Issue 65 (Fall 1997)

APLIC-INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATOR
Fall 1997, Issue #65

The APLIC-International Communicatoris published several times yearly by the Association for Population and Family Planning Libraries and Information Centers, International. Mailing address: c/o Family Health International Library, P.O. Box 13950, RTP, NC 27709 USA. ISSN 09-9847
Editors:
Peggy D’Adamo, Center for Communications Programs, Johns Hopkins University, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, MD. 21202. Phone: 410-659-6256; Fax: 410-659-6266; e-mail: mmc@jhuccp.org
Jean Sack, Hopkins Population Center, Johns Hopkins University, 615 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205. Phone: 410-955-3573; Fax 410-955-1215; email: jsack@jhsph.edu

Table of Contents

President’s Message
By Jean Sack

As this issue of The Communicator reveals, APLIC-I has made progress in our commitment to involve library science students in our professional activities. Two Washington D.C. School of Information and Library Science publicized our March conference and sent gifted presenters to our meetings. At least one information center invited a student intern to write about her experiences. As part of the September APLIC-I Board meeting, we have pledged to send our Student Liaison Chairman, Bob McCann ( rmccann@coss.fsu.edu), the contact names for SLA or ALA student chapter advisors at Universities closest to their centers. We hope for involvement of Chicago area library schools in our April conference. Perhaps talented library students could help draft Internet resources and print pathfinders on some of the topics of our conference. Bob McCann will welcome your suggestions. Thanks, Bob, for being willing to chair this continuing Student Liaison endeavor!

Anne Ilacqua and Lisa Newman are planning an extraordinary conference in Chicago with a revised schedule to include a ½ day of potential field trips. Shifting populations and immigration is certainly a demographic topic which involves us all. Please assist them with your suggestions and by inviting Mid West family planning librarians and other social sciences librarians to this 2.5 day conference. Routing on this newsletter site and conferences announcements to interested colleagues, as they appear on our APLIC-I listserv discussion, is an efficient way to help publicize. Please send copies of what you post to Maryann Belanger and Sarah Kolda at Princeton. Lisa Newman reports that only ½ of our members have subscribed to our useful APLIC-I listserv which was set up by Elizabeth Evans at Carolina Population Center. Lisa will be mailing out electronic subscription information with your membership renewals in November. Let us know if you are having difficulties connecting to this 6-month-old listserv and, please, take advantage of the new DUPS listserv this fall!

Libraries are being transformed by the Internet and electronic services. Susan Pasquariella will soon introduce a new directory of population organizations, coordinated by POPIN, which will greatly enhance some of our most useful but outdated print and gopher directories. The new World Bank World Development Report will focus on global communications. Many of the listserv resources described in this issue have had on-going discussions about our professional responsibilities to assist in the training of colleagues in the developing world. Perhaps this will be virtual through websites, maybe more librarians serving institutes in lesser developed countries will join APLIC and attend conferences or use the DUPS listserve. As other nations become connnected to Internet, the resources are rich. The U.S. Government health agencies (CDC, NIH, NCHS, NTIS, CENSUS), survey organizations (Macro INC for DHS), reproductive health agencies (JHPIEGO, CCP, MSH), international organizations (WHO, WORLD BANK, PAHO), and our own population centers are mounting their resources and statistics web sites, as are many main-line publishers. Mike Zimmerman and Susan have released findings from a preliminary study of website use and offer tips to increase access and usage. Several site reviews carried in this issue of the Communicator should encourage our readers to contribute your best sites to the January edition! Because of this obvious surge in Web use, we are counting on PAA to sponsor their own Internet Room at the Chicago conference. Perhaps APLIC-I will be invited to assist in this third year. As APLIC-I president, I want to mention how pleased I am with your energy and willingness to take on professional responsibilities, despite many woes of library restructuring. Please note that every committee chair position has been filled. Susan Pasquariella (popin@undp.org) and Bob McCann (rmccann@coss.fsu.edu) are accepting nominations for the APLIC-I Class of 2001, should you wish to serve.

