Vancouver Events

 

Annual reports provide useful information to researchers, as long as you know what to look for and how to interpret what you find.  Kim Bradshaw and Bill Elliott, from TD Waterhouse, gave a presentation to an audience of twenty-five people for the SLA WCC at ICBC on January 18, 2005 on the fundamentals of reading and interpreting annual reports, along with useful web tools.

The presentation focused on the investor's perspective: evaluating companies using fundamental analysis methods to read the financial statements (i.e. balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement); applying various ratios to measure the past performance of a particular company; and then comparing it to its competitors. Key ratios included Earnings Per Share (EPS), Price Earning Ratio (PE Ratio), Return on Equity ROE), Trend Over Time, and Debt to Equity Ratio.Recommended web tools to assist you in navigating terms, ratios, and company information include:

• WebBroker http://www.webbroker.com - only available to TD Waterhouse account holders 
• Globe Investor http://www.globeinvestor.com
• Argus Research  http://www.argusresearch.com/ 
• Standard and Poor's 's http://www.standardandpoors.com
• Reuters  http://www.reuters.com/ 
• Big Charts   http://www.bigcharts.com
• Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/

Jenny Fry is an Information Analyst with Business Intelligence and Customer Research at ICBC.

Measuring Impact: Cost Justification for Information Services

By Chris McBratney.

On February 16th the SLA WCC presented a discussion entitled  "Defining the Impact of Information Services: Cost Justificaton for Information Services".  Approximately 25 people attended, a mixture of professionals and MLIS students. The discussion was presented by Heidi Porth, an MLIS consultant and Dialog representative. 

The discussion focused on different strategies to ensure that a special library is able to justify and quantify its cost-effectiveness.  The discussion took into account the financial benefits of having an Information Resource Centre(IRC), especially how it can add value to several different departments and help coordinate and consolidate information costs for the company as a whole. The strategy of creating a strong impact statement that helps define the IRC was also discussed, as well as methods of cost-justification. Throughout the event, there was a healthy interaction between the speaker and the audience that ensured that listener experience complimented the instructional discussion.    

Chris McBratney is a MLIS Candidate graduating in Spring 2005 and works at the UBC Biomedical Branch Library.

Managing Leadership: Yours and Those You Lead

By Nick Collings.

Ethel Salonen, SLA President, gave an inspired and entertaining talk on leadership to a large audience of about 60 people at the SLA WCC meeting at the Terminal City Club in downtown Vancouver on Monday, March 7. She began by breaking the popular and narrow definition of leadership as simply ‘leading other people’ and expanded it to include managing yourself and managing situations and resources, among other aspects. Everyone can be a leader; you do not need to be managing people to lead. She then reviewed her favourite books on leadership, some well-known and some ‘odd-ball’ones which revealed a few of her other, non-library interests. The books were:

• Towery, Twyman L. The Wisdom of Wolves. 1997, Sourcebooks Inc., 143 pages.

  Ethel has a passion for America’s national parks and found some useful insights in the way wolves work as a team.

• Roberts, Wess and Bill Ross. Leadership Lessons from Star Trek: the Next Generation – Make It So. 1995, Pocket Books, 242 pages.

  Yes, Ethel is a ‘Trekkie’! She sees Gene Roddenberry as a visionary of his time and notes that many of the ‘Next Generation’ screenplays deal with leadership issues.

• Pearce, Terry. Leading Out Loud: the Authentic Speaker, the Credible Leader. 1995, Jossey-Bass, 174 pages.

  Terry Pearce’s book deals with the leader as a communicator, particularly through speech.

• Pyham, William C. (with Jeff Cox). Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment. 1988, Ballentine Books, 197 pages.

  This book is told as a fable about the troubles and triumphs of workers in some make-believe departments.

• Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. 2002, Little, Brown and Company, 301 pages.

  “a tipping point is that moment in an epidemic when it reaches a critical mass … and starts to take off”. This book deals with how a leader can grasp a situation to create change.

• Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: the Power of Thinking Without Thinking. 2005, Little, Brown and Company, 277 pages.

  This is a new book that Ethel is still reading, but she was clearly intrigued by its provocative suggestion of making decisions on gut instinct.

Door prize winners: 5 winners, all drawn by previous SLA WCC presidents or by Ethel Salonen. Winners received a Lexis-Nexis umbrella. They were: Marnie King (VANOC); Julie Douglas (Vancouver Public Library), Claire Thomson (Placer Dome Inc.), Hanna Ruotsalainen (UBC MLIS candidate), and Anneliese Bungert (Justice Canada).

Nick Collings is an Information Analyst with the Customer Services division of ICBC.

SLA Spring Social 2005

By Mary-Ann Rajkovich.

On Friday April 15th, approximately 20 brave people ventured out into the torrential Vancouver rains to socialize and network at the SLA Spring Social hosted by SLA WCC and SLA@SLAIS at the Yaletown Brewery. The weather certainly didn’t dampen any spirits and the evening proved to be an excellent opportunity to wish our future fellow colleagues from SLAIS the best of luck!

SLA WCC thanks this year's program sponsors Micromedia Proquest, Lexis Nexis, and Thomson ISI.

Mary-Ann Rajkovich is at the Research and Knowledge Center with Canada Border Services Agency.

© All articles are copyright by the authors.