Dear Colleagues,

As some of you know, our chapter/SIG has agreed to co-sponsor the new International Calendar of Information Science Conferences. The Calendar is a collaborative venture of the International Information Issues SIG and the European and New England chapters of ASIS&T. It is a centralized master calendar listing information science related conferences around the globe. We plan to send e-mails announcing the launch of the site to over 40 listservs in the coming week (see text of announcement below, and visit the site: http://icisc.neasist.org/).

We wanted to be sure you knew of this latest development before the news hit the lists. If you have any suggestions for the Calendar, the site, or listservs we may not have thought of, please contact Caryn Anderson and Michel Menou via the ICISC Calendar e-mail address: icisc@neasist.org.

Also, Michel and Caryn have been working very hard to develop the calendar and Web site. They would appreciate any help that we can offer. If you would be willing to help add events, respond to e-mails, translate listings into other languages or develop mirror sites it would be greatly appreciated. If you are able to volunteer, please contact Caryn Anderson directly at caryn.anderson@simmons.edu.

This calendar is a useful and exciting new development that will help bring more cooperation and productivity to our field and provide greater visibility for ASIS&T and our chapters. We appreciate your support in publicizing it broadly throughout your networks.

Sincerely,

Yin Zhang (Chair, SIG/III)
Tatjana Aparac-Jelusic (Chair, ASIST/EC)
Margret Branschofky (Chair, NEASIST)

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The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG/III), the European (ASIST/EC) and the New England (NEASIST) chapters of ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science & Technology) are pleased to announce:

The International Calendar of Information Science Conferences (ICISC) http://icisc.neasist.org/

This centralized, master calendar of relevant conferences being held around the world serves three primary purposes:

- to help information science researchers and practitioners (and their colleagues in related disciplines) to discover which conferences are planned that might fulfill their need to communicate their knowledge and experience and learn from others; and,

- to help conference organizers avoid time or topic conflicts, or coordinate with other groups, leading to more interaction and coherence among professional groups; and,

- to contribute to facilitating interaction among like-minded professionals working on information problems around the globe.

This calendar is meant as a cooperative venture. Any organization or conference organizer is cordially invited to submit relevant conferences, either confirmed or planned, to the ICISC Calendar. Detailed instructions for registering a conference directly, through a submission form, or by Email can be found on the Web site. The site is moderated and the sponsoring organizations reserve the right to discard entries that would not be deemed appropriate.

The calendar is in English at the moment. We hope that more languages and/or mirror sites could be added in the future. Announcements can be passed in any language that can be presented in Latin characters, provided an English translation of at least the conference title, place and dates is also included.

In addition to the dynamic and searchable calendar available for viewing in both block and list style, there is a "Quick Calendar" listing all the events on a static HTML web page useful for printing, or for those with slower internet connections. ICISC further offers the option to subscribe to an RSS feed to keep up to date on the latest additions.

The web site further includes lists of electronic fora, organizations, networks and rotating conferences in Information science. Suggestions of relevant entries will be most welcome.

We hope that you will find this calendar useful from an organizational and/or individual stand point. We encourage you to contribute to the calendar and offer your suggestions. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS/XML feed to stay up to date on new additions to the calendar.

Your colleagues from,
SIG/III ( http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIII/)
ASIST/EC ( http://www.asis.org/Chapters/europe/About.htm)
NEASIST ( http://www.neasist.org/)

International Calendar of Information Science Conferences (ICISC)
http://icisc.neasist.org/
Contact: icisc@neasist.org