Connie Crosby Update: My New Brainchild

Something a little new: catching you up on all I'm doing (well, except real client work!) in a chatty video.  Let me know what you think--is this of interest? Should I do this again? Are there questions you would like me to answer??

Cheers!  
Connie


Connie Crosby Update: My New Brainchild from Connie Crosby on Vimeo.

Links to a few things mentioned:

• Knowledge Workers Toronto
• My new book from Neal-Schuman: Effective Blogging for Libraries (Part of the new Tech Set series) scheduled to be released in March
• PodCamp Toronto 2010
• Ignite the Web! Audio & Video in the Law webinar with Connie Crosby presented courtesy of Nina Platt Consulting Inc.

Also posted on my blog on the Crosby Group Consulting website.

Ask a Mac Expert - What to read in 2010

From the McMaster Daily News, they spoke to Titles Bookstore's Mark Lefebvre, Professor of English and Cultural Studies Lorraine York, and Associate University Librarian Vivian Lewis to find out what books they would recommend to the University community in the upcoming year. I have my friend Mitch Joel's book Six Pixels of Separation, all lined up, ready to read!



So, what are YOUR suggestions for 2010?

My Nominations for the Clawbies

If you have been reading the Canadian blawgosphere lately, you know it is time for CLawBies nominations!  The CLawBies, or the Canadian Law Blog Awards, are organized by Steve Matthews each year. 

I read a lot of Canadian law blogs, so it is a challenge to narrow it down to just three! After some thought, here are my picks this year:

1. The Stream - from the B.C. Courthouse Libraries - This is a relatively new blog, but is already influencing others. I also hear it mentioned behind closed doors by my law library colleagues. The folks at the B.C. Courthouse Libraries have set the new standard for design and engagement by a law library in Canada. Congratulations to Johanne Blenkin and her team--they are already winners in my books!  While you are on the site, do visit their whole website as it has a clean, fresh design: http://www.courthouselibrary.ca/

2. All About Information - by Dan Michaluk - Dan does a great job of writing consistent quality blog posts. He manages to stay focused while keeping it personable. I know when I am looking for information to update myself on the state of social media and employment law in Canada, this is the first place I head.

3. Jason the Content Librarian - by Jason Eiseman - This is my pick for international law blog.  Jason is the Librarian for Emerging Technologies at Yale Law School Library. I like that he is posting on things relevant to me, does not have a strictly U.S. focus, and on a personal note was one of a group of law librarians including Meg Kribble, Bonnie Shucha (who are both excellent law bloggers in their own right who also deserve votes) and many others who made me feel at home as a speaker at this year's AALL conference.

Like almost everyone else who have blogged their picks, I can't help but mention others who are well deserving and should be included in any "top Canadian law blogs list" - Library Boy by Michel-Adrien Sheppard, Law is Cool by an ever-growing slate of law students, created by the inimitable Omar Ha-Redeye,  Thoughtful Legal Management by David Bilinsky, Canadian Privacy Law Blog by David Fraser, Michael Geist's blog which has a reach far, far outside the legal community in Canada,  and Halo Secretarial blog by Laurie Mapp who is a legal virtual assistant (or legal VA) and helps me stay on track in my day to day work. And so many others!

I also can't wait to see what Tim Knight at Osgoode Law Library does with the KF Modified Blog which I should talk about with its own blog post soon.

And on the international front, I consistently read Mary Abraham's blog Above and Beyond KM (last year's winner!) because she is always thoughtful, thought provoking, and lively in her writing on knowledge management.

I am delighted to see the new entries from the B.C. Courthouse Libraries and Tim Knight because, frankly, there are not a lot of law librarians blogging in Canada. And our range of organizations, job descriptions, and geographic locations can only give us a widely diverse perspective. I hope more will jump in to provide their thoughts to the biblioblawgosphere!