APLIC News

  • Congratulations to Wendy Brand!
    Wendy, the head librarian at the Center for Demography and Ecology Library, University of Wisconsin – Madison, became the proud parent of a new daughter, Carolyn Jean, on Friday, October 3, 1997 at 9:34 PM. Carolyn weighed in at 7 lb. 6 oz. and was 19 inches long. Both Wendy and Carolyn are healthy and happy. Feel free to send any congratulation wishes to Wendy at brand@ssc.wisc.edu. She will be on maternity leave for the next 4 months, but will be checking her email from home periodically.
  • Best Wishes to Cindy Livingston who recently left her position at University of Michigan to spend extra time with her family. Cindy was an APLIC Board member.
  • Welcome to Nika Barakat, who will be replacing Cindy at the University of Michigan and on the APLIC Board.
  • Welcome to Harriet Schick, who is the new librarian at AVSC, and former librarian at PPFA.
  • Best Wishes to Judy Firebaugh in her new position as cataloger for a major outsourcing firm in New Jersey. Judy was cataloger at the Hopkins Population Center Library.

Membership Update
By Lisa A. Newman, Librarian, Demography Library,
Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania

APLIC-I membership is steadily growing. The total 1997 membership is 114 (up from 107 in 1996, 104 in 1995, 77 in 1994, 107 in 1993, 101 in 1992).

82% of the membership is from the United States. (Up from 80% in 1996). Geographically, 59 individual and 10 sustaining memberships are from the United States. The remaining are from Africa (2), Asia/Pacific (7), Europe (4), Latin America (5), Canada (2) and the Caribbean (1).

68% of the membership are individual members.

There are eleven organizations with sustaining memberships. There were only eight in 1996.

First renewal notices will go out November 18. Second renewal notices will go out February 19.

Conclusions from the UN POPIN Survey of Population WWW Servers
By Michael Zimmerman, System Analyst/Administrator
The Pennsylvania State University Population Research Institute

During the spring and summer of 1997, I undertook a small research project with Susan Pasquariella for the UN to examine the usage of population related WWW sites. Specifically, we wanted to find out what sorts of resources–such as online publications, datasets, subject resources, organizational information, etc.–were most popular, and what sort of sites received the most international usage.

Five organizations agreed to participate in the project: the Carolina Population Center from the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, the Office of Population Research from Princeton University, the Hopkins Population Center at Johns Hopkins, the Population Research Institute and the Pennsylvania State University, and Family Health International. These sites each provided logs from their WWW servers, which were analyzed using the Analog server log analysis package. Two other organizations, UN POPIN and the U. S. Census Bureau, provided server statistics for comparison.

While is it difficult to draw any hard and fast conclusions based on a small sample of such disparate WWW sites, certain trends did seem to become apparent upon comparison of the different sites.

First, as should be obvious, having even a single important resource at the site increases the use of the site significantly over having only information about the organization itself. The sites with the highest usage were those that provided unique resources to the Internet community, from original data to online publications to topical resources, and those resources made up a significant portion of those sites’ requests. Even sites with more moderate use had their highest numbers of requests for documents which were intended as a “community service”, rather than organizational information.

Second, whether they represent non-profit or educational institutions, sites which provide “user oriented” resources, .i.e. subject guides and FAQs, or online publications intended for the lay audience, receive more traffic over all and are much more likely to receive a high percentage of commercial (*.com) and international usage than those providing primarily “research oriented” resources such and datasets and working papers. This is further supported by the data from the POPIN site. A significant portion of POPIN’s resources are “user oriented”, and the majority of its users are from international (or unresolved IP) and commercial domains. On these sites, the “user oriented” resources are usually the most popular, as well. 1

Third, as was demonstrated by the FHI site, foreign language pages (particularly Spanish) make a site much more accessible to international users. Spanish language documents accounted for 29.25% of FHI’s total accesses, and French language documents for another 7.08%.

Fourth, putting online publications into an easily accessible format such as HTML makes them much more likely to be used than documents in Postscript or PDF. This is significant because it demonstrates that PDF’ has not really lived up to its promise as a “most common denominator” format for electronic document distribution. 2

Most of these conclusions, while somewhat preliminary, are not surprising, and obviously many more questions remain to be answered. However, they do give some general indications of what population organizations can do to make their WWW sites more useful to the wider community.

