Welcome to the Special Libraries & Information Services Group

NEW!! Join SLIS on LinkedIn Groups 

11th Southern African Online Information Meeting Innovation in an Age of Limits - Sandton Convention Centre 5-8 June 2012

SAOUG (Southern African Online User Group), SLIS (Special Library Information Specialists) and OSALL (Organisation of SA Law Librarians) are now inviting proposals for papers to be presented at the next SAOIM (Southern African Online Information Meeting) with the theme “Innovation in an age of limits”.

The conference theme is a reflection of the challenges that modern day libraries are facing and the subsequent need for innovative solutions.

SAOIM provides a forum for the exchange of information on current developments, applications and opportunities in the expanding field of online information. As with the previous conferences, the aim of the 11th SAOIM is to provide insight into the exciting extent of growth and activity taking place in the information industry. Coverage will include not only the traditional online systems and services, but also latest areas of information transfer and exchange.

Conference papers are sought in all areas related to online information, including but not limited to, the following:

  • Mobile technologies: providing information access via mobile delivery channels
  • eBooks and libraries
  • Data management
  • Semantic web, Web 3.0 and information discovery
  • Cloud computing
  • Virtual research environments
  • Open access publishing
  • Digital curation
  • The changing role of the information professional
  • Value addition and innovative services
  • Information literacy
  • Embedded librarianship
  • Next generation libraries
  • eLearning
  • Managing electronic resources in academic and corporate libraries
  • Knowledge sharing & collaboration
  • New technologies and service delivery 

As with the previous SAOIM, a special session will be dedicated to innovative and best practice ‘show and tell’. Come and share the new things that you are doing in short 10 minute sessions. Any aspect of good online practice will be welcome. Whilst priority will be given to contributors on the suggested themes, presentations on other relevant topics will also be considered. All proposals will be evaluated by a joint panel of SAOUG, SLIS and OSALL members in a blind review. Proposals will be judged on their relevance to the online information field as well as on the strength of the idea and potential member interest. All applicants will be notified of a decision, however, the decision of the selectors is final and no correspondence with regard to acceptance or rejection of submitted papers will be entered into.

Submission guidelines and specifications

  • Concise papers (20 minutes maximum) based on practical experience or practical applications of information technology are preferred. 
  • Due to time constraints only one presenter per paper will be allowed.
  • As this is an international event, papers must be presented in English.
  • Should you wish to present a paper, please submit your 250 word abstract together with the following details via e-mail to mvanheerden@csir.co.za  no later than 29 February 2012:
    • Name and designation
    • Company / institution / affiliation and address
    • E-mail address, work telephone and fax numbers
    • Cell phone number
    • Date of submission

Satellite events

Satellite events, including exhibitions and pre- and post-conference workshops, will be held to maximise the benefit delegates will derive from attending the formal sessions on the 6th-7th June 2012.

Please e-mail mvanheerden@csir.co.za should you be interested in the following:

  • Exhibiting during the conference, 6th-7th June 2012
  • Presenting events such as training courses, workshops and tutorials on the 5th or 8th June 2012.  (Please enclose a brief outline of the proposed event.)
  • An opportunity to present product reviews or workshops will be given to exhibitors, service providers and publishers during the conference. (Please enclose a brief outline of the product review /workshop.) 

Conference programme

The following keynote speakers have been confirmed:

  •  Stephen Abram: Spotting trends and opportunities: innovation in an age of limits
  •  Michael Stephens: The hyperlinked library: trends, tools, transparency
  • Karen Blakeman: Personalisation, localisation, semantic search

 Pre- and post conference workshops include:

  •  Michael Stephens: Taming technolust: technology planning in a hyperlinked world
  • Stephen Abram: Frankenbooks: understanding the eBook opportunity
  • Karen Blakeman: Personalisation, localisation, semantic search
  • Jeremy Wallis: Getting things done
  • Kosie Eloff: Self publishing