The Agenda Interview: Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin

If you missed her speaking at the Women's Law Association of Ontario's 90th anniversary gala last week, here is Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada in a recent interview with Steve Paikin of TV Ontario's The Agenda. It is an interesting look inside the SCC rarely seen. The video runs about 26 minutes.



Some of the things they discuss:

• being the first woman to head the Supreme Court of Canada
• how diversity on the Supreme Court is important
• the life of a "Supreme"
• cameras in the courtroom
  

Hat tip to Michel-Adrien Sheppard over at the Library Boy blog for the link.

Coming Soon: Celebrity Librarian DeathMatch!

See the website! Join the Facebook page! Check out the trailer! --



From About the Game:

Welcome to the home of Celebrity Librarian DeathMatch, the show that pits two teams of reference librarians against one another for bragging rights and prizes! Listen in to the live podcast and play along through our TalkShoe Interface, or listen to past shows in the Episode Guide! Watch this blog to see the game in progress as Command Central gives out questions and follow up information and librarians fight the clock to give the best reference in the quickest time! Don’t forget to watch the introduction video before each podcast to learn all about our contestants and to hear genuine librarian smack talk!

Champaign Public Library has challenged Urbana Free Library to start off the season!

Celebrity Librarian DeathMatch comes to us courtesy of Eric Sizemore and Jenny Veile. If you are on Twitter, follow them @libdeathmatch. Great work, folks!

Looking forward to Ontario Library Association - Super Conference 2010

I have a newly-minted personal membership to Ontario Library Association. We used to carry an organizational membership when I worked in the law firm so we could access some of the great programming. But, this coming February will be my first opportunity to attend the annual OLA Super Conference. I've been watching the conference website for a few weeks, and today the preliminary conference program arrived in the mail.

I am a veteran conference-goer, but I suspect this will be a whole other experience. So, as a first-time Super Conference attendee, I'm wondering where to start. What should I be sure to see? What social events are must-attend? Should I volunteer myself to help with something?

I would love to hear from you, the veteran OLA Super Conference attendee, with any advice!

The OLA Super Conference runs February 24-27, 2010.

New Beta Twitter Feature: Retweeting

Simon Fodden asked me about the new Twitter "retweet" feature which was recently opened up to a number of us on Twitter. It is currently in beta test. I thought sharing my response might be helpful.

What is retweeting?

But first, let me explain what "retweeting" is for those not familiar with Twitter:

Retweeting is forwarding/spreading a Twitter message (or "tweet") posted by someone to your other Twitter followers.

Quite often Twitter developers will take note of a convention that spreads throughout Twitter users and turn it into an official feature. The original way to spread a message sent out via Twitter (a ''retweet") is to put the abbreviation "RT" plus the person's ID with the "@" symbol in front so the person originating the tweet gets credit for the tweet and sees it automatically in their stream of replies. For example, Simon Fodden retweeting from the Slaw.ca Twitter account:



The new retweet feature

We can still manually retweet as we have been doing, but now Twitter has added an automated feature they are calling "Retweet". It does a few different things than we are used to. It can be confusing at first. Hopefully this helps explain it:

• The retweet feature replicates the entire original tweet, including the person's name, icon and source they sent the tweet from (e.g. Tweetdeck, web). So, if you retweet something a friend tweeted, everyone following your twitter stream will see your friend's icon instead of yours. This is the most confusing part of the new feature. For example, in the example below, my friend @pfanderson retweeted something from @sneakymonkey, and it is @sneakymonkey's icon that shows up. They also add "retweeted by" in the status line under the tweet:
  
  



• currently we can't edit or add any information to the retweet. Previously we could edit the tweet down or add a comment as there was space with the 140 character limit.
  
  
• there are some new lists of the retweets, from your right side menu ("retweets") - http://twitter.com/#retweets. Under "Your tweets, retweeted" they show who has retweeted (see the icons under each retweet):
  
  
  
  
• I don't see an RSS feed listed for the retweets yet.

