The Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) held its annual conference from May 24 – 27 in Moncton, New Brunswick. The conference sees law librarians, researchers, and library stakeholders from across Canada come together to discuss the many challenges and opportunities faced by professionals in the legal information field.
This year’s conference theme was Currents of Resilience: Navigating Change, reflecting the challenges law libraries are facing across the country while highlighting their resilience and continued growth.
Law libraries are wrestling with the digital transformation of information, rising subscription costs, and shrinking budgets. At the same time, they are responding to changes in research culture, reducing barriers to legal information, and creating space for Indigenous legal orders. These complex challenges require the law library community to think outside the box, with new partnerships, and new ways of doing library.
This year, members from the Society were invited to hold a panel to discuss the new strategic partnership between the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, the Schulich School of Law, and the Lnuwey Dêbludaqan Wiguom (Mìgmaq Law Lodge).
Through this partnership, the three organizations are collaborating to create a unified Nova Scotia Law Library with the following mandates:
- to provide tools, training, and services, expertly designed, equitably accessed, and affordably delivered to all of Nova Scotia’s legal professional from law school to retirement,
- to partner with the Acess2Justice (A2J) community to curate and disseminate legal information to all Nova Scotians, leveraging our information and training expertise, and,
- to engage with Indigenous community partners to curate, archive, and make accessible Indigenous legal orders, with the goal of creating an Indigenous law library.
The panel featured David Michels, Library Project Consultant at the NSBS; Jennifer Haimes, Library Technician at the NSBS Library; Mark Lewis, Chief Law Librarian at Sir James Dunn Law Library; and Kristin Belanger, Instruction & Public Service Librarian at Sir James Dun Law Library.
Throughout the panel, the team described the challenges facing libraries and their communities, their current planning process, and the first steps being taken to create a partnership that blends academic and courthouse models of service.
This year’s CALL Conference served as an opportunity to not only celebrate law library communities and their shared strength and creativity in the face of oncoming change but offer an exciting look into what libraries can be in our increasingly digital age.