Footnotes:

1. POPIN’s most popular resources are electronic versions of the World Population and Basic Social Services wall charts, and the “Electronic Library of Population Resources”, a set of links to other online sites. Both are primarily what the author would call “user oriented”. Many of the most commonly used items Census Bureau site–the geneological resources, for instance–are clearly “user oriented”, as well.

2. It is likely that the sheer size of many PDF files (as compared to HTML, for instance) makes PDF less than ideal as a format for electronic documents, particularly to users with slow network connections. For instance, in a recent sample of accesses to the U.S. Census Bureau server (http://www.census.gov), arguably one of the largest sources of demographic data on the Internet and an early user of PDF, requests for PDF documents made up less than 3% of the total 2 million or so weekly requests for files. However, those PDF files accounted for over 45% of the total volume of data transmitted by the server during that period. The average size of the PDF files delivered by the server was over 1.2 Mb each.

Michael Zimmerman
zimmer@pop.psu.edu
http://www.pop.psu.edu/~zimmer/
System Analyst/Administrator
The Pennsylvania State University Population Research Institute

Changes in the APLIC Duplicates (DUPS) Program
By Jean Sack, APLIC President

When our information centers receive duplicate copies of valuable titles, update editions or weed historic items, APLIC-I has had a unique method of sharing these resources within the membership. In fact this DUPS program has been a cornerstone of APLIC and has been operating in an efficient way for about twenty years. During this time DUPS has been a major reason why developing country librarians have benefitted by becoming members of APLIC.

In September, 1997 Neil Zimmerman sent out the final paper copy of the dups lists from the Population Council. Beginning in November, 1997 APLIC-I members will be invited to subscribe to the new electronic listserv and to post their own listings.Neil’s final DUPS list was recently mailed out.

Beginning in mid-November, Lisa Newman at University of Pennsylavania will implement a special listserv (electronic mailing list) for APLIC members who would like to continue to participate in the DUPS program, both as suppliers and users. Since only a few APLIC members do not have e-mail addresses, the listserv will be accessible to most members electronically. Gretl Cox will print out and fax the lists to overseas members without e-mail so that they can continue to request duplicates.

Lisa will mail out information about the DUPS program and how to subscribe along with the first APLIC membership renewal notices that go out around November 15. This will ensure that every APLIC-I member gets the information.

The lists can be in any format with as complete citation as possible, including date of publication. The number of items on each posted list should be limited to 50. A deadline of about 2-3 weeks for responses should be given on each list posted. Requests for materials should NOT be posted to the entire listserv, but to the holding (posting) library/institution. Materials will be distributed on a first come/first serve basis, with preference given to libraries in developing countries. The library requesting the materials will select exact titles and supply a complete mailing address. Postage will be the responsibility of the holding library/institution but APLIC will reimburse if necessary. Members who participate in the DUPS program should keep statistics on the number of items sent and the cost of postage and submit the information to Lisa Newman. Lisa Newman will monitor the DUPS Listserv.

If members would like to participate as a receiver of duplicates and do not have access to e-mail, they should send their fax number (or complete mailing address) in writing, with a request to be added to the APLIC DUPS List to: Lisa Newman, Demography Library, Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6298. or e-mail Lisa with this “paper” information: lnewman@pop.upenn.edu.

Macro International Inc.’s Corporate Library
By Erin L. Clougherty

Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) is a 13-year project funded by USAID and administered by Macro International Inc. Macro is headquartered in Calverton, MD, just outside of the Washington, DC beltway. Macro International is a professional services consulting firm, specializing in research, management consulting and information technology.

Macro International’s Library contains a variety of reference resources, a book collection of over 7,000 books and 200 journal subscriptions, and access to a variety of online databases. The focus of the collection emphasizes Macro’s areas of business, which include education, health, social science, population, management science, energy, market research, qualitative and quantitative research, government, public affairs, and legislation. The library supports the Demographic and Health Surveys staff primarily with literature searches on Popline and Medline and obtaining articles and books through Interlibrary Loan. As with most corporate libraries, our library is only for internal use, but we do participate in loaning materials to APLIC members.

As most APLIC members are aware, Macro produces the DHS reports and newsletter. All publications are available free by request. The Publications Catalog is available both in print and on our web site. Requests for publications can be made by telephone at 301-572-0985, fax 301-572-0999, or by sending email to: reports@macroint.com

An inventory reduction is expected to take place in the coming months. DHS-I reports published between 1986 and 1990 will be discarded. If you would like some of these materials, please requests them as soon as possible.

