Happy Canada Day!!

Summer is here and with it comes vacation time, long hot days and time to enjoy life, as it should be. Everything and everyone is in a relaxed mode. It is also the time for SLA’s Annual Conference and our chapter student awards.

June’s conference in Denver was one of the best. Al Gore was our opening keynote speaker and Scott Adams was our closing keynote speaker. Mr. Gore inspired us and Mr. Adams had us in stitches.

I had the distinct honour of meeting Mr. Gore at his book signing prior to the keynote speech on Sunday. It was really worth it sitting in line for 2 ½ hours to get An Inconvenient Truth signed for my son. I got to network with other SLA members who had the same goal as me. It was truly amazing and an experience I will never forget.

During the conference I attended many amazing sessions which included for the first time the “Synergy Session”. I also attended many receptions, including the best one there – The Canadian reception”, which this year was hosted by Eastern Canada. The Canadian reception is starting to be a big hit at the conference and is growing in size every year. Next year our chapter hosts the reception, which will be organized by our President-Elect Daniel Lee. From what I have heard it is going to be one heck of a party.

I am also very pleased to announce our student award winners this year. Each of these students earned top marks in their courses at each of their institutions:

• University of Toronto – Shannon McSheffrey
• University of Western – Kelly Celeste Farrah
• Seneca College – Jenifer Erlendson

I want to offer congratulations on behalf of the chapter to each of these students for their very hard work. It is an honour to receive and we need to recognize all the students. At the same time, I am pleased to recognize one of our Advisory Board members – Sandra Stephenson, who won the OLA Anniversary prize presented at the FIS award ceremony. Sandy was also a Beta Phi Mu Nominee. Congratulations Sandy.

Now for information on the relaxation event of the summer: on August 30th, SLA Toronto and CASLIS Toronto will be pleased to co-host our Summer Social at the Bedford Academy from 5:30-9:00pm. No reservation or RSVP is needed, just come and enjoy the weather and the great company. I hope to see you all there.

Have a great summer,

Pam Casey, CTT+
President, SLA Toronto Chapter

Well, the long, hot days of summer are finally here. For some that means picnics, family barbeques and summer vacation! But here at your Toronto chapter we are busy lining up the fall calendar (and recovering from SLA 2007).

In this summer issue of the Courier, President Pam Casey gives us some of the highlights of SLA 2007 as well as some recent chapter award winners. Juanita Richardson also brings back some of her thoughts on the Denver conference.

Our local group members have been busy so be sure to check out the latest installment of “People on the Move” to see who’s been up to what. Finally, our own Sandra Craig reports on the “Best of the Web” event held earlier this year – see what sites our members find most useful.

As always, we are looking for writers, occasional and regular, to contribute ideas, comments, thoughts, and news items. Share your experiences with your colleagues. Contact us directly anytime for more information.

Enjoy!!

Heather Postill
hpostill@sympatico.ca

Elizabeth Malak-McMullan
elizabeth.malak-mcmullan@vaughan.ca

1. SLA Blog

The SLA Blog site is up and running. This site will bring you information about
and from SLA’s 2007 Annual Conference and Exposition. After the conference, it will branch out into
other topics and continue to provide you information about the profession and
about SLA. New content will be added daily — and more
often — between now and the end of the conference. Check it out at http://slablogger.typepad.com/sla_blog.

2.  WIKIS

SLA has
secured wiki software for SLA
units to test, play, and use.  Are you interested
in using this tool for organizing, collaborating and presenting information for
members of your chapter, division, caucus, or association-level committee?  All content is organized into ‘spaces’, and
all wikis will be open to the entire membership.  You will only be able to view those wikis that were set up with "public" access.

The wiki software is developed using HTML standards and is
tested with all major browsers.  RSS and
e-mail allow you to interact from your daily work tools.  For details on its many features, click here.

Some of the systems features are unique – spaces allow easy linking to multiple wikis; you can create a blog in
every space with ‘News’; pages, comments, blogs and
attachments are all searchable; e-mail integration and PDF exporting.

To set up a
wiki for your unit, contact SLA Director of
Information Technology, Quan Logan.

3.  EPA Libraries Update

Mike Flynn,
Deputy Director of the Office of Information Analysis & Access for the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spoke to a group of more than 50 people
at the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference during a policy update.  In the audience was the new national program
manager for the national EPA library system (Deborah Balsamo).  There were also several EPA librarians and
those who work in EPA libraries on a contract basis.  I also had the privilege to have lunch with
Mike, Deborah and a few others.

