APLIC-International Communicator

Winter 1997, Issue #63

Transforming Libraries for the 21st Century: APLIC Conference Preview
By Jean Sack
Head Librarian
Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health

Transforming Libraries for the 21st Century
The 30th Annual APLIC Conference, March 24-26, 1997
The Hyatt Grand Hotel, Washington, D.C.

The Association for Population/Family Planning Libraries and Information Centers-International (APLIC) will offer demographic information professionals a view of electronic research resources at their annual conference in the nation's capitol, held in conjunction with the Population Association of America (PAA) Conference.

The conference opens with a presentation about the African Internet, (the Leland Initiative) and its impact upon health, education and research. With an aim of "empowering Africans in the Information Age", USAID, The Department of State and NASA are using $15 million dollars over a five year period to develop workable local governmental policies to accomodate telecommunications at affordable prices, viable technological services (including training of technicians) and WEB content for sustainable development. This USAID Africa Global Information Infrastructure Gateway Project will promote the use of Internet to connect Africans to Africans.

International Census Sources will be discussed by Gera Draaijer, who maintains the APLIC Census network list at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas. To preview portions of holdings, go to the PRC website and click on the PRC library icon, geographic region and country of interest. Entries for each country are arranged chronologically beginning with the earliest census.

A keynote presentation will be Jolande Siebenga's "Information on European Demography", with a focus on publications which deal with Europe only. Jolande is APLIC's sponsored guest, coming from the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute at The Hague, Netherlands.

In an effort to review new electronic publications and databases, two of Tuesday's sessions will feature expert panels. A troika of commercial vendors will discuss journals and bibiographic databases: J-Stor Project, begun by the Mellon Foundation, is putting searchable BACK ISSUES of several major population journals online as part of a much larger effort to deal with storage and access to scholarly journals. Cambridge Scientific is offering Web-based subscriptions to its biological databases and is adding new titles in fields related to population studies. Faxon Company is promoting subscriptions to a multitude of full-text electronic journals and will address issues of cost, archiving, and multi-site access. An afternoon panel of U.S. Government agencies will address the future of publications after "the paperless" edict. The GPO Transition Plan calls for the transfer by October 1998 of close to 70,000 governent documents from print to electronic formats, and speakers will present their current electronic initiatives and discuss future planning. Visit their web sites for a preview!

Preparing for a virtual library future: The 30th Conference will provide time for electronic libraries issues discussions on Tuesday afternoon to allow planning prior to the Wednesday Luncheon APLIC Business meeting. Wednesday morning features an Internet for Research hands-on workshop. Six working groups will identify key WEB resources which will be bookmarked on the computers in the APLIC Internet Room. APLIC members are asked to bring URLs of useful, favorite sites to share. A variety of Washington-based APLIC members will mediate the searches and offer suggestions in their subject fields. Participants are invited to bring blank, virus-free diskettes to download resulting bookmarks for use back in their information centers. Ideas for keeping up-to-date with technology and information change will be offered by Professor Vivan Hsieh of Catholic University, School of Library and Information Science.

Demonstrations and hands-on tutorials from several vendors offer new approaches to library automations, bibliographic reference management, archiving, census, and CD-ROM networking capabilities. These presenters will remain to offer individual tutorials on their products and offer an Information Fair for the opening of the APLIC Internet Room for the PAA conference on Wednesday evening. This would be an opportunity for APLIC members to show colleagues and supervisors the variety of electronic information delivery systems and products as they plan for improved Information Centers for the 21st Century. To visit websites:

Cuadra Star: http://www.cuadra.com
Geolytics: http://www.censuscd.com
Procite:

Students Invited to Join APLIC and "Work" for Their Conference Registration

At the Fall APLIC Board meeting in Tallahassee, decisions to intentionally mentor Information Science students include conference invitations to the three Mid-Atlantic Universities with Library Schools. Catholic University accepted overtures to send a student presenter (the Weds. morning session on Web browsers and appaisals of good web sites). Other area students will volunteer in the APLIC Internet room during the PAA conference,in return for free admission to the APLIC conference. A student membership fee of $10 was established and APLIC conference registration fees were reduced by over 25% to $50.00 for students.

Preconference "Field Trips" Require Advance Registration

Gera Draaijer will arrange for a Monday afternoon tour of the International Division of the U.S. Census Bureau. It is important to register in advance with Gera since she must collect details to allow participants to ride in the free van from the Hyatt. Jean Sack will escort those who sign up to the World Bank Geographic Information Systems and the Sectoral Libraries, leaving from the Hyatt information desk at 1:00 p.m. on Monday, 24th.

For further information regarding the 30th APLIC conference, contact
Jean C. Sack, Librarian, Hopkins Population Center Collection
Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health
615 N. Wolfe Street
Baltimore, MD 21205


Jean Sack
Head Librarian
Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health


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