DHS’s Web Page is located at www.macroint.com/dhs/. A new feature is the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page that provides answers and software to common questions regarding DHS data. The software program Demographit! is available free for downloading data from the 1992-93 India National Family Health Survey. The DHS Data Archive provides data sets for completed DHS surveys to researchers at no charge. Data sets for Nepal and Brazil have recently been added to the Archive. The web page does not provide the full text of survey reports, but news releases are available.

If you have any questions regarding Macro International, DHS or our library, please contact Erin Clougherty at 301-572-0853 or clougherty@macroint.com.

PopNet

PopNet (http://www.popnet.org), the Population Reference Bureau’s new population-resource website, is basically an annotated collection of websites that provide useful information on population and related topics. PopNet was launched in early June 1997 with a little over 180 websites in the collection. Just two months later, over 50 sites had been added.

The variety of organizations that produce population-related information are grouped by type in PopNet. For those concerned about who is producing the information they want to use, the different types include government, international agency, non-governmental agency, university population center, population association, and listserve.

Topics that are basic to population research as well as those that are currently “hot” include demographic statistics, economics, education, environment, gender, policy, and reproductive health. The Selected Topics section of PopNet allows access to those sites that provide substantial information on these topics. A Clickable World Map Section allows quick access to sites that have region or country-specific information.

All words in the PopNet website are indexed, and therefore searchable with a local Excite search engine. Keywords, topics, and regions are assigned to each site in addition to a brief annotation about the contents of the site. A list of keywords is also provided in the Keyword Search section for help in searching.

PopNet is updated at least twice each month to keep it current by adding new sites or updating old site addresses. Users are encouraged to send in comments as well as submit new sites for inclusion in PopNet.

PRB’s Information Services

The Population Reference Bureau receives several requests for population information each day. Requests come by phone, regular mail, email, or visits to the library as PRB’s library is open to the public. To manage these information requests, PRB has an Information Response Team of five staff members including demographers, interns, and the librarian. Each is assigned at least one day a week to “information duty” and handles all incoming requests for the day, whether it is answering the inquiry or referring the request to an internal or external expert. Library visitors are usually the Librarian’s responsibility, but in her absence, the person on “information duty” helps the library patrons.

Members of PRB, the media, elected officials, or colleagues are provided answers to their inquiries free-of-charge. Lenghty requests from profit-making companies are charged for the time spent on fulfilling their requests. Students are usually sent a resource list of print and electronic sources of population information.

PRB also maintains a website at http://www.prb.org/prb. Selected data from PRB’s latest World Population Data Sheet and the monthly Population Today in full-text are available at the site, as well as short demographic news and reports, and PRB’s publications catalog. A new feature is the collection of Data Web Sites for the 50 (U.S.) states that provide population and environment information.

Zuali Malsawma
Librarian
Population Reference Bureau
1875 Connecticut Ave., NW – Ste. 520
Washington, DC 20009
(202) 483-1100, x422
zuali@prb.org
http://www.prb.org/prb
http://www.popnet.org

Cataloging Gray Literature at the Hopkins Population Center
By Valorie Huynh, University of Maryland

As part of my graduate work at the College of Library and Information Services of the University of Maryland, I chose to intern at the Hopkins Population Center (HPC) library. Under the supportive supervision of the Information Core Director, Jean Sack, and Head Cataloger, Judy Firebaugh, I gained valuable experience in original cataloging of gray literature.*

The goal of my project was to catalog many of the working papers series. Well-known or important papers from agencies such as The Population Council were individually cataloged with series notes in each MARC record. Other retained items will receive a series level record. The following steps were taken:

  • Inventory the current holdings not yet online.
  • Weed for age, content and incomplete series holdings.
  • Search OCLC for potentially useful records.
  • Create original cataloging for items not already in OCLC but which merited addition to the University OPAC.
  • Label papers with consistent call numbers to aid physical access and maintain proper sequencing on the shelves.
  • Identify indexing/abstracting databases, for example POPLINE, which might create a demand for these items.

