Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to our summer edition of The Courier. My warmest wishes for you, your friends, and your families this season as you enjoy some well deserved down time.

The 2012 SLA Conference and Info-Expo took place in Chicago, Illinois July 15 to 18. As per usual, there was a strong cohort from Toronto’s Chapter present. Chicago was an exciting city to reunite with colleagues and make new connections. Kudos are due to Richard Matiachuk and our colleagues in SLA Western Canada for hosting a fantastic Canadian Reception. On behalf of the Toronto attendees, a warm thank you to the SLA’s partner CEDROM SNI for their generous participation in the event.

It was wonderful to meet and chat with this year’s Infomart Student-to-Conference winners Heather Buchansky and Stacey Nordlund. Thank you again to our generous and dynamic sponsors at Infomart. Don’t forget to check out Infomart’s blog for interesting posts on content management as well as a few guest posts from our members.

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce a couple of new members of the executive and advisory boards.

In June 2012, Bernadette Roca assumed the position of Programming Director. Bernadette is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto’s iSchool and is currently a media librarian at CBC and a records management consultant. Previously, Bernadette was the Toronto Chapter’s New Information Professional Coordinator, coordinating a series of professional development sessions led by Ulla de Stricker. Bernadette’s dedication, talent, and enthusiasm will be a substantial asset to the Toronto Chapter this fall.

Taking Bernadette’s place as New Information Professional Coordinator on the advisory board is Samhita Gupta. Samhita is a member of the 2012 iSchool graduating class and has recently completed a practicum with the Bora Laskin Law Library.

We are thrilled to welcome both Bernadette and Samhita into their new roles.

Also on the list of announcements, Melissa Pengilly —SLA Toronto’s in-house creative designer extraordinaire—has fashioned a new Facebook logo for the Chapter. Check it out and be sure to like SLA Toronto on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @slatoronto.

We recently wrapped up an exciting spring programming line up. The Chapter’s Toronto West and Solo Groups were also busy with a speed networking event and a LibGuides webinar, respectively. On June 12 the Chapter hosted a webinar introducing 2012 SLA Presdident-Elect candidates Kate Arnold and Juanita Richardson. June also focused on skills development with a Legal Research workshop hosted by Wendy Reynolds of the Ontario Legislative Library, followed by a session on Government Documents hosted by the University of Toronto’s Mike McCaffrey.

The Chapter is working on an exciting programming docket for the fall. A few highlights include the Summer Social on August 23, the Annual General Meeting will take place on November 6, and the Joint Holiday Social is scheduled for December 6. I’m also excited to announce that in addition to the Faculty of Information’s Alumni Association and the Toronto Special Libraries and Information Services Network, we will be teaming up with the Toronto Health Libraries Association for the holiday festivities. The more the merrier!

In true fall fashion we will also have a number of seminars scheduled. Access Copyright’s Rob Weisberg, Manager of Corporate and Government Licensing, is leading a seminar in the fall titled: Critical Copyright Issues For Corporate Librarians And Information Professionals. On October 9, SLA Toronto is once again teaming up with the Strategic and Competitive Information Professionals (SCIP) for a session on What Makes a CI Unit Work with Michel Bernaiche. Bernaiche is the current director of Program Development at Aurora WDC.

Please watch your email and the Chapter’s Events page for further programming announcements. Also, we want to ensure that our programming is meeting the needs of our membership. If you have any ideas for the winter and into 2013, we welcome your input. We hope to reunite with many members and welcome the new ones after the summer cools off.

See you in September!

— Laura Warner
SLA Toronto’s President

Welcome to the summer issue of The Courier! As always, I’d like to thank everyone who contributed articles for this issue.

In addition to the recurring columns, this issue also formally introduces Bernadette Roca as SLA Toronto’s new Programming Director. Kate Johnson shares the tips & tricks divulged by Wendy Reynolds during the Legal Searching for the Non-Legal Librarian session and Ricardo Laskaris reports on the 2012 ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim. Our People on the Move editor, Kim Symest, was extra busy this issue—four SLA Toronto members, including herself, accepted new positions or have take their careers in new directions.

At the end of May the lovely and talented Yannet Lathrop accepted a position in Michigan and resigned as Co-Editor of The Courier. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Yannet for all her amazing work and wish her the best of luck in her new position and new home!

I’d also like to thank Samhita Gupta, who graciously agreed to assist with the editing of this issue. Her talent and commitment made this issue all the better!

