Bulletin, December/January 2006


From the Editor's Desktop

This issue is special in a number of ways. First, sadly this is the last issue in which Andrew Dillon will appear as our regular information architecture (IA) columnist. After five years and at least 20 memorable columns Andrew has decided to hand the task on, although we certainly hope to hear more from him in the future. We are pleased that Stacy Surla has agreed to become the Bulletin's associate editor for IA. In this role she will find columnists and help put together one IA special issue a year. Members who do not know Stacy personally at least will know her through her work, as she is leading the effort to redesign the ASIS&T website.

The beginning of a new fiscal year also marks the beginning of the term of a new ASIS&T president. We therefore welcome Michael Leach, who makes his debut as a Bulletin columnist in this issue. Michael is no stranger to Bulletin readers, however, as he has also been an enthusiastic contributor on other occasions. In fact, a number of ASIS&T presidents have written for the Bulletin before they were elected. For those of you with aspirations, we would like to suggest ourselves as a rung on the ladder to success. But seriously, folks, we wish Michael the best of luck as he assumes his new responsibilities.

With the new fiscal year also comes the Annual Meeting, which occurs too late for coverage in this issue, but will be carried in February/March.

As a third milestone, we are fortunate to have our first coverage of "paid search" - the mechanisms by which pertinent advertising or other paid results are displayed when we search on Google, Yahoo! or other sites. Such displays are a part of our life on the Web and play a critical role in financing the free search engines that have so rapidly become essential to us. We are very grateful to Jim Jansen for volunteering to put together an eight-article special section for us, which covers many of the different aspects and challenges of paid search, from the ethical to the technical. I learned a great deal from reading it, and I hope many of you will find it engrossing.

Finally, we regret that we must postpone the second of Tom Lipinski's two-part article on the recent U.S. Supreme Court Grokster decision. Part II, which covers how entrepreneurs and others may avoid the problems that brought down Grokster and Streamcast, will appear in February/March 2006.