 

Full details of keynote speakers, papers, exhibitors, workshops, seminars and product reviews will be distributed closer to the conference.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

DISCUSSION & VOTE ON FUTURE OF SLIS - If you are unable to attend, it is very important that you complete and return the survey below. This will serve as your proxy during our discussion and voting process at the AGM
 

NOTICE OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF
THE SPECIAL LIBRARIES & INFORMATION SERVICES (SLIS) GROUP

TO BE HELD ON

THURSDAY 2 DECEMBER 2010 at 13.00pm for 13.30pm

VENUE: The Brenthurst Library, Federation Road, Parktown  
REGISTRATION: 13.00pm
(MEMBERS: NO CHARGE; NON-MEMBERS: R50)


RSVP: 25 November 2010 with Christelle Vermaak -  christelle.vermaak@fluor.com


ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
AGENDA

1. Welcome
2. Apologies
3. Approval of Minutes of the AGM held on 2 December 2010, PWC, Sunninghill
4. Matters arising from these Minutes
5. Chairperson Report
6. Treasurer Report
7. Discussion & feedback on making SLIS work as a professional members organisation
8. Election of Committee for 2011/2012
9. General

Election of Committee for 2011/2012
We invite nominations for election onto the SLIS Executive Committee. Available Portfolios:

Vice Chairperson
Secretary
Treasurer
Membership
Job Register
Newsletter
Website & LinkedIn

Adele van der Merwe will fulfill her second term as Chairperson, and an additional five (5) (minimum) members need to be nominated and elected onto the Committee. Should we be unable to gather enough nominations, SLIS wits its current Constitution, format and structure will not be able to continue and dissolving the association will be considered as an option.

Nominations (for yourself or on behalf of another person) for election onto the SLIS Committee can be send by 1 December via email to the Chair, Adele van der Merwe, avdmerwe@csir.co.za; Tel 012 8413944

Note that all Nominees should be members of SLIS at the time of their election.

Kindly include the following details in your email:

Name & Company
Job Title
Contact Details
Portfolio/s interested in


PRESENTATION/SPEAKER

The Meeting will be followed by a thought provoking presentation by the Chair of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa, Gary Els. The year 2010 has been a year of stars: highlights, dreams, successes, low lights, aspirations, innovation, new beginnings, and endings both in our personal and professional lives. Packed with awe inspiring pictures and fascinating facts, the presentation will take us on a journey through time and galaxies, guided by stars, meteorites and planets. We invite you to come stand in awe and celebrate your past, present and future.

The AGM and Presentation ends at 15.00, followed by a Cocktail function.

COCKTAIL FUNCTION

Afterwards, whilst having cocktail snacks and drinks in the company of our colleagues and friends, we are delighted to end the afternoon enjoying wonderful toe-tapping music and Spanish dancing by the guitar duo Mischief.....

RefWorks User Group 

 Due to file size restrictions the RefWorks Training manual, compiled by Adèle van der Merwe, can be downloaded from the SLIS website. This is a temporary solution only. Please let Adèle van der Merwe know of alternative solutions. The *.docx format is to big for Google Docs and this site.

Full recognition goes to the guidelines and manuals made available by RefWorks to their users - this is an extremely valuable service.

Please report any mistakes/errors/outdated information to Adèle van der Merwe - it is a very difficult task to keep the manual up to date.

Please click here for a *.pdf version of the manual. 

4th African Conference for Digital Scholarship and Curation (peer reviewed)
'Innovation & collaboration in the digital research and learning environments'

Call for papers
 
Dates: 17 -19 May 2011
Venue: CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa
 
Collaboration is an acknowledged and important source of innovative thinking. The rapid development of new and emerging technologies have ensured that the creation and pursuit of new ideas can be brought to community by networks of individuals, selected because of their individual contributions and credibility, and operating in a coordinated manner. This conference will attempt to surface some of the innovations brought about as a result of such collaborations.  We will also endeavour to highlight the role technology plays in enabling collaborations and in collectively building repositories of data and knowledge.
 
