History Fund

Under the leadership of Robert V. Williams and Boyd Rayward the History of Information Science and Technology Fund was approved by the ASIS&T directors in 2000. It has been supported with royalties from several books and by further donations. The purpose of the fund is to support and encourage research and publication in the history of Information Science and Technology. In 2007 the amount of the fund passed $10,000 making its income available for support of the SIG's activities. In 2009 a further matching grant from Eugene Garfield brought the total to around $18,000. Contributions to the fund would qualify for tax-deductible contributions as a result of the ASIS 501-c-3 status.

The fund is being used to support two new initiatives:

Best Paper Award

An award of $500 for the best unpublished paper on information history received by the committee.

2009 (inaugural award): Rachel Plotnick, doctoral student in Media, Technology and Society at Northwestern University for “Computers, Systems Theory and the Making of a Wired Hospital: A History of Technicon Medical Information System, 1964-1987.”
2010: Sarah Buchanan (UCLA) for "'Names the Same?': The Los Angeles Chapter of ASIST upon its Semicentennial"
2011/2: No Award
2013: Xiaohua Zhu for "Who Had Access to Juris?: A Failed Case of Open Access"

Research Grant

2009 (inagural award): Charles Meadow, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, to study the digital divide historically.
2010: Andrew Russell, Asst. Prof., Stevens Institute of Technology, for his proposal, “An open world: ideological origins of network standards.”
2011: Trudi Bellardo-Hahn & Dianne Barlow, for their proposal "Research on the NSF, information science, and Helen Brownson."
2012: No Award
2013: Kalpana Shankar & Kristin Eschenfelder, for their proposal "Social Science Data Archives: A Historical View of Sustainability, Access and Use"

Libraries & The Cultural Record

ASIS&T SIG HFIS has accepted an invitation to have a representative on the editorial board of Libraries & the Cultural Record. The representative will normally be the current Chair of SIG HFIS, and, accordingly, the first representative is Kathryn La Barre, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. See also http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/~lcr/about/editors.php. Note: in January 2012 the journal's name will change to Information & Culture: A Journal of History.

Session Sponsorship

As an ASIS&T SIG, SIGHFIS organizes and sponsors sessions for the annual meeting of the society. If you are interested in taking part in such a session or organizing one please contact the SIG chair. The meetings are held in the fall, but deadlines are around January so it is necessary to plan well ahead. Sessions held in previous meetings can be seen here.

Membership

SIGHFIS is a Special Interest Group of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T). To join SIGHFIS you should select it as one of your SIGS when joining ASIS&T or renewing your membership. Note that ASIS&T no longer charges an additional fee to join more than one SIG.

Email List

ASIS&T administers an email list, SIGHFIS-L (sighfis-l@asist.org), for the benefit of people with an interest in the SIG and its acitvities. SIG members are not automatically enrolled in the list. To join the list or view its archives go to http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sighfis-l.

Bylaws

The current SIG Bylaws are here. There are based on the ASIS&T model SIG bylaws.