Conference catch up: librarians, staff attend ALA, CALIcon, AALL 

It’s conference season in the library, and we’ve been busy learning from our friends and peers at various convenings, including ALA, CALIcon, and AALL.

Library and law school conferences are great ways to network with others working on the same challenges you are, engage with sessions addressing current issues, and talk to vendors and others in the law school and law library industries. 

ALA (American Library Association) 

FRIDA (Faculty Research & Information Delivery Assistance) staff recently attended the American Library Association’s 150th annual conference in Chicago and found it to be a wonderful experience. They were able to meet and connect with fellow librarians from around the country, including one librarian from the University of Delaware, and another who is a middle school librarian in Indiana. It was particularly interesting to hear about the work of a middle school librarian, a rare opportunity only possible because staff were able to attend a major conference like ALA and what makes it such a valuable opportunity.  

Their favorite panel, among many, was Unlocking History: How Librarians Can Harness AI for Family and Local History Research. The panel covered recent developments in AI transcription of handwritten documents. Of particular note, Transkribus, which is shaping up to be a powerful tool since it’s specifically being trained on cursive, and FamilySearch.org which is using AI to make a huge set of documents available through full text search (like land deeds, wills, obituaries, and other county and court documents).  

CALIcon 

Debbie Ginsberg, Manager of Emerging Technology Initiatives, attended the 2026 CALIcon at the beautiful University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  CALICon is a small law school technology conference sponsored by CALI, the people who make the online legal lessons and provide CALI awards.   

The conference focuses on technology issues important to law school faculty, staff (especially librarians and IT), and students.  The keynote speaker explained how he used artificial intelligence (AI) to teach a doctrinal class, focusing both on what worked and what did not.   

One of Debbie’s favorite sessions focused on vibe coding, using AI to help code websites and other projects.  The session both explained the reasoning and process behind vibe coding and provided space and time for attendees to try vibe coding on their own.  Find examples and learn more about how to vibe code on their Law as Code site. 

Debbie led a session, too: ABA Formal Opinion 512 and its Impact on Law Libraries.  This session featured an in-depth discussion of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct and how they affect legal practice and law school teaching.  In this interactive session, the audience interjected their own opinions and ideas on a variety of issues from how AI affects client confidentiality to what “competence” really means. 

AALL (American Association of Law Libraries) 

Debbie attended the American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting in Cleveland from July 19-22.  She moderated a popular session on vibe coding where librarians from different kinds of law libraries discussed how they use this in their day-to-day work.  Debbie also attended a session on preserving legal materials featuring HLS Library’s Director for Collections Caroline Walters and a session on contract negotiations moderated by Research Librarian Deanna Barmakian. 

One of her favorite sessions every year is Cool Tools Café. This year’s tools included The Docket, a site that “aggregates calls for papers from across legal academia into a single searchable platform”, as described by the presenter. This site is regularly updated by AI agents searching for the latest information.  Users can even set up alerts to learn when new calls have been added! 

For all of us, ALA, CALI, and AALL offered valuable opportunities to learn from our colleagues, explore emerging tools and ideas, and bring fresh perspectives back to our work at HLSL.