It seems that we celebrate more when the weather is warm. Whether you are at a wedding or just having a simple BBQ in your backyard, we all seem to be more open to finding pleasure in the moment during the summer.

As a chapter we have much to celebrate. The 2005 SLA Annual Conference was a huge success. Our chapter played a significant role in helping more than 5300 colleagues feel welcome, comfortable and entertained during their stay. I have received several emails offering thanks for the Do North: Guide to Toronto, the conference website and advice offered at the Toronto information booth. I wish to extend my gratitude to Mary Hum and Kolette Taber for their leadership of the Local Arrangements Committee. Everyone on the committee worked very hard to ensure the Toronto chapter shone brightly.

Heather Wilson deserves special recognition for her outstanding efforts in organizing the Toronto information booth. If you were at the conference you noticed that she was always at the booth and with a smile! She did a heroic job of recruiting, training and organizing the dozens of volunteers required to man the booth. This was a job of gathering all of the tourism literature, door prizes and the graphic design for our signs. It was no small feat and she did it graciously and enthusiastically.

Pam Rollo presented her vision as the new association president. Her message to us was full of excitement, determination and optimism. It is clear, that as a group, we can look forward to innovation and forward momentum. Several new task forces are being established and a call for volunteers will be put out in the near future. Pam has challenged each chapter to find 1% of its membership to serve in some way at the national level. I know as a chapter we have many talented people with a great deal to offer. I hope that more than 1% of you will respond when the call is made.

Another aspect of Pam’s vision includes more recognition of our membership. I couldn’t agree more, particularly because our chapter membership is so diverse and interesting. I would be delighted to hear from anyone with an idea for an award or for nominees deserved of recognition. I am hoping to create several new awards this year and look to your input for inspiration.

We have another reason to celebrate. We now have more than 500 members in our chapter. If you recently joined, welcome! I hope you will continue to receive the benefits of membership beyond the annual conference. I look to you to tell us ways to keep you engaged. This is your association so please speak up and get your money’s worth.

In closing, I’d like to send a personal congratulation to Gayle Kiss. Early in July she became Gayle Gossen. I had the privilege of attending her very beautiful wedding on Salt Spring Island. I am sure I speak for the Chapter when I wish her and her new husband all the best.

Laura Knapp

It’s hard to believe that the 2005 SLA conference has come and gone! Hosting the conference in Toronto was a unique opportunity for us to showcase our Chapter, our wonderful city and the convention centre. For me, the highlight was co-convening, with Barbara Slawek, the ever-popular Canadian reception. Barbara and I were delighted to learn that this year’s Canadian reception had the highest attendance ever! We are grateful to Micromedia ProQuest for their generous sponsorship of this event.

The SLA community has much work to do between now and next year’s conference in Baltimore. Hopefully the “Board Watch” column will keep the Toronto chapter informed and enthused about SLA activities!

News from the 2005 Conference

As almost 5,300 people descended upon Toronto for the SLA 2005 conference, the impact on the city was impossible to miss. First, our conference’s demand for Internet access set a new record for the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, which had to bring in additional servers to add capacity. The Canadian Visitors Bureau estimated the financial boon to the local economy at more than $10 million. And then there were the local news media.

The Globe and Mail ran an almost half-page feature, including a photo, headlined “Librarians as Tech-Savvy Sleuths.” The Toronto Sun ran an item. The CBC’s “Metro Morning” radio programme featured a live in-studio interview with President Pam Rollo and member Michele Melady (of the CBC staff).

Click University is Here!

On Monday, June 6th at the annual conference, Click University became a reality. With a crowd of a few hundred looking on, the online learning community was inaugurated during a ceremony presided over by SLA President Ethel Salonen and Executive Director Janice Lachance.
SLA’s Click University (clickuniversity.com) is an online learning community created expressly to meet the professional development and continuing education needs of librarians and information professionals worldwide. Use of Click University is reserved exclusively for SLA members.

“In the past, the options for ‘info pros’ pursuing career development were limited – mainly seminars and conferences requiring travel, registration, tuition and fees that often proved cost-prohibitive,” said Executive Director Janice R. Lachance. “Click University obliterates those barriers,” Lachance said. “This means every SLA member can get top-notch, university-level courses anywhere, anytime; complete the work at their own pace; and at a price that’s right for them.”

Click University offers 10 course libraries with a combined total of 320 courses. Six-month and yearly subscriptions are priced between US $19 and US$249. You may choose from courses ranging from software programs you use every day to a graduate degree program.
Significant funding for Click University’s launch was provided by Elsevier, which contributed US$60,000 to the effort. Future development will be supported by SLA and its Professional Development Campaign.

