A five-day-long ASIS&T 2019 annual meeting ends on 23rd October

Prodip Roy AALIA (DCP)

November 3, 2019

The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) previously named as American Society for Information Science and Technology held its 82nd annual meeting at Crown Conference Centre in Melbourne, VIC., Oct. 19–23, 2019. The theme was INFORMATION…ANYONE, ANYWHERE, ANY TIME, ANY WAY.

The event details can be found at https://www.asist.org/am19/

The Opening and Closing Plenary sessions focused on the conference theme ‘ anyone ‘ and ‘ anywhere ‘ Mikaela Jade delivered the opening plenary presentation on ‘ Mixing Reality for Cultural Proliferation, ‘ where she shared her industry experience that successfully engages indigenous women in technology. Similarly, the closing plenary presentation entitled ‘ Changing the Paradigm: Building a Learning Health System Through Disruption Collaboration, ‘ given by, Helena Teede where she highlighted the importance of providing information at the right time and in the right way.

ASIS&T’s Annual Meeting is an important event for information science academics. However, it is also ideal for professionals, students and researchers in the area of library and information science, knowledge management, information integration / linked data, information organisation, information retrieval, information seeking, knowledge construction, metrics scholarly communication, open access & government data and related fields.

Data science was the hottest topic

 This meeting focused on the creative and analytical resources of the ASIS&T community on the drastic near-horizon socio-technical changes. Data science was the hottest topic, among other issues. Most of the data science sessions focused on the challenges to ensure that ethical and human-centred perspectives, including sustainability, privacy, human agency, and equity. Besides, the conference emphasised to a rapid advance in other technologies used in libraries such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics, digital and augmented reality, and embedded, ubiquitous computing.

The conference included several panel discussions, international incubator sessions and paper presentations during the day. These invited sessions were facilitated by global thought leaders who have been stimulating the ASIS&T community around critical information problems such as sustainability, engagement, collaborations, social media bubbles, global data sharing, ethical AI, and mobilising ASIS&T chapters. Most of the sessions mainly focused the future activities on showcasing how Information Science and Technology can be leveraged to address critical 21st-century challenges.

The new President is Dr Clara M. Chu

The past President Professor Elaine Toms, PhD University of Sheffield, UK handed over her president’s role to Dr Clara M. Chu who is the Director and Mortenson Distinguished Professor and an affiliated faculty at the iSchool of Illinois, USA.

A five-day-long ASIS&T annual meeting ended on 23ed October 2019. The meeting drew 360 delegates from more than 40 countries. The 2020 annual meeting will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the USA from October 23-28 with the theme, “Information for a sustainable world: Addressing society’s grand challenges.”