Jill
Hurst-Wahl provides and update on the SLA blog: http://slablogger.typepad.com/sla_blog/2007/06/whats_happening.html

4.  2007 Annual Board Meeting Agenda and
Documents

Open
Session Agenda

SLA 2007 Board of Directors Meeting
Friday and Saturday 1-2 June 2007
Denver Convention Center
Denver, Colorado, USA

1. Opening of the Meeting
• 1.1 Call to order
• 1.2 Announcements and Recognition of Special Guests and Board Candidates
• 1.3 Adoption of the Agenda
• 1.4 President’s Remarks
• 1.41 Summary of Executive Session
• 1.42 Staff Recognitions
• 1.43 Comments of President-Elect
• 1.5 Public Discussion Forum
2. Consent Agenda

   [The consent agenda is a group of action items that can be adopted without separate debate or vote by the unanimous consent of the board. Any board member may remove any items from the consent agenda for any reason prior to the adoption of the consent agenda.]

• 2.1 A07-25 Open Session Minutes for the 24 & 27 January 2007 Board of Directors Meeting (Document Forthcoming)
• 2.2 A07-26 Awards Committee Annual Report
3. Items for Action
• 3.1 A07-27 Committee on Association Governance and Awards and Honors Committee Proposed Change in the Charge of the Awards and Honors Committee
• 3.2 A07-28 Committee on Association Governance and Bylaws Committee Proposed Change in the Charge of the Bylaws Committee
4. Program Updates and Reports
• 4.1 B07-20 SLA 2007 Denver Conference Program Committee Report
• 4.2 B07-21 SLA 2008 Seattle Conference Planning Committee Update
• 4.3 B07-22 Centennial Commission and 2009 Conference Planning Committee Update
• 4.4 B07-23 Scholarship Committee Annual Report
• 4.5 B07-24 Student and Academic Affairs Advisory Council Annual Report
• 4.6 B07-25 Diversity Leadership Development Program Committee Annual Report
• 4.7 B07-26 Finance Committee Report
• 4.8 B07-27 HQ Operations Technology Update
• 4.8 B07-27 HQ Operations Technology Update
• 4.10 Chapter Update (Verbal)
• 4.11 Division Update (Verbal)
• 4.12 Alignment Initiative Report (Verbal)
5. Final Announcements and Adjournment
• 5.1 Public Discussion Forum
• 5.2 Other Business
• 5.3 Adjournment

Full documents are available here: http://www.sla.org/content/SLA/governance/bodsection/pastbodmtg/07annual/index.cfm.

Here are some of the upcoming events presented by SLA Toronto Chapter. For details see the Toronto chapter website (http://units.sla.org/chapter/ctor/).

August 30, 2007: CASLIS/ SLA Summer Pub Night

September 6, 2007: Click U Live webinar: Gary Price Tool Kit

October 25, 2007: Succession Planning
Presented by Vicki Whitmell

Thanks are due to Kolette Taber of The Canadian Health & Life Insurance Association (CLHIA) who continues to provide meeting space for the Downtown Solos.

Downtown Lunch Meetings

On April 23 we discussed how the solo practitioner can promote their library services. The importance of current awareness services, newsletters and having a presence on the corporate intranet were all stressed.

The May 14 meeting focused on networking for solos. As well as professional bodies such as SLA it was felt there was value in trade associations to which our employers may be affiliated.

Our final meeting of the season on June 18 featured a discussion of our professional activities over the past year and what we had learned from them.

Besides discussing a particular theme, our meetings also allow an opportunity for those who may be isolated professionally to share their experiences and challenges with those in a similar situation.

Our monthly meetings will resume in September. Meetings are posted to the Toronto Chapter listserv in advance of the event and we are always delighted to welcome new members.

Paul Cheeseman is the Librarian at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and can be reached at 416-868-5060 or pcheeseman@cppib.ca.

At the end of March, Pam Casey became an independent information professional and started her own business, “Information Now.” She provides organizations that do not have a library or librarian with information services which include all aspects of library functions, searching, document, records & serials management and training in the use of databases.

Her new contact information is:
Pam Casey, CTT+

President, Information Now

539 Cumberland Avenue

Burlington ON L7N 2X3

Information_Now@canada.com

905-467-3763

In April, Gayle Gossen moved from her Sales Specialist position at CNW Group to Manager, Field Sales at Thomson Carswell. Gayle manages a sales team across the country. She can be reached at 416-609-5895 or gayle.gossen@thomson.com.