Click University will continue to grow and expand a dynamic library of e-courses. The course catalog currently concentrates on core skills such as software and technology use; management, communications and leadership strategies; and effective practices and methods for the collection, sharing and use of information and knowledge in the modern working world.
In addition to Click University’s library of courses, Click students are eligible for a 50% discount on individual Syracuse University e-courses, and a 10% discount on Syracuse graduate degree and certificate program courses. Click also offers Drexel University courses at a 20% discount, and SLA and Drexel continue talks that could expand the partnership and educational offerings.

To get clicking, go to www.clickuniversity.com.

SLA Expands with the Addition of Two New Caucuses

At their June 8, 2005 meeting, the SLA Board approved the creation of two new caucuses. Dennis Hamilton is the convener of the Architecture, Building Engineering, Construction and Design Caucus (KABC). This new caucus seeks to serve those information professionals working for public and private organizations in the building and real estate trades. This includes, but is not limited to, architecture, building engineering, construction, interior design, landscape architecture, development, public works, historic preservation, urban planning/urban design, planning, and real estate.

The second new caucus is the Inclusion Caucus (KINC). Linda Absher and Liz Blankson-Hemens are the co-convenors.

Its scope reads as follows: SLA is an organization made up of members from a multitude of ethnic, geographic, political, religious, sexual orientation, gender, abilities and age backgrounds. This diversity is strength and a challenge. SLA faces many of the same issues that other organizations and businesses do who operate across boundaries. The Inclusion Caucus will offer coordination of and partnering for the initiatives of various as SLA units addressing these challenges as well as the collection and dissemination of information and best practices from our membership. Where the activities of other units are aligned with the scope of the Inclusion Caucus, the caucus will link to and promote the efforts of the other unit.

A caucus is an informal group within SLA that is intended to serve as a focus for the interaction of members who share a common interest not covered by any chapter, division, or committee. To add either of these two new caucuses to an existing membership, please send a cheque for US$12 with a note requesting the addition of the specific caucus to Finance Department, SLA International Headquarters, 331 South Patrick Street, Alexandria, VA 22314-3501 USA. If paying by credit card, contact SLA Membership at +1.703.647.4900.

Disaster Response Network Begins Taking Shape

The SLA Task Force on Natural Disasters recently held a briefing for chapter and division leaders to inform them of plans for a volunteer disaster response network. Dubbed the Information Professionals’ Alliance on Natural Disasters and Accidents (IPANDA), this network will field requests for information from emergency responders and relief agency personnel for the purpose of improving preparedness and facilitating immediate support in the wake of a tragic event. For more information contact the task force at ipanda@sla.org.

For information regarding membership, please email me at

href="mailto:pcasey1@cogeco.ca">pcasey1@cogeco.ca

Dennis Gaulin: Infopreneur Extraordinaire
By Vicki Casey

The information world lost one of its best and brightest with the sudden death of Dennis Gaulin on July 16th, 2005.

Dennis was an advocate for information and the benefits it could bring when applied judiciously and wisely. Always the master of metaphor, he saw its potential reflected in the shifting patterns and colours seen through the kalaidiscopes he collected from around the world. As a credit professional, Dennis delighted in measuring the impact of a decision, and finding the direct link between performance improvement and a piece of sound data. As an expert researcher, he was constantly on the watch for new, innovative pathways to elusive bits of data, whether via an online information service, a web search tool, print publication or another person’s expertise. As a new thinker, no subject or idea was too esoteric to become grist for the mill in his quest to demystify how knowledge workers can process data for maximum impact. As a communicator, he engaged his audiences with a magic mix of razor-sharp intelligence, humour, infectious enthusiasm and an uncanny ability to distill complex ideas into crystal clear phrases.

Dennis first discovered information in the trenches as a credit manager at Black and Decker Canada. There he learned that reaping the performance gains promised by the internet would not come simply through plugging a few words into a search tool – what he called “slot machine searching.” Knowledge workers must become “information intelligent,” armed with the basic skills required to access and apply information on the fly. Organizations, he believed, must make a commitment to promoting, supporting and rewarding information intelligence among knowledge workers.

After leaving Black and Decker, Dennis took a year off to focus on spreading the word about information intelligence. Thousands of knowledge workers across North America experienced his highly-successful Data to Decisions seminar. He wrote numerous enthusiastically-received articles, some in library publications. He realized his dream of writing a book – The Credit Manager’s Internet Handbook: Data to Decisions. I was privileged to collaborate with him in writing and publishing the book, an experience that proved to be the most creative, laughter-filled, challenging experience of my career.

