Computing Services Special Interest Section Annual Report
Thanks to its dedicated and enthusiastic members, the CS-SIS accomplished a number of important projects this year. This year, the CS-SIS tried to focus on member education and support.
Education
Five CS-SIS sponsored programs are being offered at the 2005 Annual Meeting: "Creating & Using Interactive Electronic Legal Research Lessons," "Raise Your Standards, Improve Your World and Create Universal Web Pages," "30 Cheap Web Development Tools in 30 Minutes," "Multimedia Presentations: How to Get Copyright Clearance and Other Permissions for Digital Projects," and "Beyond the Blog: RSS, Wikis, and Blikis." The Roundtable Planning/Coordination Committee, chaired by Eric Young, is running two roundtables at the Annual Meeting this year, one on Web design and maintenance and one on instructional technology. This year's CS-SIS Breakfast is on the future of law librarianship and featured Roy Mersky, the Harry M. Reasoner Regents Chair in law, and director of research at the Tarlton Law Library at the Jamail Center for Legal Research at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. Other CS-SIS meetings and events will include the CS-SIS Executive Board Meeting, CS/TS/OBS/RIPS-SIS Joint Reception, the CS-SIS Business Meeting, the CS-SIS Program Planning Committee Meeting, and Karaoke night.
The Technology Competencies Committee, chaired by Eric Gilson, developed a resource guide related to the core competencies AALL has developed for information technology. This guide will be available at the CS-SIS Web site. Also developed this year for the CS-SIS Web site were a resource guide for obtaining copyright clearance for digital projects and a guide to inexpensive Web development tools. These join our CS-SIS Adaptive Technology Guides, Cascading Style Sheets Templates, and Job Descriptions Database. The Job Descriptions Database has surpassed 900 entries this year.
To support librarians interested in blogging, the CS-SIS developed a new Blawgs Committee co-chaired by Bonnie Shucha and Debbie Ginsberg. The committee created a blawg, using Bloki, a web service which also runs forums and wikis. This committee now has nearly 30 members who actively contribute to the CS-SIS blawg at http://cssisblawgs.bloki.com/blog/.
Publicity
The CS-SIS continued to promote the visibility of our section by submitting articles for every issue of Spectrum's "SIS News" column. CS-SIS events will also be featured in the annual newspaper and blog, the AALLamo. We also published two issues of our newsletter Connecting…, one in December and one in June. The Recruitment and Involvement Committee is reaching out to new law librarians by running a table at the CONELL marketplace as well as putting together a wonderful display in the exhibit hall.
Other Committee Work
Other CS-SIS committees also worked hard this year. The Grants Committee, under the direction of Cynthia Lewis, awarded three program registration grants to David Lehmann, Eric Young, and Bonnie Shuscha. A special CONELL grant was awarded to Denise Potter. The Strategic Plan Committee, chaired by Robert Jacoby, ran a survey of CS-SIS membership and developed a draft strategic plan that was voted on at the Annual Meeting. The Nominations Committee, chaired by Don Arndt, chose an excellent slate of candidates to run for office. Our second electronic election was held and elected were Kris Neidringhaus, Vice Chair/Chair-Elect; Eric Young, Secretary/Treasurer; and Debbie Ginsberg, Member-at-Large. They join the 2005–2006 Executive Board members Dom Grillo, Chair; Susan Boland, Immediate Past Chair; and Robert Jacoby, Member-at-Large. We give a heartfelt thanks to our departing Board members, 2004–2005 Past Chair Don Arndt, Secretary/Treasurer Vicki Szymczak, and Member-at-Large June Liebert.
As the role of information technology grows in libraries, the role of the Computing Services SIS to provide a voice and support for law library personnel involved with information technology also continues to grow.
Respectfully submitted,
Susan Boland, CS-SIS Chair, 2004–2005