Which Tables Do You Pull Your Chair Up To?

As the President of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries, I was privileged to spend a few days with my fellow volunteer board members recently. Part of our time was devoted to planning around the strategic direction of our association. Though our board includes a diverse cross-section of legal information professionals when measured by geography, institution type, and role, we all self identify as “law librarians”. Even me and I am semi-retired and work in legal research technology sales.

Our strategy discussion asked what is going well or poorly, who are we today and is that different from how we see ourselves ten years from now? How do others see our group? Which tables do we need to pull our chair up to? Who is willing to pull up a chair at our table and is that changing?

It is membership renewal season for many professional associations. I just renewed my membership in CALL. It is not the only library group that I am a member of. It is not the only legal group that I am a member of. CALL/ACBD is both a virtual and in person group since as a national association, we do have activities that occur throughout the year in addition to our annual conference which is a live event.

The question I am posing to Slawyers is this: would you feel welcome as a member of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries/L’Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit? If yes – why? If no – why?

As a CALL Board, we thought about our table in addition to those we want to pull up a chair to. We believe that our table of legal information specialists is anyone with a role or interest in:..

  • locating
  • curating
  • disseminating
  • advocating for
  • developing
  • building
  • accessing
  • educating about
  • having content expertise in
  • creating
  • using

…legal information.

Are we you?

Comments

  1. Thanks for this post, Shaunna. As someone who left the law *library* world some time ago, it was reassuring to see that I still have a contribution to make to this profession. (I renewed earlier this week, so there was no doubt that I wanted to continue my affiliation with CALL/ACBD).

    I think that there are many professionals working in aspects of the law who could benefit from having a professional community like this one. And we would benefit greatly from the perspectives and participation of those in non-traditional positions.