Sandy Iverson is left EBSCO at the end of June to go traveling with her 13 year old daughter for approximately one year. They will be starting in Europe, visiting friends and relatives and have loose plans to spend some time in Latin America studying Spanish.

Laurie Scott has been appointed Head, Public Services and Education in the Bracken Health Sciences Library, Queen’s University, effective August 1, 2007. Since 1997, Laurie has been Executive Director of the Health Science Information Consortium of Toronto, based at the Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto Libraries.

Daniel Phelan, Manager of the Collection Services Team at Ryerson University Library is retiring at the end of the summer and moving to Kingston with his wife Laurie Scott.

Radikha Jaggernauth has joined UNICEF Canada as the Research Officer for their Major Donor Programme. Prior to this position, Radikha was employed, for 2 ½ years with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario as their Major Gifts Researcher. Her new email is: rjaggernauth@unicef.ca

Evan Vella has been appointed Business Analyst for Lusight Research in their Toronto office. Lusight is an independent investment research firm, with a focus on Global Emerging Markets.

In mid-June, Cathy Choi started her new job at an ILS company in Markham as Senior Trainer/Implementation Analyst. Infor Global Solutions (former GEAC) is located at 600 Alden Road in Markham and Cathy can be reached at 905-754-3219 or cathy.choi@infor.com.

People on the Move will be a regular column highlighting the achievements of our members and help keep us all in touch. Please share your career changes, retirements, life changes, volunteer work.

Submit your news to Frances Wong at FWong@blgcanada.com or Radikha Jaggernauth at rjaggernauth@hsf.on.ca.

The Best of the Web event was held on June 21. There were a variety of special libraries represented at this event. We wanted to include some topics not usually covered at SLA events. Each librarian spoke for about 15 minutes and Daniel Lee acted as the facilitator. The speakers were enthusiastic and passionate about the areas in which they work and enjoyed sharing their resources with the group. They all said they had trouble whittling down their selection to only 20 sites. The attendees had the opportunity to not only learn about useful resources but also about these unique libraries. Some had no idea that the Toronto Botanical Gardens had a library!

Presenting at the event were: Le Dieu Tran, Research Librarian at the Legislative Library; Astrid Lange, Library and Research Specialist at the Toronto Star; Leanne Hindmarch, Librarian at the Toronto Botanical Gardens; Eve Goldin, Senior Manager at the Film Reference Library and Rachel Dupuis, Director of Information and Communications at the Institute of Communications and Advertising.

Le Dieu Tran has worked at the Ontario Legislative Library since 2006. Le Dieu has a strong interest in social networking tools and she enjoys blogging, reading her feeds, Facebooking and discovering new online tools. Many of the sites she presented were not tools she uses to do her work, but some neat sites she has discovered. Le Dieu highlighted some useful travel sites: for example Kayak can be used for finding travel deals and Seatguru is a guide to airplane seats, in-flight amenities, airline info, etc. Le Dieu also showed us some Google map mashups. For Toronto specific mashups check out Toronto Goggle Maps Mashups Compendium. Some other useful sites included Libraryelf which helps you to manage your library loans and holds, Sizeasy to help you visualize and compare things and last.fm, an internet radio and music community site.

Astrid Lange has worked at the Toronto Star for seven years. In addition to providing research services to the Star’s newsroom, she trains the newsroom on investigative research tools and maintains the library’s intranet site. Astrid mentioned that there is a wide variety of questions asked at the Star library so many types of resources are accessed regularly. Websites such as Google News Archive, Canada Newswire and Statistics Canada are used heavily. Also useful are Craigslist (Toronto), How Stuff Works and Climate Data Online. For information on literature and verse, Astrid uses Bartleby.com. Another source that has proved to be very useful is Allwhois.com which is used to find information on domain names. Astrid also mentioned that Facebook has been used to find information on people.

Leanne Hindmarch spoke about horticultural resources. Leanne is a solo librarian at the Toronto Botanical Gardens (TBG), a non-profit organization, and has worked there since 2005. She relies heavily on free web resources to find plant information for her clients. A key resource is the Royal Horticultural Society Horticultural Database. This is a complete and current source for verifying the Latin names of plants. Also used is Missouri Botanical Garden TROPICOS database to find out what family a plant belonged to, when it was first classified and who named the species. For finding general plant information, the Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder is used. A good source for photographs is Hort.net Gallery of Images. A good general interest gardening website is Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s gardening pages which covers topics on sustainability, urban gardening and native plants and is also a good source for horticultural book reviews. One of Leanne’s favourite sites for Canadian information is the Evergreen Native Plant Database.

