Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the winter 2013 edition of The Courier newsletter. It is my great pleasure to serve as your SLA Toronto Chapter president this year, and l am looking forward to working with many of you to continue building our very strong chapter.

One of the reasons SLA Toronto is such a strong chapter is the passion our members have for their profession and collaboration with their colleagues. I’m very lucky to be surrounded by highly talented and motivated people. It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you the 2013 Executive Board:

Erin McDonald – President-Elect
Laura Warner – Past President
Melanie Browne – Treasurer
Helen Kula – Secretary
Stephanie Quail – Technology Director
Christine DeLuca – Membership Director
Bernadette Roca – Programming Director
Kim Stymest – Partner Relations Director
Stacey Piesner – First Five Years Director

My goal for 2013 is to continue to grow the Special Libraries Association, and the best way for me to accomplish that goal is to focus on growing the Toronto Chapter. This means broadening our membership to include those who work in the information profession, but have a wide range of education and experience that may not necessarily include a degree in library science. While many of us are librarians, some of our colleagues also have complementary expertise in knowledge management, competitive intelligence, fundraising, prospect research, records management, GIS and data management, and a wide variety of information services. To this end, I will focus on building partnerships with complementary associations outside of the library profession, and offer programming to attract new members to SLA. Currently, SLA Toronto partners effectively with other library associations and groups–expanding beyond “libraryland” will benefit SLA and our new partners, resulting in a stronger information management community overall.

Growth through diversification is one of the key strategies for SLA this year. In early February during the Leadership Summit, SLA President Deb Hunt announced the “Get on the Beach” recruitment campaign. This campaign is designed to increase the size of the SLA membership by encouraging current members to recruit one or more new members. Members who recruit at least one new member are entered into a draw to win lunch on the beach in San Diego with Deb and a Visa gift card. To learn more about how to “Get on the Beach,” check out the SLA Blog.

We learned at Leadership Summit that the SLA 2013 Conference Planning committee has some wonderful things in store for us in San Diego this June. SLA Toronto has historically represented our city well and I look forward to seeing many of you in sunny San Diego in just a few months. It is a wonderful event to look forward to as Toronto creeps toward spring weather!

All the best,

— Kim Silk
SLA Toronto’s President

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the 2012 fall edition of The Courier newsletter. I hope you are having a busy and happy autumn. It’s hard to believe that another year is coming to a close.

Looking back to the beginning of 2012—which seems like just yesterday—there were three things I wanted to contribute to the Toronto Chapter. I hoped to help build relationships, to keep our programming strong and diverse, and to enhance our online communications outlets.

Our Chapter’s strength lies in our many relationships—relationships with partners, with other associations, with students, and with our members. The Chapter has built a strong alliance with its partners over the years and in 2012 added 67 new members to the circle. On behalf of SLA Toronto, I would like to recognize our sponsors and thank them for their tremendous support:

• Access Copyright,  Dysart & Jones,  Eureka.CC, and Ovid who are sponsoring our Holiday Social with the Toronto Special Libraries and Information Services (TSLIS), the Faculty of Information Alumni Association (FIAA), and the Toronto Health Libraries Association (THLA). Recently, Eureka.CC hosted a fantastic event launching their new product Eureka.cc Analytik.
• Infomart, who continued their support of the Student-to- Conference Award for the fifth year in a row.
• Carswell, who helped us put on a very successful Membership Appreciation event in May.
• Springer, who hosted an exciting eContent Workshop featuring Mary Ellen Bates.
• Access Copyright, who generously contributed to this year’s Annual General Meeting

Partnering with other associations has also strengthened our Chapter’s programming and network. This year we will have joint-hosted two events with the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals. We organized informative and engaging Articles Clubs with the TSLIS network. TSLIS and FIAA are once again co-hosting the Holiday Party with SLA Toronto, and we are excited that THLA has joined the event as well.

The SLA Toronto Chapter also ensures that it provides the network and support to students and recent graduates. New Information Professionals have been busy this year attending valuable professional development sessions under the sage design of Ulla de Stricker. A special thank you to Bernadette Roca for all her work coordinating these workshops. This fall, the SLA Toronto Student Group toured the CBC Libraries and Archives space. To keep connected with members outside the GTA boundaries, Kim Silk, Erin MacDonald, and myself also paid a visit to the University of Western Ontario’s SLA Student Group.
To keep our relationship with our mid-career professionals strong, we listened and responded to the programming requests of our constituents. In 2012 we had a diverse, exciting schedule of events, including a balanced mix of workshops, speakers, professional development, salon-like discussions, and networking receptions. This summer saw many SLA Toronto members at the 2012 conference in Chicago. The post-conference dinner at Vagabondo in July, coordinated by Samhita Gupta, brought together conference attendees and other SLA Toronto members to discuss the highlights of Chicago 2012. To wrap up the summer, the Chapter came together again with TSLIS for the annual Summer Social at L’Espresso.

The fall professional development programming series kicked off on September 9; Rob Weisberg from Access Copyright presented at a very well attended Copyright Concepts session. The session was followed by an impromptu tour of the Martin Prosperity Institute by Kate Johnson. On September 20, Ulla de Stricker graciously donated her time to straighten out our job applications in her Cover Letter Workshop.

October was another full month. Ulla continued her professional development sessions in October and will do the same in November. The ever popular SLA-TSLIS Articles Club took place on October 3. On October 9,  Michel Bernaiche  presented on Effective CI Units to SLA Toronto, SLA Western Canada, and SCIP. A tour of the RBC Corporate Archive Tour and Talk was held October 16. I commend our outstanding programming director, Bernadette Roca, for executing such an ambitious schedule with such grace and efficiency. Thank you to everyone who made the Annual General Meeting on November 6 a success. A special kudos to Gayle Kosokowsky for securing the lovely venue —The Faculty Club at the University of Toronto — and a very entertaining guest, corporate magician Anthony Linden.

And one more date to mark on your calendar for 2012 — our Joint Holiday Social is on December 6 at the Arts and Letters Club, with our partners for the evening, Access Copyright, Dysart & Jones, Eureka.CC, and Ovid.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge all those who enhanced our online resources. Our discussion list, social media outlets, website, and The Courier newsletter are our main means of communication with our Chapter. I would like to thank Kelly Butler, Yannet Lathrop, Samhita Gupta, and Heather Buchansky on their phenomenal contribution to The Courier newsletter. Also to all of those who have contributed images and articles this year. On the social networking front—SLA Toronto’s social networks continues to grow with 359 members in our LinkedIn group, 168 ‘Likes’ of Facebook, and a whopping 642 followers on Twitter. Thanks to our social media coordinator, Tylene Reaume, for her timely posts and tweets. A shout out to Melissa Pengilly for designing the new SLA Toronto logo on our social media outlets. Finally, a special kudos to Terri Zimmer for her efficiency and hard work as chapter webmaster this year.

A sincere thank you to everyone for lending their time, efforts, and talents to the Chapter in 2012. We had an amazing executive and an equally compelling advisory board. I am especially grateful for all of their resolve and unprecedented support. I am truly lucky to have had the opportunity to contribute to this amazing Chapter in so many capacities. The SLA Toronto network has added enriched and enhanced my career. I hope to keep paying this gift forward for many years to come.

Looking forward to raising a glass with you at the Holiday Social!

— Laura Warner
SLA Toronto’s President