Finding the necessary MARC records was a challenging process. OCLC on-line union catalog provided many monographic records but very few series entries for the papers held at HPC. The book format cataloging for individual papers within a series was fairly consistent. In modifying these records for HPC use, we removed all geographic sub-headings from the 650 subject headings fields and used the 651 field instead. The 651 field is specifically for geographic location and reduces redundancy in the 650 field. We felt that long subject heading strings were not helpful to our patrons.

This 650/651 criteria also applied to the original monographic records we created locally. Most of the patrons search by geographic location because they are researching a specific region. All added authors were listed in 700 fields and series notes were entered in the 490 and 830 fields. In some instances, added authors are well-known researchers. Users may want to access all research in which this person has been involved. To maintain series continuity, all papers receive the same call number to ensure browsability in the stacks.

OCLC lacks series records for much of this specialized population literature, therefore only a small percentage can be copy cataloged. The current campus-wide OPAC will not accept original series records, only original and copy cat monographic MARC records. Since the HPC has its own database, ProCite, we decided to place a pointer record in the larger online catalog and a series record in ProCite. HPC prefers to place records in the online catalog because it is networked and accessible to the entire Hopkins community.

As a result of my 100 hours of cataloging service/internship, we have identified some points worthy of wider discussion and action by other population information centers.

Subject Access
Improved subject access is desperately needed. Current Library of Congress Subject Headings are inadequate for most topics in population and reproductive health. Either they are too general (Population) or too specific (Birth control clinics–now used instead of Family planning services). Some terms which are common in these working papers, such as Family planning, are no longer considered current in LCSH.

Shared Cataloging
If each issuing population agency cataloged its own papers and shared the MARC records with other centers, much duplicated and inconsistent cataloging could be eliminated. The optimum situation would be for each center to provide monographic and series cataloging.

Print vs. Electronic Formats
Several centers now provide electronic access and no longer routinely distribute print copies of their papers. A standard web format, such as Adobe Acrobat or html markup, is suggested By doing so, other centers would need only one platform or reader (plug-in) in order to access all full text population papers on the Web.

Complete Series
For those centers still producing paper copies, clear reciprocal exchange agreements would save staff time in identifying missing papers, renamed or new series. Each issuing agency could make an annual announcement listing the working papers published that year. An electronic announcement could be posted on the appropriate listserv. To facilitate access to earlier papers, perhaps one or two centers could be designated as repositories, both for print and electronic links to full-text. It is assumed that each institute now keeps archival copies of its own papers.

Collection Dispersal
Some guidelines are needed regarding the dispersal of collections when an agency closes. Currently, the communication is very informal, with other collections taking what they feel they need via a DUPS exchange organized by APLIC-I. If archives or repositories existed, they would be the only collections required to inventory their holdings meticulously to determine if needed any of the weeded papers from other sites. These repositories could be allowed a priority pick before others can select from the DUPS lists.

Library literature on this topic of gray literature cataloging includes the following:

  • Gregor, Dorothy et al. “Cataloging must change.” Library Journal (April 1, 1991) p.42-7.
  • Miller, Jeannie P. et al. “Improved access to engineering society technical papers.” Reference Services Review vol. 23 #3 (1995) p.63-7.
  • Soules, Aline et al. “Compromises in the management of working papers.” Library Resources and Technical Services vol. 36 (Oct. 1992) p.478-86.

*Grey literature are technical papers “produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry, etc. but which is not controlled by commercial publishers”.

APLIC STUDENT MEMBERSHIP TO GEAR UP
By Bob McCann, Student Membership Coordinator

APLIC-International has established a student membership category in order to let up-and-coming future librarians know about our organization and what we do; and thus try to insure that there will be librarians with an interest in population studies to carry on APLIC’s mission in the future.

With this in mind, I would like to request that all APLIC members please forward to me any information about any contacts you might have with library/information science programs where you work or in your area.

Here at Florida State University, and possibly at other locations, this is the faculty advisor to the local student SLA chapter.

Additional ideas would be to invite library students to tour your facility; provide internships; provide part-time jobs; or speak to your local student SLA chapter. If you have any other ideas about how to get our name in front of library students and to encourage their becoming involved with APLIC, please forward them to me.

It would be great to see a nice contingent of student members at the next conference meeting.