At the time of his death, Dennis was shaking things up, information-wise, as Manager of Credit Services at the Export Development Corporation in Ottawa. He embraced his position there with his customary energy and activism.

Dennis respected librarians as information specialists, and never failed to advise his executive and knowledge worker audiences to consider librarians the experts in locating elusive bits of data. His 8 A’s of Information was his gift to the profession, a model designed to help librarians communicate to organizational decision makers the importance of their competencies.

Dennis was a true original. His thirst for learning was unquenchable, and creative ideas just kept coming. He had a gift for living life with gusto and optimism every day. He was a loving husband and father to wife Denise and sons Kyle and Keith, and a loyal and generous friend and colleague.

Visit Dennis’s web site at www.prismthinking.com to read his 8 A’s of Information article, and to see his kalaidiscope collection.

Professor Ethel Weiss Auster (1942-2005)

Professor Ethel Weiss Auster, AB, MLS, Ed.D., Professor at the Faculty of Information Studies, passed away unexpectedly in her sleep on July 1, 2005. Born in Montreal on June 4, 1942, Prof. Auster graduated from Outremont High School in 1959, attended McGill University 1959 – 1960, and after two years in Cambridge, England, resumed her undergraduate education at Boston University. She obtained a Master’s degree at Simmons College, also in Boston, and was librarian at Brookline High School for two years. After the birth of her son David she returned to Canada, settling in Toronto. She resumed work as research librarian at the Toronto Board of Education, then as librarian at OISE/University of Toronto.

It was at OISE that Prof. Auster began her studies for her doctoral degree. While completing her research and dissertation, she was appointed Assistant Professor of Library Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A year and a half later she returned to Toronto to join the University of Toronto, in what was then called the Faculty of Library Science.

For 23 years Prof. Auster was an esteemed and well-loved Professor at what became the Faculty of Information Studies. She served as Chair of Doctoral Studies for 15 years, guiding scores of students through the program – providing insight, research direction, and practical advice that made her a legend across the country. A brave, forthright, and committed colleague, she was a mainstay of the Faculty through a number of major changes and developments. She was also a frequent speaker at a variety of North American conferences, including those of the Canadian Library Association and the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

Prof. Auster’s research dealt with libraries, management, and information use – covering such topics as the information-seeking behaviour of managers, the evaluation of online services, information dissemination, the retrenchment and downsizing of large academic libraries, and most recently the training and development needs of librarians.

The recipient of many awards, Prof. Auster was granted the Miles Blackwell Award for Outstanding Academic Librarian in June 2005 by the Canadian Association of College and University Libraries for her “outstanding national and international contribution to academic librarianship and library development.” As noted in the citation, she “demonstrated this achievement through her formidable research and publishing record, in which her projects support the investigation of issues relating to academic librarians and academic libraries.” The award also lauded her role as a spokesperson and leader who actively promoted academic libraries and librarianship in Canada, and the significant mentoring role she played in the careers of academic librarians.

During her career Prof. Auster published three books, co-authored two others, and wrote numerous scholarly articles. A reviewer praised her latest book, Downsizing in Academic Libraries, co-authored with Shauna Taylor (University of Toronto Press, 2004), as “ground-breaking” and “the most comprehensive survey of the impact of downsizing in Canada’s university libraries.” Another noted “the remarkable, even exemplary, clarity of thought behind the writing and structure.” In addition, noting a property that endeared her to generations of colleagues and students, the reviewer pointed out that “refreshingly, Auster and Taylor’s conclusion offers suggestions for improvement, reminding readers that ‘economic downturns are part of the normal business cycle,’ and concluding that the results from this study can help in getting it right the next time.”

In addition to her own research, Prof. Auster served her community in many capacities: she was twice elected to the Governing Council of the University of Toronto, and over the past two years spent countless hours reviewing doctoral student award applications for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She had unfailing energy for doctoral students, many of whom were inspired by her forthright intellectual honesty, her unstinting regard for others, and her exacting scholarly standards. With many of them she formed lasting mutually gratifying friendships.
Prof. Auster is survived by her son, David L. Auster, his wife Janis H. Auster, of New York City, and David’s father Henry Auster, of Toronto. Condolences to the family can be sent to dean@fis.utoronto.ca or by post to:

David Auster, c/o Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto, 140 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5S 3G6

Professor Karen Olcen

Passed away peacefully on Monday July 18, 2005, after a year long struggle with lung cancer. Her unexpected passing came as a great shock to her friends and family. A professor in the Library and Information Technician Program at Seneca College.