The deployment of powerful computers, high-speed networks, and large scale storage technologies has made the academic and research landscape increasingly dynamic. Emerging professional are much more information and computer literate than ever before.  They also have a very different expectation for both the university and work experience. These transformations oblige us in academia, research and the general information service provision industry to seriously seek and develop strategies and solutions to effectively harness the new opportunities.  The 2-day conference is organized under the joint banner of the Network of Data and Information Curation Centres (NeDICC), the University of Botswana and the University of Pretoria (South Africa). The conference will address various issues of digital scholarship, digital curation and the accompanying emerging technologies. We are specifically also calling for case studies and success stories.
 
Authors are invited to submit abstracts for papers linked to the main and sub-themes of the conference. All papers will be peer reviewed and selected ones will be published in an international refereed journal. Abstracts and proposals (in electronic format) for papers, posters and workshops should be submitted before 30 October 2010. 
 
Please submit abstracts to:
Nomvuyelo Ngcangula
E:mail: nngcangula@csir.co.za 
Deadline: 20 November 2010
 
Those wanting to co-ordinate workshops or deliver conference posters: these will not be peer reviewed but will be made accessible via the conference web site.  Such contributions may be submitted until 30 January 2011.
 
Sub-themes
 
Research
Innovative research
Research and scientific collaboration
Innovation in science
eResearch and eScience
Virtual Research Environments
Data management
Data curation
Preservation
Managing large data sets
Data repositories
Data mining for research purposes
Mobile service delivery
 
Teaching and learning
eLearning and mLearning
Gaming in education
Open and distance learning in a digital environment
Digital scholarship readiness
Virtual worlds
Living labs
 
Technical infrastructure
Africa's undersea fibre infrastructure
Cloud and grid computing
Open source
Digital divides
Web 2.0 technologies & applications
Emerging technologies and Digital scholarship
Remote hosting services
 
Disseminating research results
Open access
Open data
Digital commons
Digitization
Institutional repositories
Federated repositories
 
Policies
Ethics, trust and intellectual property in the e-Environment
Protection of indigenous knowledge in an electronic environment
Scholarly communication, peer review and publications in a digital environment
Data and information security
eResearch and indigenous knowledge
Quality assurance and best practices in digital scholarship
Policy frameworks for digital scholarship
Research management in digital environments
 
Activities
 
· Paper presentations
· Poster presentations
· Exhibitions
· Workshops
 
Papers/abstracts
 
Paper length:  Maximum of 5000 words inclusive of references
 
Abstract lengths: 500 words
 
Citation format: APA (American Psychological Association Format)
 
Format of the paper:    
Introduction (providing context of digital scholarship issue),
research problem,
methodology,
findings and discussion,
implications, conclusions and recommendations
 

Case studies:              
Case studies, success stories but also 'lessons learnt' papers are encouraged!
 
Key Deadlines
· Submission of abstracts by prospective paper presenters: 30 October 2010 - extended to 20 November 2010
· Selection and acceptance of abstracts: 30 November  2010
· Deadline for full paper submission by presenters: 30 January 2011
· Review of papers completed: 30 March 2011
· Draft programme released: early February 2011
· Presentation files submitted: 1 May 2011
· Submissions for posters: 30 January 2011
· Submissions for workshops: 30 January 2011
 
Target audience
· Scientists and researchers
· Research managers
· Educationists
· Information scientists, Librarians and other information professionals
· ICT infrastructure service providers and managers - mobile services, computing and software
· System engineers
· System developers
· Information Technology Managers
· Spatial and other data analysts
· e-Space analyst
· Technology stewards
· Archivists, records managers, curators
· Policy makers - in tertiary education, science and technology centres
· Young professionals: those who need to gain exposure to the new work environment; and
· Seasoned professionals wanting to stay relevant.