SLA: Report from Seattle
By Nancy Minter, Urban Institute Library

What do sunshine, Bill Gates, knowledge management trends, and intranets have in common? All were prime features of the SLA Annual Conference held in Seattle in June. The weather was exceptionally nice and the flowers in the Pike Street market were a wonder to behold.

Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, the conference’s keynote speaker, addressed a packed crowd that comprised over 85% of the registered attendees. He declared that “libraries are an absolutely critical resource and will play a more central role than they ever have before,” and this just within a few days of his announced philanthropy program. He paused in the middle of his remarks to introduce corporate librarian Amy Dunn Stevenson, who demonstrated Microsoft Library’s Web Page, which, she pointed out proudly, was developed by librarians, not ‘techies.’

The conference offered a wealth of workshops and discussion sessions on a wide range of topics, from knowledge management to intranets, from outsourcing to intellectual property, from education and training needs for new information professionals to integrating Internet resources with commercial sources, and from managing the virtual information center to a vendor update of online health care sources. But it wasn’t all work and no play — there were many vendor-sponsored receptions, Dutch Treat dinners, division open houses, and literally hundreds of chances to network with other information professionals. There was a special reception, sponsored by the Social Science Division, for all conference attendees to honor the growing international dimension of special librarianship. There was the annual library school alumni reunion. In between all these activities, attendees strolled through the exhibit hall, taking in the offerings of some 300 vendors presenting new, traditional, and reengineered products and services, and enjoying the promotional discounts many offered.

Celebration Coming. At the 1998 Annual Conference, to be held in Indianapolis, IN, the Social Science Division will be celebrating its 75th anniversary. We are bringing in a featured speaker: nationally-known, Pulitzer-winning biographer and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. She will address an association-wide audience on Tuesday morning, and be our special luncheon speaker that day. We are sponsoring numerous other workshops and discussion sessions, and while plans are not yet final, the topics being worked on include The Aging of the Population, Philanthropy on the Web, a Municipal/Local Government Information Swap Session that will focus on using the Internet to access all levels of government information, a walking tour of the revitalized downtown area, a discussion of the Euro, the coming common currency for Europe, a review of the Europa Website, plus some purely social times when you can meet with other information professionals who share your interests. Be sure to visit our Division Suite and attend our annual Dutch Treat Dinner. Visit the hundreds of vendors showing new and updated products and services. Mark your calendar for June 6-11 and come, help us celebrate!

Many APLIC members have already discovered the worthwhile benefits of membership in SLA. Just ask APLIC President Jean Sack, or IPPF’s Abigail Hourwich, who serves as Secretary-Treasurer of the Social Science Division, or Princeton’s Maryann Belanger, who chairs the SSD’s Health and Human Services Roundtable, or NORC’s Patrick Bova, or any of several others. For SLA membership information, consult their web site: http://www.sla.org.

APLIC Members Serving as Officers in the Special Libraries Association
By Abigail Hourwich, ahourwich@ippfwhr.org

Several APLIC members are officers in various chapters and divisions of the Special Libraries Association (SLA.)

  • Maryann Belanger (Princeton University, Office of Population Research; mbelanger@opr.princeton.edu ) is Coordinator of the Health and Human Services Roundtable of the Social Sciences Division, after serving as Treasurer of the Princeton-Trenton Chapter.
  • Teresa Frydryk (John Snow, Inc.; tfrydryk@jsi.com) is Secretary of the Medical Section of the Biomedical and Life Sciences Division.
  • Abigail Hourwich (International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region; ahourwich@ippfwhr.org) is Secretary/Treasurer of the Social Sciences Division.
  • Nancy Minter (Urban Institute; nminter@ui.urban.org) is Chair of the Public Relations Committee of the Social Science Division.
  • Katherine Willson (Futures Group; k.willson@tfgi.com) is President of the Connecticut Valley Chapter.

APLIC 1998 – 31st Annual Conference Update
March 30 – April 1, 1998
By Anne Ilacqua and Lisa Newman

Your Vice-Presidents have been busy working on the forthcoming Annual Conference. We can assure you that the program will be a very interesting and informative one. It is still early for announcements about speakers; however, we are actively working on speaker invitations, time slots and program formats.

