Next week, Jen and Brenda will be attending the 2016 CALL/ACBD Conference in Vancouver, BC. This is the leading professional development opportunity for legal information professionals in Canada, and is an excellent opportunity to meet and learn from other people working in firm, academic, government, and courthouse libraries across the country. It’s also where we learn about new products coming out from vendors, and notable legal developments.
Of all of the sessions coming up over three days, here are some of the topics we’re most excited for:
“Webinars: Doing it Right” – Brenda will be attending this pre-conference half-day session, which is timely and highly relevant to us here at the CCLA, since we’ve finally made the plunge into providing legal research webinars. She is very excited to get some great tips on how to make our webinars top notch.
“Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About US Legal Research But Were Afraid to Ask!: US Legal Research for Canadians” – There’s plenty we’d like to know but have been to afraid to ask, so this session is perfect! Currently, the only things Jen knows for sure about US law is that Louisiana follows a Civil Code (much like Quebec), and that you can find US decisions on Google Scholar. Ready to take lots of notes during this session!
“Research in the Real World” – This session is all about the collaborative program Research in the Real World that was conducted in Calgary, between academic, firm, and courthouse law librarians for summer students to develop practice-focused legal research skills. Sounds right up our alley!
“Computers in Legal Research” – Brenda is really excited to attend this discussion on the future of Watson-type AI in the legal world, and the extent to which computers might be capable of replacing lawyers in the future (and the inevitable Skynet uprising of course!).
Librarians love to live tweet events, so if you want to check in on the conference, look for #CALLACBD2016 on Twitter.