I hope you enjoy this issue of The Courier. Please remember, submissions are always welcome. You can send your comments, ideas, and/or suggestions to:

Kelly Butler
kelly [at] kllybtlr [dot] com

Post-Conference Debrief

I’ve just returned from SLA 2012, which was held in beautiful Chicago from July 15 to 18. I was joined by a very strong Canadian contingent this year, with over forty SLA Toronto members attending, plus many of our colleagues from the SLA Eastern Canada and Western Canada chapters. In fact, despite concerns that conference attendance would be lower this year due to being held in July as opposed to June, early counts indicate that attendance exceeded SLA 2011 in Philadelphia. I will share the final attendance numbers with the chapter when SLA HQ releases them.

To get a sense of the various conversations that occurred via Twitter, search for the #slachicago hashtag.

SLA President, Laura Warner, and I attended various leadership meetings during the conference and learned how SLA continues to tweak the conference experience to meet member expectations. One change that has been made for SLA 2013 in San Diego next summer (June 9—11 for those who like to plan ahead) is that the conference will run for two days instead of three. This change is in response to members who have been unable to attend conference due to financial constraints; shortening the conference by one day will mean significant savings in meal and hotel costs. The goal is to enable as many members to attend the conference as possible. As those of you who were in Chicago last week or have attended the annual conference in the past know, it’s a wonderful event that everyone should have the opportunity to experience.

Looking Forward

Finally, it’s that time of year when your President-Elect begins to plan in earnest for her presidential year. SLA Toronto chapter members with ideas and suggestions for 2013 should get in touch with me to share your thoughts. I’m easy to reach by email. I have found being part of the SLA leadership team this past year to be stimulating, fascinating, and a great deal of fun! I encourage all members to consider taking on a leadership position, whether within this chapter or a division. If you’d like to learn about how SLA governance works, I’m more than happy to share what I know.

Enjoy the remainder of the summer!

— Kimberly Silk
SLA Toronto’s President-Elect

Please join me in welcoming the following new members who joined our Chapter from May 2012 through June 2012.

Vickie Albrecht, Winnipeg
Pamela Bakker, Toronto
Roxana Carapet, Etobicoke
Tyler Chenosky, London
Margaret Collins, Toronto
Silvia Fernandes, Etobicoke
Kelly Elliott, St. Catharines
Kara Griffin, Toronto
Eve Leung, Toronto
Min Li, Toronto
Ross Newton, Toronto
Anne Northcott, Ottawa
Ed Sangalang, Toronto
Jessica Shiers, Toronto
Stephanie Winston, Thornhill

I look forward to meeting each of you at an upcoming SLA Toronto event!

— Christine DeLuca
SLA Toronto’s Membership Director

Having been accepted to the PhD program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information, Elysia Guzik will be leaving Egon Zehnder at the end of July. She plans to explore the information behaviour of new members of religious groups and the ways in which they use resources to establish their identities and cultivate community. Elysia joined Egon Zehnder in April 2010 as Records Management Analyst and was promoted to Research Analyst the following January. During her time with the firm, she led a records clean-up project to address a three-year file backlog and developed the Toronto office’s first records management policy. On top of that, she has worked with consultants and senior researchers on numerous executive search assignments. Elysia can be reached at elysiaguzik [at] gmail [dot] com.

Effie Patelos has accepted a one-year research leave replacement position with the University of Toronto. As the Architecture Librarian, she will be responsible for directing and managing the services, resources, and staff of the Shore and Moffat Library at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. Previous to this new position, Effie worked at the University of Concordia as a Reference and Instruction Librarian. In this position she acted as coordinator of an innovative for-credit information literacy lab designed to teach struggling students the research and critical thinking skills required to succeed in university. Although Effie is sad to bid farewell to the beautiful city of Montreal and the incredible librarians and staff at Concordia University Libraries, she is excited to work in her subject area of expertise—developed during her previous career as an architect. She also looks forward to applying what she has learned about designing and delivering information literacy to support students studying in the specialized fields of architecture and landscape design. She can be reached by email at effie.patelos [at] daniels.utoronto [dot] ca, or by phone at the library (416) 978-6787.

Sally Press—formerly of MMM Group—joined Coffey Geotechnics, a specialist geotechnical engineering company, in September 2011. Her role as Library Services Manager for the Canadian Offices involves collaborating with librarians in the Australian offices to build up the library and information service for the company’s Canadian office. She is based in Etobicoke, Ontario and can be reached at sally_press [at] coffey [dot] com.

On May 1, Kim Stymest began a three-year contract as a Business Librarian with the Peter F. Bronfman Business Library at York University. She is incredibly excited by the opportunity and looks forward to the coming academic year and all that it brings in a new environment. She has already met a number of truly great students and looks forward to more! Kim can be reached at stymest [at] yorku [dot] ca.

People on the Move is a regular column highlighting the achievements of our members and helping us all keep in touch. Please share your career changes, retirements, life changes, or volunteer work with column editor Kim Stymest.