At Seneca College, Karen was known for her intellect and her cataloguing expertise. She is remembered for her strength, her consideration and her independence, characteristics that were especially evident during this last year. We will miss her humour. We share her loss with her 19-year-old son, Kenneth Hasell and Kenneth’s father, Doug Hasell and by her brother Pat Olcen and his family

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Canadian Cancer Society www.cancer.ca.

Fall Plans

I have been asked to continue as chair for the Solos until the end of the calendar year and have a few plans for the upcoming fall season. BUT I WOULD BE HAPPY TO GET ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS FROM YOU!

Last winter, the Solos living and/or working north of Toronto got together for dinner one evening and did some serious networking. We are going to be meeting again this fall, probably in mid-October and hope to include our Brampton colleagues as well. So, please let me know what day of the week works best for you and suggest a restaurant somewhere around Hwy 7 between Yonge and Hwy 400.

Our monthly downtown lunches will resume in late September but the day will probably change to Wednesdays. Also, we are looking for a new location that will hold a dozen or so people. Let me know if your company has a boardroom they would be willing to “lend” us. Our first meeting will be a “meet and greet” networking lunch but I am looking into the possibility of having some speakers come and talk to us. Possible subjects include Copyright and Professional Development. If you know of someone who might be willing to talk to us, or if you have something you would like to share, do get in touch with me.

New Members

We are always looking for solo colleagues with whom to connect. So pass this issue of Courier around and bring a fellow solo to an event happening near you!

Looking forward to seeing all of you again in the fall.

Gillian Clinton is the principal of Clinton Research. Her company provides information research, knowledge management and library services to corporations or individuals on an as-needed basis. She can be reached at clintonresearch@yahoo.ca or 416-218-9038.

This was a special year to be an SLA student representative at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies (FIS) since the 96th annual SLA Conference was held in Toronto. Judging by the number of FIS students who turned out for the conference both as attendees and as volunteers, special librarianship is a career path in which many FIS students are interested. Through our activities over the past year, my co-chair Marjan Farahbaksh and I did our best to generate this interest and involvement in SLA and the conference.

It was our objective not only to promote student involvement in the conference and SLA, but also to create awareness of special libraries. I considered this role to be of great importance as library students should know the variety of library types of that exist in order to know where they may be interested in working in the future. Through this task I too learned about special libraries and the terrific network that exists among them. Our final task was to enhance the SLA Toronto Student Group’s (SLA-TSG) operations, and we did so by improving the website design and providing interesting and relevant programming.

In order to expand the students’ knowledge base of special libraries, we organized events that would be of interest to students throughout the year. We invited three speakers to come and share their experiences and expertise, and we held three tours. Our first speaker Daniel Lee, research librarian with Navigator Inc. and director of SLA Toronto Chapter, spoke in October about how he was able to obtain work, and offered tips on the job search for recent FIS graduates. This was a very well-attended event, and the students really enjoyed Daniel’s down-to-earth approach and his valuable insights. Next, we held a tour of the headquarters of Canada’s pre-eminent newspaper The Globe and Mail.

In the winter term, Nick Nanos, an information security consultant, spoke to us about how information security and compliance with Canada’s privacy laws can benefit companies. We then held two tours of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Near the end of the semester we had the pleasure of hearing Ulla de Stricker discuss the skills and behaviours that will help new graduates in their future jobs. The wisdom she has acquired through her work experience made her the perfect spokesperson for these issues.

It was generous of all the speakers to donate their time and efforts to SLA-TSG (www.fis.utoronto.ca/people/affiliated/sla-tsg/articles/About_SLA-TSG.htm). In between these talks and our coursework, Marjan donated her web skills to redesigning the SLA-TSG website. It has a simpler design, allowing greater accessibility and ease of navigation, and is now relevant and up-to-date. Marjan’s efforts were acknowledged at the SLA conference where, at the SLA student group awards ceremony, SLA-TSG won third place for ‘Creative Use of Electronic Resources’.

Marjan and I feel we have benefited tremendously from our role in the SLA-TSG. We learned to organize and advertise events, and we gained the satisfaction of knowing that we have generated awareness and interest in special libraries. It was also satisfying to become part of the special libraries community as we met several people involved in the Toronto Chapter of the SLA. We have turned our duties over to three first-year students for the upcoming academic year, and we are certain that they will continue the group’s activities with skill and commitment. Marjan and I look forward to continuing our involvement with the SLA.

