January 19, 2008
Report to ACRL-STS
ASIS&T 2007 Annual Meeting, Oct. 19-24, Milwaukee, WI
Liaison: Tina O’Grady
The American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) is a professional organization with about 4,000 members from various information fields. Its mission is as follows:
“The mission of the American Society for Information Science and Technology is to advance the information sciences and related applications of information technology by providing focus, opportunity, and support to information professionals and organizations.”
The organization has divisions called Special Interest Groups (SIGs) related to various aspects of Information Science. The SIG most closely aligned with STS is SIG-STI, for Scientific and Technical Information Science.
Business Meetings
The ASIS&T Annual Business Meeting on October 23 was presided over by President Edie Rasmussen and attended by approximately 50 members. Important points of business included an update on membership numbers (stable this year after recent years of decline), information about the transition of Wiley (publisher of ASIS&T’s journal) to Wiley-Blackwell, and the need for a new editor of the journal (JASIS&T). The budget and auditor’s report were also presented.
The SIG-STI Annual Planning Meeting on October 22 was attended by 13 SIG members. The budget was presented, the creation of a policy on reimbursing fees for invited speakers was discussed, and a new slate of officers was elected. Also discussed were possible program proposals for the 2008 Annual Meeting (Oct. 24-29, Columbus OH). The theme for that meeting will be “People Transforming Information - Information Transforming People” and proposed STI-sponsored sessions included:
- Importance of and methods for tracking the provenance of data in databases and repositories
- Data curation education for information managers
- Using the “speed meeting” format (like speed dating) employed by another SIG to allow attendees to share research interests, learn about issues and identify possible collaborators
- Preconference for information professionals who work embedded with scientists to connect and share theories and information.
Programs of Interest to STS
There were many programs relating to social computing and Web 2.0 issues that would be of broad interest to information professionals and academic librarians in particular. Some programs of specific interest to STS included:
Opening Science to All: Implications of Blogs and Wikis for Social and Scholarly Scientific Communication (Bora Zivkovic, Jean-Claude Bradley, Janet Stemwedel, Phillip Edwards):
Science blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 technologies are proliferating, and making available information such as reports on unpublishable and unsuccessful experiments, informal writings and reviews, and casual commentary on science and science policy. Access to plentiful amounts of this sort of information is a relatively new development, and the technologies and their impacts were explored.
Identifying Best Practices and Skills for Workforce Development in Data Curation (G. Sayeed Choudhury, Christopher Geer, P. Bryan Heidorn, Helen R. Tiboo, Richard Marciano):
A panel of information professionals and working scientists presented projects and tools related to data curation. The current dearth of knowledge about curation standards and interoperability amongst scientists has means that the potential of data repositories is not being fully exploited. The panel discussed the skills required for data curation and how best to educate scientists and curators in these skills.
Other SIG-STI sponsored sessions included:
The Future of Institutional Repositories: the Experts Debate (Leslie Chan, Kenneth Frazier, Michael Leach, Robin Peek, Kristin Eschenfelder, Anita Coleman)
Live Usability Lab: Open Access Archives and Digital Repositories (Paul Marty, Michael Twidale, Anita Coleman, Tim Donohue, Dorothy Salo)
The entire conference program with abstracts is available at http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM07/program.html.
Next ASIS&T Meeting will be held October 24-29, 2008 in Columbus, Ohio with the theme, "People Transforming Information - Information Transforming People."
Questions about ASIS&T or the 2007 Annual Meeting can be directed to Tina O’Grady, the liaison between ACRL-STS and ASIS&T SIG-STI.