Best of the Web: SLA Toronto Event

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.