Bulletin, December 2012/January 2013


Bulletin Editor, Irene TravisEditor's Desktop

Irene L. Travis, Editor

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

Bulletin@asis.org

Taxonomies are the focus of this issue and, in particular, the practical problems associated with creating, integrating and maintaining these crucial components of many information retrieval systems. Marge Hlava of Access Innovations, Inc., is our guest editor and has recruited timely articles on a variety of topics ranging from taxonomy creation and evaluation to integrating taxonomy structure into user experience design and utilizing taxonomies in automatic indexing. Our thanks to Margie for her efforts.

The issue includes our regular IA column and the RDAP Review column that was initiated as a regular feature in the last issue. Thom Haller, our associate editor for IA, suggests ways to elevate IA so that it can become more a part of the strategic thinking of management, reducing the risk that higher management will chase after the latest fashionable technology solution regardless of its suitability to their application. It’s an important, ubiquitous problem, and Thom offers sound advice. 

Turning to RDAP, the newly established Digital Curation Postdoctoral Fellowship is sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Digital Library Federation (CLIR/DLF), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and six universities. One of its first recipients, Inna Kouper, is the author of this month’s column, which focuses on the hybrid role of the data curator.

Finally, we have two President’s Pages in this issue: one from outgoing president Diane Sonnenwald and the other from our president for 2013, Andrew Dillon. Together they provide an excellent overview of the strategic direction of the Society. While Andrew’s column is based on his inaugural address at the Annual Meeting, our primary Annual Meeting coverage will be in the next issue. I was, unfortunately, among the missing this year, but I’m told this 75th Anniversary event was a unique experience for the attendees and successful in the face of the challenges presented by superstorm Sandy.