Eve Goldin introduced the group to film websites. Eve has worked at the Film Reference Library (FRL) for the last fifteen years. A key resource is the Canadian Film Encyclopedia, which is an online reference project of the FRL. It includes historical and current information on Canadian films and filmmakers. Another important resource is IMDbPro. This is a comprehensive business resource for people in the entertainment industry. HollywoodReporter provides information on movie reviews, box office and entertainment news. For breaking entertainment news, movie reviews and awards visit www.variety.com. For authoritative information about the entertainment industry, Eve uses the Hollywood Creative Directory. A useful online journal devoted to the discussion of cinema is Senses of Cinema. Two useful Canadian websites include Telefilm Canada and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Rachel Dupuis manages the library services at the Institute of Communications and Advertising (ICA) which is a non-profit association serving advertising and communication agencies. She began by showing the group the Cassies website. This organization is ‘dedicated to recognizing, rewarding and improving the business effectiveness of advertising’. The site includes the Cassies award winners and case studies. Other key marketing tools include Advertising Age, Media and Advertising section of the New York Times, Brandchannel and AdForum. Rachel mentioned that it is important to keep up with trends in the advertising industry, so sites such as Reveries/Cool News and Springwise are very useful. Youthography, a marketing and communication site dedicated to youth, is another useful site.

The Best of the Web event was a very informative and enjoyable evening. This topic just might become an annual event!

Sandra Craig is the Events Coordinator for the SLA Toronto Chapter.

I wanted to share with you some of the “a-ha – I must write that down” moments I had in Denver. I hope you will find them to be as illuminating as I …

From the Leadership Development Institute with Dr. Jose Marie Griffiths on Sunday morning: we’re seeing a trend emerging called “collective intelligence” – some examples are Wikipedia, Amazon, Flikr. Also: information and economics: information will continue to be an economic driver.

On Monday morning, we were treated to a Synergy Session with Stephen Abram, Eugenie Prime, Clifford Lynch and moderated by Tom Hogan. Questions had been submitted in advance by the membership and they started off with:

“How can we persuade business leaders that info pros are worth investing in?” Eugenie emphasized that: 1) WE must be convinced; and 2) we have to DELIVER. “Otherwise, business leaders have ‘cognitive dissonance’ – they see the facts but they don’t believe.”

“How can info pros help their organizations manage and search for information that springs up all over their organizations?” Cliff pointed out that there’s been a shift that allows the non-specialist to have access to vast amounts of information. That said, within organizations there’s a vast amount of information that’s being amassed that needs “data curation” to preserve it for re-use so that the value of the investment in the creation of the information can be fully realized. “This is a huge opportunity for info pros but it reflects a change in role and scope of “traditional” librarian opportunities.”

“What innovation has had the greatest impact in the last 5 years and what’s coming in the next 5 years and what will be the info pro competency?” All 3 speakers waded in on this question: In terms of competency, “adaptability and paying attention to what’s happening in the environment broadly.” “We’re not talking about a technical skill. Technical skills become obsolete very quickly.” “It’s the leadership competency that allows you to use the technology.” “How things work has a longer shelf life. How to do it changes quickly.” “No single technology has made the difference. We are now seeing the cumulative effect of lots of development – cheap camera phones, GPS. It’s a whole new way of looking at the environment.”

Personally, I found it interesting that the concept of “collective intelligence” came up again (after I had heard it for the first time the previous day): “There will be a need for people to work together synchronously and asynchronously. There will be more group approaches to problems in business.”

Eugenie’s final words: “The biggest issue facing our profession is that we don’t run our information centres like a business and we lack the business acumen to do so.”

Stephen’s final words: “Be the change you want to see!”

I attended several other sessions between Monday morning and Wednesday – but I will leave you with a quote from Dave Pollard from the session I attended Wednesday afternoon just before heading home: “Here’s what’s keeping business executives awake at night: 1) mitigating risks; 2) reducing costs; 3) increasing value / person; 4) strengthening key customer relationships. Tell us how knowledge managers, information professionals, librarians can help us with that.”

SLA conference – always food for thought.

Juanita Richardson is the Chair-Elect, SLA Leadership & Management Division. This article is also published on the SLA Leadership Division blog.