Other new things from Twitter

Incidentally, Twitter is opening up a lot of new features and functionality these days. Lists are one I have also been playing with. They have also integrated Twitter with LinkedIn so we can push tweets to LinkedIn status messages, and I see there is now Twitter in Spanish and some new functionality (from what I can understand) with Twitter in French. It is worth following the Twitter blog to learn about all the new features coming down the pipe.

Do you have pointers or questions about the new retweeting feature?

Holiday Law Firm Challenge: Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank

A lot of people have been checking this blog for information about the upcoming Daily Bread Food Bank challenge for Toronto law firms. This year's challenge is about to start on Monday! I've just given a full write-up over at Slaw.ca: Holiday Law Firm Challenge: Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank.

Related posts:

Daily Bread Food Bank - Toronto law firm food and fundraising challenge (Nov. 29/06)
Daily Bread Food Bank - Law Firm Challenge (Dec. 7/07)
hohoTO: A Lesson in Using Social Networking for Charity (Dec. 17/08)
Duarte de Silva on HoHoTO fundraising event (Dec. 18/08)

Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals: Why I will be voting "Yes" to the SLA name change

I have remained fairly quiet about the proposed name change for the Special Libraries Association until now because I have been giving it some good thought, and watching the various conversations unfold. Change is not always easy, and it has amazed me how seriously people take the names and labels we apply to ourselves.

This is why I will be voting "Yes" to the name change. Take from it what you will:

• I have always found "Special Libraries Association" to be problematic. The term "special library" is not clear, and people outside librarianship do not understand what it means. I always say "specialized library" to clarify, and still that is not completely accurate. Aren't all libraries specialized in some way? I also object to it being "libraries" instead of "librarians" because it is not our libraries that are members. And even so, SLA includes more than librarians, so that would not be accurate as well. And ever since the Symbionese Liberation Army, the abbreviation SLA has had negative connotations in my book. At any rate, I have been waiting a long time for the opportunity to move on to another name.
• We all can come up with a name that we prefer for the Association, but the truth is everyone else will think his/her own idea is better. We are never going to come up with a perfect name that everyone adores. SLA is just too big an association for that, and our many members are just too diverse to all completely agree. This is not a bad thing in my books--the diversity is what helps us to see things from other perspectives and makes us strong as an organization, and helps feed me as a member.
• In today's world, one cannot just make up a name and go with it. There has to be availability as far as business name, trademark and domain name. And it has to work on a global level, not just in the U.S. As we know, easier said than done! I always find naming things (blogs, my company) the most difficult part of any new project, and adding this layer of obstacles makes it near impossible to come up with an original name. I am impressed that the SLA Alignment initiative took it even a step further and ran focus groups, and tested the names they came up with against the market, and found a clear winner.
  
• The research SLA did with marketing/branding experts Fleishman-Hillard was pretty intense. For the record, I was part of one of the focus groups here in Toronto. I learned a lot about attitudes towards librarians from the others (non-librarians) who also took part. It became even clearer to me on that day that a change is needed.
• It is time to open up the possibilities for ourselves. While I love being a librarian, and will always consider myself one, the name of my occupation can cut two ways. There is a lot of respect for libraries, but we are often seen as the people in the back quietly making things run. And yet, my skills are so varied I can be involved in many aspects of an organization to help it run more smoothly: library, information management, knowledge management, and records management to name a few. Why restrict ourselves to library? Where are the librarians who are CIOs?
• A lot of money, time and effort has gone into this name change proposal. If we do not seize the moment and change it now, it is unlikely a chance will come around for a very long time, if at all. I highly doubt SLA Executive Boards in the near future are going to want to risk yet more rejection if we do not accept this name.
  
