing Partners) was discussed. I am certain that the CALL group could plan an interesting session to open up to local TO leaders.

I am sure that more ideas flowing from the conference will flow up to Slaw.