Serials Spoken Here: Reports of Conferences, Institutes, and Seminars

Abstract

Reports from the 18th North American Serials Interest Group Conference held in June 2003 and the annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology held in October 2003. The two reports in this column describe the experience of a conference student grant winner at the 2003 North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) Conference at Portland State University (PSU) and six plenary sessions from the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) held in Long Beach, CA. NASIG has not been held in the Northwest since the group was in Vancouver in 1996. Many attendees enjoyed spending time in Powell's bookshop. I'm sure the Portland economy was booming with so many librarians in town. Because there were no residence halls at PSU, delegates stayed in local hotels—quite a change for long-time NASIG members. Lisa Bowman focuses on this theme of change. Rafal Kasprowski presents a very thorough and fascinating report on ASIST sessions dealing with the humanizing of technology. While not specifically aimed at serialists, we can all appreciate how this topic fits into our daily routines where technology seems to rule, or maybe it only rules as much as we let it. Nonetheless, Kasprowski covers a lot of excellent research on new directions in system design as well as several theoretical and methodological approaches for more effective information service. Social and cultural analysis is important, and emotion can even play a key role in user interaction with systems. There is a lot yet to learn and understand about user behavior, and the ASIST conference has really put together an excellent series of presentations.