• The proposed new name, Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals (ASKP), is one I can live with. Actually, I really like it. But the key is that we have to be able to live with it, even if we don't love it. The term "strategic" places me right where I want to be, leading projects and organizations in their goals and objectives, and helping them in their accomplishments. I tend to talk about "information professionals" rather than "librarians" (because my profession includes more than librarians) or "knowledge professionals" but the truth is those in IT have sewn up the term "information" so it is difficult for us to differentiate ourselves if we use that term. If we get into semantics, I see "knowledge" as building on and going a step further than "information" so this is a positive difference. While all members certainly don't work in knowledge management, we are all smart knowledge workers (as originally defined by Peter Drucker) in our own right. So, this is appropriate. And we are all professionals. This is an association of ambitious, smart people who approach their work in a professional manner. And many of us consider our work to be not just a nine-to-five job, but a vocation.

The more I think about it, the more I see this name change as a positive change. I have heard so much negative feedback, I thought it was time to put in a positive voice.

For additional information, visit the SLA Name Change Info Center. If you are on Facebook and are also thinking about voting for the new name, join me on the page YES to Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals. The vote begins Monday, November 16 and ends on December 9th.

Women's Law Association of Ontario: 90th Anniversary Gala

I am doing work with the Women's Law Association of Ontario, and helping to spread the word about their upcoming 90th Anniversary Gala at the Royal York Hotel on Thursday, November 26. They have an exciting evening planned, with The Right Honourable Madam Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin giving the keynote talk. Everyone is welcome: members and non-members; men and women. A link to the registration form is below.

The Women's Law Association of Ontario is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to advancing issues and causes relevant to women in the legal profession through education and awareness programs.

Law Librarian Podcast: Social Media and Law Libraries

Today's episode of the Law Librarian podcast will be recorded at 3 pm ET or 12 noon PT on Blogtalkradio. Our topic today will be social media and law libraries. Join us live (listen via the website --headphones recommended at the office) and call in with questions, or listen to the recording later. I will be participating in this episode. Richard Leiter hosts with his new co-host Marcia Dority Baker.

Incidentally, I was away during the last recording on September 3rd but have had a listen. The focus of the episode--"What's Real in the Real World?"--was on resources used in law firm libraries, and the discussion between academic and private law librarians regarding what is needed for legal research training for law students piqued my interest.

[also posted to Slaw.ca]

Adoption of Web 2.0 by Libraries: Pivot Points of Change

It's fine to learn all you can about the new technologies, but the challenge is figuring out how to practically implement them into your work, and how to adapt to the change. I like this presentation by Buffy Hamilton, High School Media Specialist at Creekview High School in Canton, GA she will be giving this week to the Georgia Public Library All-Staff Meeting.

I like that this is a fresh look at the technology, helping to make it accessible. She comforts us by letting us know that we do not have to change everything, but gives ideas on how to gradually change up what we are doing.

Pivot Points for Change: Libraries and Librarians Using Web 2.0 to Connect, Create, and Collaborate

View more presentations from Buffy Hamilton.

See also her blog post Pivot Points for Change and her wiki-licious resources page to accompany the presentation.

Updated: and this is the blog post she says started it all. Enjoy!

Introducing Canadian Book Review Annual Online

On my Crosby Group blog Connection I have just announced a new client initiative, working with The Dundurn Group to get word out about the newly launched Canadian Book Review Annual Online. I am excited about this project, since this well-respected publication was last published in paper format back in 2006. For the full press release and instructions on how to take advantage of the 30 day free trial on Monday, please see my full blog post.







I had a chance to take an advance look at the preview, and am impressed. There is the choice of a one-box search, or an advanced search screen that I find intuitive while allowing for complex Boolean searches. I like that results can be sorted by any field such as author, publisher or date just by clicking on the heading name. Book reviews are helpful and succinct. One can click on publisher name, author name, and tags (informal key words indicating things such as format and subject) to find more of the same.

The free trial is only for the next month, so I encourage you to sign up and try it out, whether you are in a library or not. This is a great Canadian resource we should all be familiar with!

