Annual Report
Computing Services Special Interest Section, Annual Report
Deborah Ginsberg, Chair 2010-11
August 12, 2011
The officers of the Computing Services Special Interest Section during 2010-11 were Deborah Ginsberg, Chair; Meg Kribble, Vice Chair; Bonnie Shucha, Past Chair; Melissa Serfass, Secretary/Treasurer; Jason Eiseman, Member at Large; and Daniel Blackman, Member at Large. In 2011-12, our officers are Meg Kribble, Chair; Jason Eiseman, Vice Chair; Deborah Ginsberg, Past Chair; Cynthia Bassett, Secretary/Treasurer; Daniel Blackman, Member at Large; and Thomas Boone, Member at Large.
The Section’s 2011 Annual Business and Breakfast meeting was held on Tuesday, July 27, at 7:15. At this meeting, the membership approved minor changes in the Section’s by laws to clarify ambiguous language. Members also discussed the 2011-12 Strategic Plan which includes specific recommendations for the Section for the coming year. CS-SIS is thankful to the meeting’s sponsors: HeinOnline, Lexis/Nexis, Wolters Kluwer, and BNA.
The CS-SIS annual Kenneth J. Hirsh Distinguished Award for outstanding service was presented to June Hsiao Liebert, Director of the Law Library at the John Marshall School of Law. CS-SIS also awarded grants to attend the Annual Meeting to Beth Given and Jennifer Prilliman. The Section also participated in the selection of AALL’s Innovations in Technology Award, which was presented to “The People's Law Library.”
CS-SIS experienced problems with its self-hosted website in the fall of 2010. The Section decided to take this opportunity to redesign the website using the popular Drupal content management system. The new site will launch by the fall of 2011. CS-SIS is looking forward to using its new site as a tool to introduce and teach Drupal to our members who are interested in learning more about it.
The Recruitment Committee surveyed the Section’s members for feedback about communication and volunteer opportunities. CS-SIS will use the results to reach out to members in the coming year. The Adaptive Technologies Committee reported on accessibility issues with PBWiki (used by the section to host several projects) as well as the new AALLNet website.
CS-SIS sponsored or co-sponsored 12 programs at the 2011 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. Popular sessions included “Cool Tools Cafe” which invited participants to attend hands-on demos for mobile, scholarly, and educational technologies. We were proud to host VIP Nicole Engard of ByWater Solutions. Nicole presented CS-SIS’s annual “Hot Topic,” discussing open source technologies available to law libraries. Additionally, she was one of four presenters for the session “Coding Potpourri: A Survey of Programming Languages and Tools Used in Library Applications Today.” CS-SIS recorded its self-hosted programs which will soon be available on the new website.
CS-SIS also hosted two popular social events at the Annual Meeting – Karaoke with Ken and the annual Bloggers Meet-Up (with special guest Meredith Lindemon).