“Where can I get a Swing dance?”

This was my first question as I began my shift as a volunteer at the Toronto Chapter Hospitality Booth at the recent SLA conference.

What’s more, it was clear that the conference delegate asking the question was in a rush to get somewhere else. She wanted an answer right away–just like a regular library user! I tried to think fast.

“There are some supper clubs that have live swing bands that do that sort of thing…but I’m not sure what there names are or just where they are,” I trailed off.

I scanned the table in front of me hoping to spot a brochure that might be helpful-to no avail.

“There might be something in Now magazine,” (www.nowtoronto.com) one of the other volunteers at the booth offered as he started leafing through the magazine.

“Why don’t I just take that with me,” the woman suggested. “I’m in a bit of a hurry. Thanks for your help.”

“Uhm. Okay,” I stammered, thinking, darkly, that I had been of no help at all.

But there was no time to reflect on my apparent limitations as a reference librarian as more and more people arrived at the booth with more and more questions:

Budget considerations made an Internet connection at the hospitality booth impossible. Instead, volunteers relied upon their own reference skills, as well as old fashioned, hard copy sources to answer these and other questions.

Volunteer coordinator Heather Wilson, charged with both staffing and stocking the booth, had done an amazing job accumulating Toronto city attraction brochures, maps, magazines and other helpful items. On top of all this she managed to get over fifty volunteers to sign up for ninety-minute shifts, ensuring that there were no fewer than three people at the booth at any time. This meant that many questions were handled as a collaborative effort.

A particularly useful source was Do Norht: Guide to Toronto (www.sla.org/toronto/2005/DoNorth.pdf), a guidebook put together by the Toronto Chapter Local Arrangements Committee. Do North featured listings of restaurants, bookstores, and libraries. Also helpful were the yellow and white pages, which most volunteers sheepishly admitted they hadn’t cracked open in years. (Remember those days before Canada411.com?)

The Yellow Pages came in handy for volunteer Pam Casey. Working an early shift when the booth was just opening one morning at 7:30, Pam remembers consulting them to assist a delegate looking for the nearest laundromat. Pam supplemented what she found in the Yellow Pages with a suggestion that neighbourhood dry cleaners might also handle laundry.

Unable to consult the Internet, some volunteers took the opportunity to make telephone calls on behalf of delegates seeking specific information unavailable in the various brochures and guidebooks at the hospitality booth. Volunteer Erika Steffer called the Ontario Wheelchair Sports Association to find out about similar local associations. This came in response to a question from a delegate who volunteered with her own local Paralympic Association and wanted to visit a comparable association in Toronto.

“Where are the best underground goth clubs in town?”

Volunteer Michel-Adrien Sheppard recalls this as the most interesting question posed during his stint at the booth. And where did he find the answer?

“I answered off the top of my head (essentially guessing based on street posters I’ve read, because, of course I would never be seen in a Goth club), and by perusing a copy of Now magazine. Who would have guessed that looking closely at all those strange posters as I walk along Queen Street West would come in handy one day in my professional life?”

Many stopping by the booth were seeking personal recommendations. Several delegates, explaining that they had only one free evening, wanted to make the most of it. What would we suggest they do? Volunteers fond of particular neighbourhoods tended to recommend their favourites: dinner in the Beaches followed by a stroll on the boardwalk, or perhaps a visit to the Distillery District.

Along the same lines, volunteer Daniel Lee remembers being asked, “What’s a must see in Toronto?” by a delegate whose CE course had been cancelled, leaving him with three hours to kill. Daniel’s answer: “Pick a neighbourhood and walk-Queen West, St Lawrence, Beaches. It’s a very Toronto thing to wander around a neighbourhood.”

Beer-savvy booth volunteers suggested the nearby Steamwhistle Brewery and C’est What, to delegates wondering where to find brewery tours, “good micro-beer”, or the “best pubs”.

And what could we suggest to delegates who wanted to take home an example of Canadian food? In lieu of the problems that back bacon or butter tarts might have created at the border, Smarties seemed like a safe bet. (The candy-covered chocolates are not available in the U.S., and many of the delegates asking about this were American.)

There were moments, however, when personal recommendations, collaborative effort and creative thinking just didn’t cut it. At least one hospitality booth volunteer ended up taking the more difficult questions home to look up answers online. Gwen Harris recalls searching in vain for a Serbo-Croatian restaurant during her booth shift. None of the restaurant guides had such a category, but she was able to find listings in two minutes or so using Google. Gwen emailed the delegate, and logged the restaurants in a list at the booth the next day – in case the question arose again.