The Law Librarian Talk Show: Resources Used in Law Firms

I'm back from a fabulous vacation where I had a chance to recharge my batteries, and am now in the process of catching up. One thing I missed was participating in the latest episode of The Law Librarian talk show/podcast on BlogTalk Radio. The latest episode recorded on Friday--What's Real in the Real World?--focusses on resources used in law firm libraries. I haven't listened to the full episode yet, but encourage you to have a listen and add your comments to the show's Facebook page or host Richard Leiter's blog, The Life of Books.

Libraries of the Future

I'm heading out for a couple weeks' vacation. I have *so many things* lined up for this blog, but alas it will have to wait. In the meantime, here is an interesting video (running just over 9 minutes) about what the future of libraries will be, put together by JISC in the UK. Which side do you fall on--will we have librarians in the future?

The Best Canadian Law Firm Website

Yes, I have had my head down working. Yes, I am still alive and kicking. So many things to tell you dear readers about! Here is a quick one for now--from Mitch Kowalski at the Financial Post's Legal Post blog:

Jordan Furlong, editor of the Canadian Bar Association's magazine, The National, has rounded up a group of writers who focus on innovative legal practices and tasked them with selecting the top websites by a Canadian law firm.

I am honoured to be one of the judges.
Sites will be judged in the following categories:

1. Big Firm (national/multi-jurisdictional)
2. Small Firm/Solo
3. British Columbia (national firms excluded from the provincial/regional categories)
4. Prairies
5. Ontario
6. Quebec
7. Atlantic Provinces
8. Blogs (not the best law blog, but the law firm websites that have the best blog(s) or use blogging the best)
9. Multi-Media (best use of podcasts, videos, etc.)
10. Student/Recruiting

If you would like your firm's blog to be considered by Mitch, send it to mekowalski@rogers.com by tonight at 11:59 p.m ET (i.e. before midnight!)

Oh, did I mention? I'm also a judge. Hmmm, perhaps I should mention this over on my company blog as well.

Let the best websites win! Winners will be announced in the fall.

15 Key Observations by Bob Pearson

Tonight I am attending Third Tuesday Toronto with speaker Bob Pearson, President of the Social Media Business Council (formerly Blog Council); also formerly of Dell.

http://Twitter.com/bobpearson1875

15 Key Observations about big business and social media

1. Customers are co-shaping your reputation every day.

2. Customers assume leaders will identify issues before they happen.

They have set up a "hot issues" team to try to anticipate.

3. The customer does not care where you want them to go.

We go where we find what we need. Our networks, therefore, are liquid.

4. Less than 1% of a customer's time is spent purchasing a product.

5. E-commerce will become e-community.

Customers don't want to go two places to get what they want. Sears,
Wal-mart and Dell are doing work in this area.

6. How people consume content is changing.

YouTube has become the second largest search engine. Customers go
where they want to.

7. The media world isn't changing -- it has changed.

Traditional media such as New York Times that are content producers
are find. Next successful are bloggers.

8. There isn't a destination for a customer.

If your clients are signed up for your email they may no longer be
coming to your website.

9. Syndication of content is more important than traffic to your site.

Micro-communities, video, etc. Customer-driven preference;
participation is a choice.

10. 10-20% of your customer base in a given year.

The majority are searching online, asking peers, or doing nothing when
they have a problem. Better to empower them to help each other.

11. Customers want to do three things to help each other.

12. Don't measure trust internally if you are living it.

Employees help each other.

13. We judge people by how they interact with us.

We need to speak the customer's language. How many languages can we
speak?

Put ratings and reviews right in front of customers. Be open and honest.

14. Preparing for yesterday is ineffective.

Old models and habits hold back innovation. They look and smell nice,
but hold you back.

15. Ethical behaviour is a key part of maintaining trust.

We should never support fake blog posts. Important we keep our ethics
straight.

In conclusion: "Companies that cling to the past may not realize it,
but they will lose relevance."

From the Q&A:

Websites are a great place to store your content that is syndicated,
but most people will not be coming to your site.

Virtual worlds still have a place but are not yet ready. Shopping mall
or tech support worlds would be useful.

