Inside ASIS&T

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, Dec 2004/Jan 2005

The New Jersey ASIS&T Chapter (NJ-ASIST) presented its 18th Distinguished Lectureship Award to Eugene Garfleld, chairman emeritus of the Institute for Scientific Information. The award, established in 1985, honors individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of information science. At a series of events associated with the honor, Dr. Garfield provided a synoptic review and history of citation indexes and their evolution into research evaluation tools. The review covered the origins of journal impact factors, citation classics and other bibliometric applications, including historiographic mapping of science.

The Wisconsin Chapter of ASIS&T and the UW-Milwaukee ASIS&T Student Chapter featured Feicheng Ma, dean, School of Information Management at Wuhan University, China, in a presentation focused on the achievements and deficiencies in the construction of Chinese information laws and regulations. The speaker also proposed corresponding countermeasures and presented a brief comparison study between Chinese and U.S. laws.

The Potomac Valley Chapter of ASIS&T, in conjunction with the DC Chapter of SLA, presented Technical Challenges of Digital Libraries for Children in November, a luncheon program held at the Supreme Court building. Allison Druin and Ann Weeks of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) at the University of Maryland presented the technical challenges of an informative and educational digital library - specifically the technical evolution, difficulties and successes of the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) project. The ICDL is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The Los Angeles Chapter of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (LACASIS) and the Southern California Chapter of the Special Libraries Association kick off the holiday season with their annual joint holiday program. The featured speaker for the December evening of good food, friendly people and fascinating conversation is Kevin Starr, professor of history at University of Southern California and state librarian emeritus. A contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times, Starr spent more than 30 years researching and writing his six-volume Americans and the California Dream.

News from an Institutional Member

Rutgers University Receives Grants; Adds Faculty

The Department of Library and Information Science (LIS) in the Rutgers University School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS) has received two recent grants, one in support of a collaborative research project with IEEE and the other to support development of an online degree program.

The IEEE project, Experiment and Evaluation of Digital Library Performance, will explore user interface evaluations and system performance issues for IEEE's Xplore digital library. Nicholas J. Belkin and Karen Novick are the principal investigators for the project.

In other Rutgers University news, two new faculty members have joined SCILS for the fall semester: Marie L. Radford and Sherry L. Vellucci.