Towards the end of my shift, a familiar face appeared at the booth. It was the woman who had asked about swing dancing an hour or so earlier. And she was smiling!

“You guys are great!” she exclaimed, pushing the Now magazine under my nose. It was open to the Live Music section.

“See? There are a couple of clubs. Now, how would I get to these?”

Another volunteer and I pulled out city and TTC maps and started marking a route for the woman to follow.

And so it went at the Toronto Chapter Hospitality Booth–satisfied clients, and enthusiastic librarians – the best combination in any library setting, and a particularly fitting way to welcome the 5,000 delegates to SLA here in Toronto.

Greg Barber

One thing was clear from the many content aggregators at the SLA Conference 2005, the interfaces are beautiful to look at, taxonomies and metadata are the underpinning for all sophisticated tools, and clustering is being adopted as a search aid. All of that is happening for the specialized information products. On the Web it’s a different matter, at least judging from Google. There could be a battle building between the sophistication of specialty tools and the simplicity, sometimes deceiving, of Google.

Interfaces

Perhaps usability really is improving, or we’re getting used to certain designs. As Marshall McLuhan wrote, “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” Search interfaces of the products at all the vendors seemed well laid out and straightforward to use.

ABI Inform, as one example, has a new design using of tabs for topics and publications and dropdown boxes for search options that seems cleaner and simpler. Tabbed navigation is also employed for browsing dissertations by subject and location. (www.proquest.com/division/pqnext/previews/UserInterfacePreview/)

A more complex but very effective interface is seen at Scopus, the abstract and indexing database of scientific, technical, medical and social sciences literature from Elsevier. Scopus was a multi-year project in which 300 scientists and 21 research institutions were involved in testing and evaluation. Testimonials from the University of Toronto, Oxford University and several others praised the interface as well as the connections to full-text holdings and the use of Scirus for web searching. Its success is due in large part to the easy-to-use options for refining the search by source title, author name, year, document type, and subject area. One testimonial states, “Nothing is superfluous, everything is useful, has its place. When you arrive on the site, you are not lost, you know exactly where to look and search, you know what you want and you can express it easily.”

There is a short demo at the Scopus site showing how easy it is to make choices and refine results. (www.scopus.com/scopus/home.url)

Taxonomies and Metadata

The search functionality of these tools is built upon an extensive structure of metadata to describe the records fully, taxonomies to guide the user through the topic, fielded search on the main descriptive elements, and controlled vocabulary used in related terms and indexing.

All of this apparatus is in play with the Compendia from CAB International for research and reference into forestry, crop protection, and animal health and production. For example, you can use the diagnostic search to find pests of plants by host, country, pest type, stage affected and symptoms. The datasheets have extensive profiles with text, images, statistics, and geographic mapping. There are complete taxonomic trees for locating datasheets on species. See these features at work in one of the downloadable demos from Compendia. (www.cabi.org/compendia.asp)

Taxonomies as a structured approach to viewing content are gaining ground. LexisNexis announced during the conference a taxonomy program in which LexisNexis would work with companies to set up a system to organize unstructured content using a combination of customized rule sets and the LexisNexis taxonomies. These are taxonomies LexisNexis has developed over the last 15 years that cover business subjects, industries, geographic locations, companies, organizations, and people. (www.lexisnexis.com/about/releases/0802.asp)

Clustering

Some specialty information resources are also parsing the text of search results to find commonalities and cluster them into groups that are usually topically inclined.

The Life Science Research Center at Infotrieve does aggregated searches of a range of sources that cover patents, protocols, and papers on scientific subjects related to biotechnology and pharmacology. Again, this is a tool that uses categories and field searches for author, title, year, patent number, and lets you narrow by gene, organism, disease and anatomy. But LSRC also extracts terms on the fly and clusters results according to linguistic use and statistical occurrence using the clustering technology product Clusterizer from CyberTavern.

• Life Science Research Center – www4.infotrieve.com/products_services/databases/lsrc.asp
• Press Release about Clusterizer – www.prweb.com/releases/2005/6/prweb255807.htm (June 2005)

On the web, you can see Clusterizer at work at iBoogie (www.iboogie.com), a clustering metasearch engine that accesses many Web search engines including Yahoo, MSN, and FindArticles.

