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 […]

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“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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Session: Self-Archiving, Information Repositories and Knowledge Management: What Can Different Types of Libraries Learn from Each Other? Presented by: Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division, Science and Technology Division On the closing day of the SLA conference, a diverse panel of library and information professionals offered up their experiences with developing repositories for their organization’s […]

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Session: Finding Properties Information Presented by: Chemisty, Engineering and Materials & Manufacturing Divisions On the Tuesday of the SLA Annual Conference (June 7th), I attended a session entitled Finding Properties Information, a session sponsored by SLA’s Chemistry and Engineering Divisions, as well as Knovel Corporation and Elsevier Enginering Information. The aim of the session was […]

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Session: Legal Division International Roundtable Presented by: Legal Division The SLA Legal Division International Roundtable Program combined Canadian and US expertise to present an overview of collective bargaining issues generally associated with the NHL lockout. Mr. James J. Norton, former Vice-President of the AFL-CIO, explained that collective bargaining occurs in any group, such as a […]

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Advertising & Marketing Mining the NEW Web for Information: RSS Feeds, Blogs, Social Networks and More Presented by Mary Ellen Bates, Bates Information www.batesinfo.com/sla-2005-new-web.pdf Statistics for Business Planning Presented Presented by Peter Lys, Statistics Canada www.slabf.org/stats_business_planning.ppt Statistics from International Governmental Organizations Presented by Mike McCaffrey, University of Toronto www.slabf.org/international_orgs.ppt Demystifying Hot International Market PowerPoint presentation […]

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The speaker’s presentation should bear at least a passing resemblance to the announced topic. If possible, the speaker should stop talking before the audience stops listening. If the speaker insists on speaking past their allotted time, they should at least use the next speaker’s script or be more entertaining than the next scheduled event. All […]

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Each year, U.S. companies waste more than $31 billion searching for but not finding information*. Factiva, a Dow Jones & Reuters Company, continues its mission to improve enterprise information effectiveness with its recent acquisition of U.S.-based taxonomy consultancy Synapse, the Knowledge Link Corporation. “With the market for taxonomy services rapidly growing, Factiva has experienced tremendous […]

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