Congratulations to this year’s SCALL award winners. SCALL members have benefited throughout the years from the indelible and lasting contributions of this year’s award winners and are lucky to call them colleagues and friends. A big thanks to the Awards Committee (Jennifer Berman, Jim Senter, and Larry Meyer) for their work recognizing this wonderful group of candidates.
- Diana Jaque was awarded the William B. Rohan Chapter Service Award in recognition of her long-standing and exceptional service on the Institute Committee and SCALL. Over the years, Diana has served and chaired many Institute subcommittees, such as the Exhibits sub-committee. Her major contribution has been providing expertise and guidance regarding the institute hotel site selection for over a decade. She works closely with the incoming VP to determine site location preference. She has extensive knowledge regarding SCALL’s hotel facility needs for exhibitors and attendees. Her very detailed information/checklist guides the VP/Institute Chair’s analysis regarding hotel selection. She has established close relations with the hotel event/banquet coordinators with whom SCALL has contracted for past events. She has developed (in conjunction with other past presidents) a detailed cost spreadsheet that enables the VP/institute chair to track and assess institute expenditures and income. Also, for the past few years she has been the driving force behind the Inner City Youth Committee.
- Ralph Stahlberg was awarded the Albert O. Brecht Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his long-standing and exceptional service to SCALL. Ralph Stahlberg retired from the LA Law Library in 2016 after 28 years of service to the public and SCALL members. In 1988, Ralph joined the library as a Reference Librarian. He progressed to Senior Librarian and ultimately to Director of Reference & Research. He played a pivotal role in developing services that helped SCALL and the public. During his tenure at the LA Law Library, Ralph worked with SCALL’s inner city youth internship program by organizing law library work for a student for several summers, supervised the internships of many library school students from UCLA, USC, and San Jose State, conducted classes on California legislative history at SCALL meetings, and contributed in the SCALL newsletter. His dedication to law librarianship and SCALL was most evident as Ralph chaired the SCALL Archives committee from 1990 through his retirement. In 1999 he received the Rohan Chapter Service Award for his work as the SCALL archivist. And, recently he was instrumental in indexing and digitizing historical SCALL materials and making them available online (with the assistance of Ramon Barajas) via the SCALL website.
- Cindy Spohr, formerly of LexisNexis, was awarded the Vendor Appreciation Award in recognition of her unfailing support of SCALL over the last 20 plus years. As the Manager of the Librarian Relations Group at Lexis for over 20+ years, Cindy worked closely with both the national and the local librarian communities to support the work that we do. She was always willing to support underwriting SCALL events, such as the lunch for the SCALL Spring Institute for more than a decade. She created and maintained many programs including Teaching Research in Private Law Libraries (TRIPLL), Advanced Management for Private Law Librarians (AMPLL), Teaching Research in Academic Law Libraries (TRIALL) and Teaching Research in Court/Agency Law Libraries (TRICALL) which allowed SCALL members to join colleagues from other chapters to gather together for professional development over a decade. She gave librarian leaders (including members of SCALL) a voice in helping to shape LexisNexis products by creating the LexisNexis Librarian Advisory Board. At the annual AALL meetings, for over 20 years, Cindy organized and created educational opportunities, extended learning sessions, focus groups, CRIV sessions, and social events that encouraged SCALL members and members from all Chapters to participate and engage in law librarianship. She will be greatly missed at future AALL events.