ASIS Annual Meeting 1997
Summary
by Steve Hardin
About a thousand persons
attended "Digital Collections: Implications
for Users, Funders, Developers
and Maintainers," the 1997 Annual
Meeting of the Association for
Information Science. The
meeting, held in Washington, DC, featured experts
leading
interesting discussions on a number of the issues and
research
surrounding digital collections.
Clinton administration
advisor Tom Kalil delivered an overview of
the administration's networked
information policies during the
keynote address. Kalil -- Senior Director
responsible for Science
and Technology Issues to the National Economic
Council, the White
House, and the U.S. National Coordinator for the G7
Global
Information Association pilot projects -- told the hundreds of
persons
in the audience "This is a fun and exciting time to be working"
on
the issues surrounding networked information."
Some of the factors
he gave in support of his position include the
declining costs of storing,
transmitting and processing information,
information technology's
increasing sophistication and ubiquity,
information's increasingly
important role in the economy and
society, and the intellectual ferment and
experimentation
accompanying these developments. He noted an example of
how
important information is in developing countries. In Sri
Lanka,
farmers were able to get higher prices for their crops because
of
the wider availability of pricing information. The impact
of
newly-available information, he said, is greater in the developing
world
than in the industrialized world.
Kalil also discussed several
Clinton administration initiatives. He
said one top priority is ensuring
meaningful access to information
technology for every student. He added
the information scientist's
expertise is "desperately needed" to make the
Internet's content
more usable. The "next generation Internet" is another
Clinton
administration initiative. Its goals include developing
long-term
research capabilities. He hopes we'll soon see network
lines
running 100 times faster than today's Internet, with a
few
institutions able to run things 1,000 times as fast.
Another
lively session featured attorneys representing publisher and
library
interests discussing copyright and fair use. The American
Library
Association's Washington Office's Legislative Counsel, Adam
Eisgrau, spoke
about why he and the ALA favor a broad interpretation
of the copyright
exceptions contained in fair use. He said it was
basic for "the flow of
information in a democracy." On the other
hand, Association of American
Publishers attorney Allan Adler argued
for a more restrictive understanding
of fair use to permit greater
protection of intellectual property rights.
He said that if those
rights are not protected, the people who provide the
information
will stop doing so, and information consumers will lose.
Jeff
Rosedale, the Acting Director of Access Services for
Columbia
University Libraries, discussed common ground between Eisgrau's
and
Adler's positions. He said we should think of intellectual
property
more than in terms of dollars and cents.
A third session
dealt with Uniform Resource Identifiers and
metadata. Former ASIS President
Clifford Lynch of the
Coalition for Networked
Information
began with a discussion of naming systems.
Naming systems
are useful, he said, in part because of the problems
we have with URLs,
which tend to rot over time and be dependent on
format. We're at the
point, he said, where we need to consider why
we need naming systems and
what their properties should be.
Rebecca Guenther gave a history of
the
Dublin
Core
and its relationship to MARC. MARC can be used to catalog the
Web,
especially with the recent changes in the 856 field. On the
other
hand, the Dublin Core is a much simpler approach to
providing
metadata for an item on the Web. Its original version had only
13
elements. Work has been done in converting Dublin Core records
into
MARC. It's possible conversion of MARC to Dublin Core would
be
useful, too, she said. DC is seen as the lowest common denominator
for
metadata.
There were dozens more sessions, but, of course, not enough
space to
consider them all here. More in-depth information is available
at
the ASIS Web site at http://www.asis.org or by looking through
the Proceedings. The 1998 ASIS Annual Meeting is scheduled for October
26-29 in Pittsburgh. The 1998 MidYear Meeting is scheduled for May
18-20
in Orlando.
IASIS Spring Meeting and
Program
Martha (Marti) Montague Smith, will present "Ethics for
Information
Professionals: Neutrality or Advocacy?" at the IASIS Winter
Meeting and
Program on Thursday, March 5, 1998.
An Assistant Professor
with the IU School of Library and Information
Science, on the campus of
IUPUI, Smith is author of "Information Ethics,"
a chapter in the
soon-to-be published "Annual Review of Information
Science and Technology
(ARIST), Volume 32, 1997. Also, Smith serves as
one of the selected expert
participants in VF-INFOethics, a global
discussian forum whose "main
objective is to augment knowledge and public
awareness in information
ethics' topics and to provide UNESCO [United
Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization] with
recommendations for further
actions in the field of information ethics"
(for more information point
your browser to:
http://www.de3.emb.net/infoethics/).
The meeting will be held at
the Airport Holiday Inn in Indianapolis, and
will include an Executive
Board meeting, social time (with cash bar),
business meeting, dinner and
our guest presenter. For more information or
to register online, visit the
Indiana ASIS March 1998 Meeting and Program
page at the IASIS website.
Do you know the answers?
Attendees of the IASIS Winter
Meeting and Program will have the
opportunity to take an Information
Ethics Quiz which is part of an
upcoming publication by Martha Montague
Smith. Following are just three
of the challenging and thought-provoking
questions.
In the course of your duties managing a large database, you
have found
several serious problems that need correcting. However, your
colleagues
(who were responsible for the design of the database before you
came to
work there) don't like to "rock the boat" and would be angry if the
"new
kid" did. You believe that the problems could cause a major failure
in
the operation of the company. Do you:
- Keep quiet and maintain your relationship with your
colleages?
- Take the matter up with
senior management?
- Talk with your colleagues and tell
them that if they don't
help make adjustment then you will go to
senior management?
A friend has been offered a job by a
competing firm. Part of the
lucrative package includes the disclosure of
proprietary information.
When asked for your advice, you tell your friend
to:
- Take the offer only if assured that
no breach of
confidentiality with the proprietary information is
involved?
- Take the job and ask for a bonus to disclose
the valued
information?
- Tell the
current employer what is going on and refuse the
job?
- Refuse the job.
While you are on duty at the reference information desk, someone asks
you for information about how to break into a computer system. Do
you:
- Ask the person why he or she wants
the information?
- Suggest a more technical library?
- Call a friend for the information needed?
- Call the FBI?
Calling all
Indiana "ACES"
When the room-rental contract for the next IASIS meeting
arrived addressed to "Indiana ACES," we had to laugh. After sharing the
story with fellow IASIS members, we heard more humorous tales of
misunderstandings and mispronunciations of the IASIS and ASIS
acronyms.
Do you have any tales to share?
We're calling on all of
you "Indiana ACES" to share any stories you have relating to the names of
the national organization or our chapter. Your responses will be printed
in an upcoming edition of the IASIS newsletter.
Please share your
humorous anecdotes by sending them to:
Patsy Allen at
pallen@alleninfo.com
or
Allen Information Consultants, Inc.
PO
Box 501633
Indianapolis IN 46250-1633
We look forward to hearing
from you!
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