Caroline Young, grant recipient, on the AALL Conference!

I want to thank the Computer Services Special Interest Section for awarding me the 2009 CS-SIS Grant for Students and New Librarians with less than Three Years of Service.   This grant enabled me to attend the most important conference in the law library field: The American Association of Law Libraries Annual Conference.  I found the wide variety of educational programs fantastic.  I connected with many new friends and colleagues.  Additionally, the extensive exhibits were great for learning about cutting-edge products and trends in the use of technology in law libraries.

The Computer Services Special Interest Section is so important to me because I am personally very interested in the use of technology to support all of the functions in the library.  I have started the second year of my first job as a law librarian as the Reference and Technology Librarian at Rutgers Law School in Newark, N.J.  I see my position as the link between technical services and public services within our library.

I found the many CS-SIS activities to be excellent.  My favorite program was “Making Your ILS Web 2.0 Happy”.   This was so helpful for me because I oversee and optimize the use of all modules of our integrated library system (Millennium) and provide training.  The program gave me so many ideas for ways to improve our integrated library system and our OPAC.   Hearing the experiences of others and knowing that I could follow-up with the speakers if I had more specific questions has motivated me to use additional technologies to improve our systems and make the OPAC more user friendly.  As a result, I think I will have a very productive second year at my job!

I also truly enjoyed the opportunity to be a guest at the CS Breakfast Business Meeting and Awards (despite the early hour!).  This gave me great insight into all of the individuals and all of the hard work that has been put into creating all of the activities, programs, and workshops that the CS-SIS implements.  I was really impressed!  I very much hope to have the opportunity to become more active with the CS-SIS in the future.  Thank you again for awarding me the 2009 CS-SIS Grant for Students and New Librarians with less than Three Years of Service.

See you in Denver!

Caroline Young, JD, MLIS
Reference and Technology Librarian
Rutgers Law Library – Newark