Crosby Group is pleased to announce we are currently working with The Dundurn Group on the launch of the new Canadian Book Review Annual Online. We are helping to get word out about the CBRAonline’s free trial starting on Monday–details in the press release below. This will be of particular interest both for Reference departments, and as an Acquisitions tool for libraries. Individuals may also want to have personal access.

If you work in a major Canadian library and have an Interlibrary Loan Code from Collections Canada, you already have access!

The code should be 4 characters in length, and is case sensitive, so you will need to input it in all capitals.

If you do not already have access, contact info@cbraonline.com for your free trial password.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CBRA Live, Online, & Free for 30 Days

TORONTO, September 10, 2009…Dundurn Press is pleased to announce that the Canadian Book Review Annual (CBRA) will roll out live, online on Monday, September 14, 2009.

CBRAonline — the most comprehensive, authoritative database for quality reviews of Canadian-authored titles —is being launched to fill the need for an easily searchable electronic version of the venerable hardcover, Canadian Book Review Annual. Now these important reference annuals with 40,000 past reviews of Canadian-authored titles and over 150 new titles each month are easily accessible online. More than 300 reviewers — all experts in their fields — provide thorough evaluations of Canadian authored books in many different genres including children’s books as well as adult fiction and nonfiction.

For the first time, these reviews will be available to a broad group of users, from professors and scholars to high school students and library patrons.

About CBRA:

“Recommended for all Canadian libraries and American academic libraries with Canadian collections.”— Library Journal

“Of great value to the staff of Canadian school, public and academic libraries … as well as anyone interested in Canadian Studies.” — Booklist

As part of a special offer CBRAonline invites you to sign up for a 30 day free trial. Visit us at www.cbraonline.com and contact info@cbraonline.com for more information.

- 30 -

For comment, please contact Beth Bruder at (416) 214-5544, ext. 232 or bbruder@dundurn.com

I have recently teamed up with Martin Cleaver and Stephanie Barnes to create a Toronto interest group for Knowledge Management professionals. This will be a speaker series across industries, meant to foster discussion and cross-pollination of ideas.

We have taken the name Toronto Knowledge Workers, and have our first meeting lined up for  Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 6:30 p.m. featuring management consultant Joel Alleyne.  Joel will be talking to us about the notion of “Expertise Networking,” which embraces emerging concepts such as expertise management, expertise location, and expertise sharing. Expertise networking also embraces the social, cultural, organizational, and technical dimensions associated with managing, locating, and connecting expertise in organizations. Expertise networking is a framework that provides technical scaffolding to support experts and expertise in organizations.

You can find additional information about the group at http://knowledgeworkers.org/. If you would like to attend the meeting next week, please sign up for the group and RSVP so we have a correct tally of numbers (and hopefully enough room!). The atmosphere will be informal (it’s in a pub, after all), and the cost is free except for whatever food and drink you order.

If you are a knowledge management professional, I hope you will join us. If you are a speaker/presenter in the area of knowledge management, feel free to contact me, Martin or Stephanie to propose a talk for a future meeting. Already we have a good crowd signed up before we even have one meeting–I credit Joel’s high profile for that–but we hope to keep the ball rolling with equally interesting talks in the future.

- Connie Crosby

I have been taking part in online communities since I first learned how computers could connect people together, sometime in the mid-1980s.

When I first came to know Eden Spodek, and then worked with her as an organizer on the social media unconference Podcamp Toronto earlier this year, I realized she had just as much interest in communities online as I do. Even though we sometimes come to it from different angles, we have a real rapport when talking about our favourite people and favourite community-building tools.

With the help and support of many of our friends, Eden and I decided to host our own podcast about online communities and some of the social networking tools that help build them. It’s called Community Divas (link to iTunes)

We are very fortunate to have had the help of Jay Moonah with our first episode, and we decided to take the opportunity to interview him for the podcast. Part 1 of the interview we did with Jay Moonah, podcaster, marketing strategist, musician and a driving force behind Podcamp Toronto is in Episode 1, and the second part will be in our next episode in about two weeks.

We hope you’ll listen and participate by giving us your feedback and offering suggestions on how we can make it more meaningful for you. Follow Community Divas on Twitter or join the fan page on Facebook.

If you are also interested in learning more about podcasts and social media, consider attending Niagara Podcasting and Social Media Meet-up next weekend and PodCamp Montréal, September 20 & 21. Admission is free for both events and I am looking forward to attending both.

Cheers,
Connie

[June 26, 2008] A new white paper comparing British Columbia legislative tracking services was released today by Crosby Group Consulting. The report titled, Quickscribe: A Comparison and Evaluation Report, was commissioned by Stem Legal Web Enterprises Inc. to objectively identify key differences between Quickscribe Services Inc. and the BC government offering QP LegalEze. Key findings from the Crosby Group report identified a number of advantages for Quickscribe Services, including:

• faster system updates than QP LegalEze;
• more competitive pricing;
• easier navigation for users;
• superior ‘alert’ technology for updates; and
• more accessible customer assistance.

The report is being released today, with permission from Quickscribe Services, at the request of Steve Matthews, Stem’s Founder and President.

Downloading the report:

• A full copy of the report is available (39 pgs) at: http://www.crosbygroup.ca/pdf/whitepaperquickscribe.pdf
• An executive summary (12 pgs) of the findings are available at: http://www.crosbygroup.ca/pdf/executivesummaryquickscribe.pdf

About Stem Legal Web Enterprises Inc.: Stem Legal helps those in the legal industry build online profile and increase web-driven business. Stem’s founder Steve Matthews is also a Law Librarian, having spent more than 12 years managing Library and Information Services in the BC market

About Quickscribe Services Ltd.: Quickscribe Services is the most trusted source for the most current legislation in British Columbia. Quickscribe serves a broad spectrum of professionals who demand an easy and effective way to navigate through the ever-changing legislation governing their respective industries.

About Crosby Group Consulting: Crosby Group was founded in January 2008 in Toronto, Ontario, by Connie Crosby to help organizations and individuals start their social networking and knowledge management projects. Connie is an expert in social networking, communication and information organization. Prior to creating Crosby Group, she was Library Manager at a prominent Toronto law firm.

Connie Crosby founded Crosby Group in January 2008 to help organizations and individuals visualize and start their social networking and knowledge management projects. Her expertise is in social networking, communication and information organization.

According to Crosby:

We are living in exciting times with a lot of the rules changing. Senior executives are seeing changes in the marketplace. Junior employees are expecting to be able to use things like blogs, wikis, Facebook and instant messaging in the workplace. Managers are caught in the middle, trying to keep up at the same time as driving forward new projects in these areas. That is where I come in with Crosby Group, helping to explain the new tools and lay the groundwork for these initiatives.

Crosby Group helps organizations and individuals with small-to-medium sized electronic projects both on the Internet and inside the organization such as:

• creating a web presence
• choosing the appropriate electronic social networking tools for the target audience
• building your audience into a community
• content creation for blogs and wikis
• writing for the web
• organizing information so that clients, customers or staff inside your organization can find it
• formal and informal instruction in using social networking tools such as blogs, wikis, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter

Connie has acted as a leader in the Canadian legal and library industries, blogging, writing and speaking to lawyers and librarians, and has connections with social media innovators around the world. Her experience with online communities extends back more than 20 years, before the Internet. She is known for participating in a range of communities of interest and cross-pollinating ideas between groups

Have a question? Not sure if Crosby Group can help you? Feel free to contact me at conniecrosby@gmail.com. Or visit the new website at http://www.crosbygroup.ca.