Vivisimo (www.vivisimo.com) has been the acknowledged leader in clustering technology. Vivisimo had a booth in the exhibit hall hoping to reach some enterprise customers. It has published several white papers on the value of clustering and goes so far as to say: “Categorization of all this data has been the obvious solution to enable users to better deal with this “information overload”. Traditional approaches to categorization involving taxonomies, however, are too expensive, time-consuming and complex for most organizations. Clustering allows CIOs and IT departments to offer their knowledge workers and researchers the ability to view categorized results without the cost and complexity of taxonomy building.”

HighWire Press (highwire.stanford.edu) , a division of Stanford University, has been a platform for not-for-profit publishers to put content online where the abstracts and often the full text are accessible for free. It offers two topical views, one through subject classification and the other on-the-fly clustering. The second is provided by Vivisimo, which produces an “instant index” for search results whether this be for a general search or of a specific journal. Vivisimo clusters the results by common words or phrases and shows the number of results in each. This co-exists with the earlier and very effective classification done with Inxight software and presented in the topical hyperbolic tree.

Advanced Functions

Thomson may be delivering the nth degree of search functionality in its products. Mike Gray from the Thomson division for Legal and Regulatory spoke in a session moderated by Mary Ellen Bates on the Future of Search Engines. Gray spoke mainly about the extensive search functionality of Novus, the integrated delivery platform for combining content from various online services. Novus is being used for the legal products, NewsEdge and NewsRoom and will be leveraged across the remaining product lines. From the description we can conclude that it is rich with such value added components as editorial summarization, categorization, field markup, entity resolution, and document versioning. Search supports all the forms that information professionals love – boolean, proximity right down to the sentence level, stemming, synonyms, field searching, customized ranking, and also results by category. There are alerts and clipping services. Much of this is seen in WestLaw’s Smart Tools, which promises “desired results without building an expert query”.

Smart Tools on Westlaw – west.thomson.com/store/product.asp?product%5Fid=Westlaw+Smart+Tools
You must see the online demo especially if you like a lively tenor saxophone.

Google View

The specialized tools can take your breath away. What does Google have? Cathy Gordon, Director of Business Development at Google, also spoke in the session on the Future of Search Engines. She sees a future where “search will become more sophisticated and more personal but users will still want simple”. Google seems to be sticking with its formula of indexing everything it can (preferably with commercial benefit) and keeping a very simple interface. Ultimately it sees search as being ubiquitous.

Google has been expanding into premium content from publishers, most evident in Google Scholar, and has even added citation analysis. This is starting to encroach on the territory of the specialized information products. Gordon explained that Google Scholar had been the “first pass at working at content behind the firewall” (meaning the for-fee subscription).

It does have aspirations to serve a “global search community” by adding capabilities to handle translations and work well in multiple-language searches.

There have been some projects to make Google more “user-centric”. Search History is a kind of My Google: it records searches and web sites viewed making it easier to track back later. There is also the Personal Homepage intended for US users. These are in beta and still rough on the edges.

But Google offers no aids to help in narrowing a search, to disambiguate the meaning through any form of classification, powered by people or machine. It has sidelined its use of Open Directory Project, admittedly now the sick directory on the Net, and has never adopted any clustering of results using Vivisimo or other technology. When asked, Carol Gordon just said that clustering is very hard to do well.

Battleground

There could be a contest developing between the high-powered but possibly complex search tools like ProQuest and Google’s plain and simple keyword search.

The Googlization of search was the subject of a debate last winter at the Pennsylvania Library Association Annual Conference – Googlizers vs Resistors. One comment by Steven Bell, director of the library, Philadelphia University especially captured the conflict.

“Googlization sends our users a dangerous message. It suggests that we no longer believe in the advantages provided by traditional techniques like field search, or in the power of controlled vocabularies. If it all works like Google, why would these powerful search tools be necessary?… Consider a ProQuest Smartsearch: Even when people type in a bad first search it comes back with…some additional ways to find information on this topic. It will take a search that was typed in as a phrase and turn it into a Boolean search. It will provide you with subject headings from the controlled vocabulary. Google doesn’t care what happens.” www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA485756.html

Bill Buxton, Principal of Buxton Design, in his keynote on June 7 noted “virtually all technology that is going to have an impact in the next 5 years has been around for 10 to 15 years.” My bet is on taxonomies – however that is extended to Web searching – and clustering.

Gwen Harris teaches web-based and classroom courses on Web searching and Current Awareness Services through the Professional Learning Centre at the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto. Visit www.websearchguide.ca for information on courses and the Internet News weblog.

