The Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) presented a series of so-called Lightning Talks this morning at its annual conference in Vancouver.
The talks are brief 7-minute presentations on an initiative or project by a CALL member.
In the first talk, Alan Kirkpatrick from the Law Society of Saskatchewan library described his role as CALL's social media coordinator. He has been in charge of the content on the association's Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts since his appointment to the new role in early 2015 .
He explained where he gets material for posts, what very commonsensical standards he follows and how he avoids being swamped. He suggested that developing content was not too hard since he can repurpose material from CALL's journal and newsletter and highlight relevant posts CALL members contribute on a regular basis to blogs and sites such as Slaw.ca.
Audrey Jun from Courthouse Libraries BC was up next to present the work of Clicklaw, a website that serves as a centralized clearinghouse to help the public find useful legal information from more than 30 trusted organizations.
She described the many law librarian skills that come into play in the management of the site, among them info architecture, user needs-based collection development, knowledge sharing, project management, knowledge of substantive law, user testing and community engagement.
Cheryl Murphy and Alicia Loo from the library at the Supreme Court of Canada then explained how the reference team there developed Case Guides as a way of embedding the library in the research workflow of law clerks. I have worked on many of the guides. Each guide provides a centralized list of resources related to upcoming hearings at the Court: noting up information about the lower level appeal case and relevant legislation, suggested research terms that work in different databases, a list of relevant research articles, loose-leaf materials, book chapters and annotated legislation, etc all targeted specifically to a single case.
Jenny Thornhill from the Nunavut Court of Justice followed them with a description of how she has become an editor of judgments. At her court, she has helped develop an official standard for the production of judgments. This involves citation, editing standards, tracking the editing process, evaluating the judgments from the average educated person's point of view, formatting, and distribution. The experience has created opportunities to build trust, showcase the central role the library can play and engage in the judgment production process.
As part of her role in editing, she has created a "critical information form" where the various partners in the judgement process now include all the relevant info about each judgment, such as the proper citation, any publication restrictions, the trelease date, etc.
Finally, Kim Clarke from the University of Calgary law library described the Play the Stress Away project to help students cope with stress.
Labels: conferences, courts, law libraries, legal research and writing, library associations, public education, web 2.0
