Inside ASIST

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, Apr/May 2001

Special Interest Group/International Information Issues (SIG/III) of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST), announces its second international paper competition, following on the heels of recent success.

The theme for this year's paper competition is "Information in a Networked World: The Developing World Perspective." Winners will be invited to read their papers at the ASIST Annual Meeting 2001 in Washington, DC, November 3-8.

The first international paper competition invited submissions about practical collaborative applications of digital libraries or information science and technology in developing countries. The winning paper was written by Kyiho Lee, Republic of Korea, and was printed in the Bulletin in the February/ March issue. This issue of the Bulletin features the second place paper written by Hashish Sharma of India and William Yurcik.

Competition organizers have announced that the paper topic for 2001 can be at the country or regional level. Papers should present a leading edge, salient and/or current issue, problem, concern, policy, idea or practice of information science and technology in the developing world such as, but not limited to, the following: the digital divide, privacy and copyright issues, electronic theses and dissertations, globalization and cultural identity, indigenous peoples, knowledge management, development of electronic resources across networks, bringing access to information to distant and/or disadvantaged communities, or the language issue.

Four winners will be selected by a panel of judges, which will include Sue Johnson, The World Bank; Margarita Studemeister, U.S. Institute of Peace; Dr. Hal Borko, professor emeritus, UCLA; and Nathalie Leroy, Dag Hammarskjold Library, United Nations. The prize for each winner is a two-year individual membership in ASIST. In the case of multiple authors, the principal author will be awarded the ASIST membership.

Paper presentation

Winning papers will be presented at a conference session to be moderated by Nathalie Leroy, Dag Hammarskjold Library, United Nations. Discussion leader will be Sylvia Piggott, Deputy Division Chief and Deputy Chief Librarian, World Bank-IMF Joint Library. If a winner cannot attend the conference, the paper will be read by an ASIST member.

Other publishing opportunities

Submitted papers will be considered for posting on the SIG/III website as pre-publications. In addition they will also be considered for inclusion in the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, based on the decision of the editor. Papers will also be reviewed for inclusion in a special issue of the International Information and Library Review, subject to the usual peer refereeing process.

Information for authors

Only papers by a principal author who is a citizen of and resides in a developing country are eligible. The papers should be original, unpublished and in English. We encourage submissions from librarians, information and network specialists, and educators involved in the creation, representation, maintenance, exchange, discovery, delivery and use of digital information.

ASIST Copyright Policy

ASIST will have the non-exclusive right to publish any of the papers submitted on its website or in print, with ownership and all other rights remaining with the author.

Deadline for submission of full papers

Authors are invited to submit manuscripts, not to exceed 6000 words, by July 31, 2001.

Authors are encouraged to submit papers electronically. For more information or to submit manuscripts, please contact Nathalie Leroy by e-mail at leroyn@un.org.

Sponsorship

ASIST SIG/III thanks Academic Press, Haworth Press and Basch Subscriptions for their support of the competition.

Following the successful Conference on the History and Heritage of Science

Information Systems in 1998, the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) and the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) are pleased to announce the Second Conference on the History and Heritage of Scientific and Technical Information Systems, to be held November 15-17, 2002, in Philadelphia.

Emphasis for this conference will be on the period from World War II up through the early 1990s, including the infrastructure created by digitization, the Internet and the World Wide Web. Conference organizers are looking for in-depth historical analyses of these developments and how they have affected the practice of science both nationally and internationally.

Two preliminary workshops have been scheduled in order to stimulate research that may be presented at the 2002 conference and to assist in the ongoing effort to build a community of interest in the history of information science and scientific and technical information systems. These workshops will be directed at graduate students, information professionals and others who are interested in the history of information science and technology but who may have little or no formal background in historical study of this subject. The workshops will be small and will provide a friendly environment in which interested individuals, whatever the current level of their historical work, can clarify their ideas and present and critique work in progress.