If you get real feedback, some will be positive and some will be
negative.

Companies are mostly using old tech support models. Need to change --
companies like Comcast are heading the way.

Social media monitoring: you can see what is being said about your
brand. There could be 30 to 40 times the discussion of your brand in
social networks than you are seeing in Google.

Getting legal counsel on board: bring them in early as part of the
team. Pick one or two to be your social media experts. Same with IT:
they will set up roadblocks at first. Pick one or two to work with you.

Most people are not talking to their customers each day. Start with
free resources such as Google Alerts or NetVibes to monitor what their
clients are saying and what their competitors are doing. He's usually
working 20 steps ahead of this, but important to get clients starting
here.

Customer service and social media is a journey -- we are 10-12 years
out from finding a good way to approach this. The Social Media
Business Council is important in this respect, it allows members to
share notes and see what works, what does not work.

Search screens in mobile devices: first third of the screen is
important; bottom two thirds is not.

Inside the Council there is a private group where they share
privately. Info is shared publicly at http://socialmedia.org
and on the blog http://blogcouncil.org/blog/

If you are interested in community building, don't look at what
companies are doing, look instead at what Facebook is doing.

Note: Moblogged (live-blogged via mobile) from my iPhone with cleanup and links added afterward. Any errors or ommissions are my responsibility and not that of the speaker.

Happy Canada Day & the Story of the Six String Nation Guitar

It's that time of year when we kick back and appreciate how lucky we are to be in Canada.

Not quite two weeks ago I was in Kingston, Ontario with friends attending Podcasters Across Borders, an annual conference for (you guessed it) podcasters. Each year we come from Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and further afield in Canada, U.S. and even Brazil to converge, catch up and learn. We always expect to be inspired, but on the Friday evening before things had even really had a chance to start, we were caught off guard by a very moving, emotional keynote address.

Jowi Taylor of the Six String Nation project spoke to us about the creation of a very special guitar, the Voyageur. It is made from 63 artefacts of Canadian culture and history, including Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle, Paul Henderson's hockey stick, Maurice "Rocket" Richard's first Stanley Cup ring, L.M. Montgomery's house in Cavendish, and copper from the Library of Parliament among many, many others. The guitar has been in the hands of many people including me and my friends, if you look closely at these photos by Alexa Clark above, and has been played by many famous Canadians since 2006 including Stephen Fearing, Colin James, Hawksley Workman, Feist and many others. If you watched today's Canada Day festivities on CBC, you would have hopefully seen Shane Yellowbird playing it (see photo below):



People have been learning about the Six String Nation project through word of mouth. During his talk we learned that Jowi Taylor has financed the project himself without sponsorship, which has been a fantastic labour of love that has unfortunately left him in debt. Many of us were moved by the collaborative, patriotic spirit of the project and made personal contributions.

A book has now been released to talk about the story of the guitar. It also includes stories of the pieces incorporated into the guitar, and portraits of people with the guitar. This project is bringing together and helping to define our nation in many ways. I encourage you to watch the intro video below, explore the other videos on YouTube telling the moving stories of how the pieces were gathered, and check out the website. If you are lucky to have the Voyageur visit your community, I encourage you to see it live and perhaps even try it out. It is going to be at Harbourfront in Toronto, for example, July 24-26, 2009. The schedule calendar is on the front of the website.



Photo credits (from top to bottom):

Podcasters Across Borders & Six String National guitar photo montage by LexnGer, made available under a Creative Commons license.

Shane Yellowbird at Canada Day celebrations July 1, 2009 in Ottawa playing the Voyageur, photo courtesy Six String Nation.

Connie Crosby's Top 6 Ways to Find Out What's Going On

And It's A Wrap
Originally uploaded by LexnGer

My friend and colleague Wendy Reynolds recently asked me to write about how I keep up. The answer really comes in three parts:
(1) How do I find out about groups and events?
(2) What groups do I belong to or meet with?
(3) What events are coming up?