Programming Director | Bernadette Roca

Bernadette Roca is currently a Media Librarian at CBC and a Records Management Consultant with Knowledge-Able. Bernadette has worked in a variety of library and archive settings, including stints at Sunnybrook Hospital, York University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned her MISt from the University of Toronto, her MA in English from University College London, and her BA in English from UCLA. Bernadette has been actively involved in the SLA’s Toronto Chapter, holding positions as Registrar and New Information Professionals Coordinator before taking on the role of Programming Director. She is keenly interested in the ways the role of information professional is changing in the “information age” and the influence of postmodernism on archival practice and librarianship. In her spare time, Bernadette loves reading, traveling, food, attending concerts, and crafting.

SLA Toronto’s “Legal Research from 20,000 Feet” workshop was an informative session with an engaging and entertaining speaker, which—I’m not afraid to admit—is an incredible bonus when attending a session on legal research. Wendy Reynolds, Manager of Library Client Services at the Ontario Legislative Library, provided her audience with an overview of the legal research terrain in Ontario. This included a quick refresher on the legislative process, a tour of some of the cheap and cheerful online resources, and important tips on research strategies.

Resources

e-Laws provides access to official copies and current consolidations of Ontario’s public statutes and regulations. It is updated continually but it includes only statutes enacted and regulations filed on or after January 1, 2000. Private statutes are not available in consolidated form.

Under the Bills & Lawmaking heading on the Ontario Legislative Assembly website one can search the past and present parliaments and bills, both public and private. There are also handy PDF refreshers explaining “How Bills become Law”.

CanLII, or Canadian Legal Information Institute, is a non-profit organization managed by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. Its goal is to make Canadian law accessible for free on the Internet. CanLII provides access to court judgments, tribunal decisions, statutes, and regulations from all Canadian jurisdictions.

Statues and regulations can also be located using commercial resources, such as Quicklaw and WestLaw.

Researching Tips & Tricks

Reynolds recommends starting research with secondary sources to understand the context and significance of laws. To best support clients, researchers need to identify three things:

1) Jurisdiction (Federal? Provincial?)
2) Dates (Does the client need the most current amendments? The status during a specific year?)
3) “Currency is key” (Are all amendments in force? Was the law overturned?)

Continued Learning

Reynolds also concentrated on resources we could use to extend our understanding of legal research.

The Law Society of Upper Canada regulates, licenses, and disciplines Ontario’s 41,000 lawyers and 2,700 licensed paralegals. The Law Society’s Great Library has a bevy of legal research tools including video tutorial, how-to guides, and annotated links to other resources found under Research Guides.

YouTube is a great resource for online tutorials on commercial databases. QuickLaw from Lexis Nexis Canada and WestLaw from Carswell, Thomson Reuters both have YouTube channels.

— Kate Johnson
SLA Toronto Registrar, Information & Library Intern at The Martin Prosperity Institute and founder of TOR Info Events Google Calendar

This past June, I attended the ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition in sunny Anaheim, California. As expected, I ended up spending more time socializing with my fellow conference-goers and exploring the city than attending conference sessions. That is not to say I didn’t learn anything from the conference sessions, but experiential lessons can be equally valuable and a change of perspective can go a long way.

The exhibit floor featured the usual variety of vendors and stage presentations and, of course, the stalwart Oscar T. Robot. I had no room for books in my luggage and don’t do any of the purchasing for my library, so didn’t find much relevance there.

The most entertaining session I attended was a free-for-all about librarian stereotypes that devolved into a heated debate over the merits of the TV show “What Not To Wear”. The most interesting session, led by Marliese Thomas, was on how libraries can overcome internal stereotypes between departments (e.g. between Reference and Technical Services) in order to improve communication. Marliese’s slides can be found here.

I met a longtime Disneyland employee on the bus who shared some of its “secrets.” According to him, the park receives a full facelift every night: every scrap is separated and recycled, tall trees are replanted with short ones to make the buildings look newer (with the tall ones being relocated), every discarded piece of gum is frozen with liquid nitrogen and smashed with a hammer, and every flower that isn’t blooming is replaced with one that is—which is about a fifth of all flowers in the park. They also have their own fire and police departments, and perform sweeps around the park to keep away homeless people and other “undesirables” who might tarnish the Disney image. In case you don’t believe that, I heard the same from one of the bus drivers.

J.R. Martinez’s closed the conference, speaking motivationally about his recovery after being blown up in a Humvee in Iraq. For better or worse, his biggest claim to fame is being the 2011 winner of “Dancing With The Stars.” He spoke on the importance of using one’s inner competencies to adapt to and overcome life’s obstacles. His first book, Full of Heart: My Story of Survival, Strength, and Spirit, co-written with Alexandra Rockey Fleming, will be published this October by Hyperion.

— Ricardo Laskaris
Reference Assistant at York University’s Steacie Science and Engineering Library