¹ Professional Learning Centre at the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto, has an online resource for learning more about taxonomies. The Taxonomy Guide: Online Resource & Learning Tool will be available in the Fall 2005.

Session: Mining the New Web for Information: RSS feeds, blogs, social networks and more

Presented by: Mary Ellen Bates, Bates Information
Presentation available at: www.batesinfo.com/sla-2005-new-web.pdf

As we all know, the World Wide Web is a beast. And we all know that, as information professionals, it’s daunting to stay on top of the unending ebbs and flows of the web. Thank goodness for Mary Ellen Bates (Bates Information Services), who is without a doubt, a masterful maven. Ever-enlightening and always entertaining, Mary Ellen had the room raptured as she presented her thoughts on using RSS feeds, blogs, multimedia search tools and social networks to discover hidden gems of information on the web at the most recent SLA conference here in Toronto.

RSS

If you’re asking yourself at this point, “What’s RSS?” get yourself over to Wikipedia stat (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss) and brush up. The single most enlightening element of this portion of Bates’ presentation was the use of RSS feeds to monitor search engine results. The bulk of the major engines out there now provide RSS feeds of their results. This is very handy if you run similar searches on a periodic basis. Add the RSS feed of the search result to your RSS reader and you don’t have to visit the search engine site every time you want to see the newest results of your search. Just refresh the RSS feed and voila!

For an example of how this technique could be useful, I use MSN News’ RSS feed to monitor the emergence of public opinion polls as they are reported in the media. I refresh my RSS feed from MSN News for the search “ipsos-reid (survey OR poll)” [this isn't the full string, but you get the idea] and I instantly see the new results from this search. This technique is very handy if you’re trying to stay on top of emerging resources.

Blogs

Blogs aren’t simply the ravings of cybergeeks. The blog format is being used by countless sites out there to promote new resources (a la Gary Price’s Resource Shelf) and to manage newsletters (a la Genie Tyburski’s Virtual Chase). For those of us who are interested in market research particularly, Mary Ellen points out that blogs can be a great source for:

• Tracking consumer sentiment
• Identifying corporate reputations
• Tracking advertising effectiveness

According to Mary Ellen, blogs are the new source for market research of the web-savvy demographic. Be warned, blog searching is still in its infancy, so don’t expect any miracles just yet. Things are improving, however, so stay tuned. In the meantime, Mary Ellen suggests you check out the following two websites to see what’s available right now:

• Intelliseek’s BlogPulse Conversation Tracker http://showcase.blogpulse.com/conversation.html
• Blogs and RSS Search Engines on Fagan Finder http://faganfinder.com/blogs

Multimedia search

Like blog searching, multimedia (audio and video) searching is in its infancy. Gains are being made; but in the meantime, check out the following recommended sites:

Video search

• Yahoo video search video.search.yahoo.com
• Google video search video.google.com
• Blinkx tv video search blinkxtv.com
• Speechbot speechbot.research.compaq.com

Audio and video search

• Singing Fish www.singingfish.com

Podcasting

I’m still not quite certain where all the excitement about podcasting is coming from and why it seems to be taking so long for it to become mainstream. In my eyes, podcasting is more or less equivalent to taping a show with a blank tape. Remember walkmans and mixed tapes? Same thing.

Find podcasts at:

• Podcast.net www.podcast.net
• Podcast Alley www.podcastAlley.com

Search for them at:

• Podscope www.podscope.com (beta)

Social Networks

Now, here came the serious “Aha!” moment for me. The idea of tapping into social network sites like Friendster ? Linkedin ? orkut ? Ryze to find biographical information (especially on executives) is pure genius. By showing us one of the contacts in her “network”, Mary Ellen demonstrated quite clearly that people offer up a lot of information about themselves on these sites. These sites can be veritable fountains of information not available anywhere else. There is one caveat. You can usually only search people in your network, so there is an incentive to get your friends and colleagues to join. What come goes around, comes around I guess.

It wasn’t mentioned during Mary Ellen’s presentation, but I would caution you, dear reader, to memorize the Terms of Use statement on these sites before proceeding. Privacy issues come into play and you want to make sure you are on the right side of justice.

Sites Mentioned

• MSN News search.msn.com/news/results.aspx
• Resource Shelf www.resourceshelf.com/
• The Virtual Chase www.virtualchase.com/
• Friendster www.friendster.com/
• LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/
• Orkut www.orkut.com/
• Ryze business www.ryze.com/

Daniel Lee is a Research Librarian with Navigator Ltd. in Toronto. Daniel can be reached by e-mail at
danielplee@sympatico.ca.