Let me tackle the first one in this post. Here are my top 6 ways I find out what's going on:

1. Twitter - often the people I follow are in the same groups as I am, or have similar interests. They talk about upcoming events and groups they are part of. My curiosity leads me to check out what they are talking about. Sometimes I hear about them attending events while they are there, in which case I am disappointed I have missed out. That motivates me to pay more attention, and possibly join in with the next event put on by that group.
   
   
2. Facebook - one thing Facebook is very good at is allowing people to organize events. The people who organize events often send messages out to their friends or members of groups to invite them. I also get invited to various groups via Facebook. I have these notifications set up to be sent to my email so I don't have to constantly log onto Facebook. That being said, I check into Facebook periodically to see what events others are signing up for in case there is something of interest. The more groups you join, or the more friends you connect with, the more likely you are to hear about events. To me this is one of the most powerful things about Facebook.
   
   
3. Meetup.com - A number of groups use Meetup to organize meetings. I make sure to sign up as a member of each group I am interested in. Organizers use the system to send notices about upcoming messages to the members. Periodically I am also notified about new groups falling within my area of interest, as defined by me in my profile. I also periodically check to see what groups my friends are signed up for. I used to mine Upcoming.org, a similar site, for events, but find not as many groups using it these days. And to be honest, I find since Yahoo took it over I have difficulty signing into the site to use it.
   
   
4. Email discussion lists - listserves, group lists, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups - yes, email lists are still thriving. I am signed up for a number in Toronto for various associations and interest groups, most of which I read in daily summary mode, and watch them for events of interest.
   
   
5. Get involved - I am involved in a lot of different groups, both formal (associations) and informal (communities of interest). That means frequently I have an "inside track" on events coming up. As well, I am sometimes contacted by people in other groups putting on events looking for advice or, more likely, wanting to spread the word.
   
   
6. Check with someone who knows what is going on - about once a week my friend Eden Spodek and I touch base and talk about upcoming events and meetings we are going to. Once in a while one of us will know about something the other doesn't (usually she is more in the know than I am). It's not something we plan on doing, but it just seems to happen when we start talking. Our interests are similar but we largely work in different industries, so do hear about different things.
   
   People seem to use my blog in this way, too. I try to let people know about things they might be interested in, thinking about whether most people interested are on Facebook, Twitter, or a listserv. I'm a bit slow at getting upcoming events onto this blog. Last month I posted about upcoming Toronto events that were of interest to me, and probably should continue doing something like that which would also address number 3) above.

Note each of these informs the other. Quite often I hear about one event several times over in all different methods. To the point where I don't have to look to find, it almost seems to come by osmosis.

You may be surprised to see I do not check blogs or monitor RSS feeds for upcoming events. Do you? How do you find out what is going on?

Photo credit: BookCamp wrap-up, Saturday June 6, 2009 And It's A Wrap
Originally uploaded by LexnGer. Photo used under Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

SLA Toronto presents... Best of the Web

I will be moderating the upcoming SLA Toronto session, a tour of four librarians' top research websites. It should be a fun evening--I hope you will join us!

SLA Toronto presents ….

Best of the Web

Join friends and colleagues for an interesting and informative evening!
Speakers from a variety of special libraries will show the top 10-20 sites in their area of research.

Speakers:

Robert Fabbro: Ontario College of Art and Design
Valerie Hatten: Ontario Science Centre
Daniel Lee: Navigator Ltd.
Frank Van Kalmthout: Archives of Ontario

Moderator: Connie Crosby

Date: Wednesday June 24, 2009

Location:

University of Toronto, Faculty of Information
Room 728
140 St. George St.
Toronto

Time:

5:30-6:00: Registration and networking. A light dinner will be available.

6:00-7:15: Presentations

Cost:

Members: $20.00
Non-members: $30.00
Retired/Unemployed: $10.00
Students: Free

Click here for Registration information
Registration deadline is June 22, 2009