At the September Board Meeting, the APLIC-I Board made a decision to begin the 1998 Meeting on Monday morning March 30th. This is a change from the scheduling pattern of recent years. There will be two full days of Conference Program, a banquet on Tuesday evening and an opportunity on Tuesday afternoon for on-site visits to locations related to the conference theme: “The Promised Land: Views of an Evolving Immigrant Population”.

Another departure from the usual scheduling is that the Board and Business Meetings will be scheduled for Wednesday morning. This was in response to some constructive criticism about the repetition of issues addressed at the Monday night Board Meeting and the Business Meeting. Wednesday’s Business Meeting will be followed by a Conference planning session at which members’ input will be welcome for the 1999 New York meeting. Prior to the Board Meeting, attendees will receive “ballots” for voting on By-Laws changes, and a slate of officers for the Board.

Conference speakers are being chosen who will address topics relating to the immigration theme. We will hear from members of the Chicago community about services to immigrants as well as from speakers with a global focus. We are also planning to include specific library-related topics in the program.

We recommend that after you mark the Conference dates on your 1998 calendar, you visit the Web site “Chicago: An Overview” http://www.ci.chi.il.us/Tourism/PressReleases/Overview.html to learn about or update your knowledge of this beautiful city, which we know you will want to explore before or after the APLIC-I Meeting.

Your comments, ideas, suggestions and volunteer offers are welcome. Please send them to: Anne_Ilacqua@Brown.edu or lnewman@pop.upenn.edu.

New Listservs

AFLIB-L African Libraries Listserv

AFLIB-L is a new, lightly moderated, discussion list that aims to provide a forum for libraries in Africa and “encourage contact and communication between and among professionals on the continent.” The primary language will be English, but they soon hope to support French and Portuguese as well. Anticipated themes for discussion include professional problems and issues, the application of technology, and notices of major projects.

To subscribe send email message to (leave subject line blank):
AFLIB-L@statelib.pwv.gov.za
In the body of the message type:
subscribe your name and e-mail address.

Gender-AIDS

GENDER-AIDS is an electronic-mail discussion and information service aimed at bringing together people interested in gender and HIV/AIDS who are building and shaping the global response to HIV and AIDS. This network has been formed as a sub-network of the SEA-AIDS services and is supported by UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, ICW, International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS and GNP+, the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS.

For more info send an e-mail to francen@un.org

Indigenous Healing Network

A new electronic discussion group called the INDIGENOUS HEALING NETWORK LIST (IHN-L) created for the purpose of promoting the expansion of knowledge and practices of indigenous, or traditional, methods of healing, and to promote the health of indigenous peoples throughout the world. This will provide a platform for a dialogue about the practices and research that is being carried on with various healing methods throughout the world. The IHN-L is supported by Yooroang Garang, the Centre for Indigenous Health Studies in The University of Sydney, Australia.

Any mail you send to IHN-L will be automatically forwarded to every- one on the list. You will get your own message back, as confirmation that it has been processed.

To subscribe to IHN-L send an e-mail message addressed to: Majordomo@listserv.cchs.usyd.edu.au

In the body of the e-mail message type:
subscribe ihn-l (omit the brackets)

You will then receive introductory information about the list and commands you can use to obtain further information. The list moderator is Wilbur Hoff, International Child Resource Institute, 2230 Stuart St., Berkeley, CA, 94705, USA. Tel/Fax: +1-510-841-5804 E-mail: wilburhoff@aol.com

Population-Studies

This list is concerned with research and teaching in population studies, both in demography and in other subjects such as geography, sociology, development, management, planning and public policy. Information on research, conference proposals and teaching resources are all welcomed.

There is no other mailbase list concerned with the broad field of population studies though there are lists concerned with aspects such as UK Census data and perinatal studies. This is intended to be an interdisciplinary list, providing useful material for those in a wide range of disciplines for whom population change and structures are of relevance.

The list moderator teaches a component on Demography which features in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in management science and statistics at Kent University.

This list is intended as a forum for posting notices of workshops, conferences and other gatherings.

To subscribe, send an e-mail to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk. Leave the subject line blank, as the body of e-mail put: join Population-Studies Firstname Lastname.

Messages for circulation to list members should be emailed to Population-Studies@mailbase.ac.uk

As a discentive to junk mail, only list members may post messages.

Messages for the list owner / manager only can be emailed to Population-Studies-request@mailbase.ac.uk