[Sigiii-l] Newsletter v3 no1

[Yin Zhang]

Greetings!  Please check SIG III website for our first issue of 
newsletter for 2002-2003.  This issue includes the following items:  

1. Greetings from the Chair, Sue O'Neill Johnson

2. 2002-2003 Officers
 (Officers photos are now available at SIG III website!) 

3. 2002 Annual Meetings Activities Highlights
      SIG III Winning SIG of the Year Award three times in a row! SIG
      III Sessions and Global Information Village Plaza International
      Reception, Silent Auction, and Raffle

4. SIG III Business Meeting Minutes

5. Proposed sessions for 2003 Annual Meeting

6. Frequently Asked Questions about sigiii-l Subscriptions and SIG 
III Web Site

I am attaching the Chair's Greetings below as it summarzes our 
activities in the past year and lays out plans for this year.  Again,
the full issue is avaiable from SIG III website at
http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIII/index.html

Currently, the site is mirrored. The whole site will be moved back in
the near future. If you have any comments and suggestions on our
website and listserv, please send me a note at 
yinzhang at slis.kent.edu. Thanks!  


------------Chair's Greetings ---------

Welcome to SIG III from the 2002-2003 Chair, Sue O'Neill Johnson

SIG III was fortunate to be recognized at the ASIST Annual 
Conference, again, as SIG of the year for the third straight year!
This recognition is the result of the dedication of our members who
have been working hard to make SIG III effective for all of us. We 
are looking for more of you to join us in the activities to come this
year! Send me an e-mail at sueojohnson at msn.com if you want to become
more involved. We can discuss details.  

Here are some of the highlights of activities to come in 2003.

Thanks to the hard work of Yin Zhang we continue to have the 
electronic newsletter you are reading, the web site and SIG III list
serv. These services are excellent only because of Yin's effort and
dedication.

We are very pleased that ASIST now has an International Liaison to 
the Board, Julian Warner, to bring forward international issues to 
them. Michel Menou will be working with him from the SIG III Board.  
One of their tasks is to continue the discussion on setting up a 
membership category that will provide ASIST memberships at a reduced 
rate for information professionals from developing countries. 

Hong Xu, Immediate Past Chair, is engineering all the proposed 
sessions from SIG III for us. At last count there were ten!  Each
session coordinator must meet this deadline with specific details if
he wants to have a session in Long Beach. The deadline is upon us
(January 28), so session coordinators are moving quickly to put
together their proposals. If you want to fit into a session, contact
Hong, and she will pass the information on to a session coordinator.
This is a hurried process at the beginning, which smoothes out after
the initial proposals are sent in.     

The InfoShare Program will be granting one year memberships to new
members from developing countries. We are looking forward to having
more grants this year. Criteria for nomination and selection of these
one year grants are being drafted by Suzanne Stemler. The Program is
funded by the silent auction and raffle, which take place at the
International Reception at the Conference, which will continue thanks
to the generosity of Elsevier Publishers.

The International Paper Contest for developing country information
professionals will be held this year for the fourth consecutive year,
thanks to the primary support from Elsevier Publishers, Basch
Publications, and from ASIST Chapters. This competition has provided
some travel grants, helped dozens of information professionals obtain
two memberships in ASIST, and has enabled dozens more to have their
papers published. Papers from last years competition have been
selected for the ASIST Bulletin, and are now in the process of
selection by the International Information and Library Review (IILR).
Yunfei Du and Nathalie Leroy will be managing the contest again. In
addition to the web site (designed by Yunfei), which facilitates
reading papers for the judges,  ASIST Bulletin and IILR editors,
Yunfei is also putting up a web site showcasing the SIGS, commercial,
and big personal donors that support InfoShare and the International
Paper Contest. At least one 2003 winner of the contest will be given 
a travel grant to attend the annual conference, and others, depending 
on funds available. The top two winners will have an opportunity to
participate in a poster session In addition the second place winner
from last year, who was unable to use his travel grant because he
could not get a visa, Dr Subbiah Arunachalam, will be given a travel
grant, and present a paper.

Michel Menou and Nadia Caidi introduced the Global Village Plaza in
Philadelphia, which was highly applauded as a huge innovation at the
Conference. Information Plaza II is being organized, with novel
approaches planned.

SIG III will make another attempt to bring the five (out of twelve
recipients) of the Eugene Garfield Travel grants who were unable to
get visas to enter to the U.S. to Long Beach, CA. To do this SIG III
will host a fund raiser with the Potomac Valley Chapter in
Washington,D.C. in the spring 2003 to add to the remaining Eugene
Garfield Travel Grant funds. We hope they will be able to come to the
Conference, and give papers as well.

Responding to the request from the Eugene Garfield Travel Grant 
winner from Lithuania, Andzela Armoniene, SIG III has begun the 
process to acquire and ship selected text books published by 
Information Today publishers needed by staff and students of the
University of Vilnius library school. 

Dr PR Goswami from the SIG III Board has joined a committee of the
Special Libraries Association's Asia Chapter to work on a joint SIG
III/SLA Asia Conference. The Chair of the SLA Asia Chapter is also a
member of ASIST and a Eugene Garfield Travel Grant winner, PK Jain.

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Yin Zhang
SIG III Communication Officer 
School of Library and Information Science
Kent State University
Phone: (330) 672-0010;   Fax: (330) 672-7965
Email: yinzhang at slis.kent.edu