President's page

Over the past year my periodic reports have included information on the name change, membership, meetings, JASIS, ARIST and finances. An update on these topics follows.

Name Change

The Board Task Force on the Name Change has been active in creating a new mission statement for the Society. There will be ample time to discuss their draft before and during the Membership Meeting at the Annual Meeting in Chicago on Tuesday, November 14, 2000, at 4:00 p.m. For further information on our name change from the American Society for Information Science to the American Society for Information Science & Technology please see my last report [http:// www.asis.org/ Bulletin/Aug-00/the_president s _page_ _ august .html].

Membership

As of August gth, we had 2501 regular members and 769 student members for a total of 3270 members. In August 1999, the total was 2922. The number of institutional members is 262. Institutional membership was at 255 last August.

Meetings

The annual conference will be held November 11-16 in Chicago. The theme of the meeting, "Knowledge Innovations: Celebrating Our Heritage, Designing Our Future," was developed especially for this year, as we enter the new millennium. I am struck, however, at how appropriate a theme it is for ASIS&T in any year. For as long as our society has been meeting, our programs and publications have addressed information activities and systems in three dimensions, sharing information about current, cutting-edge work with a consistent effort to relate this both to where we have come from and where we are going. In this meeting, current "hot topics" such as knowledge management and electronic books will be addressed in this multi-faceted way, providing useful information for both the newcomer to the field and the seasoned professional.

Our keynoters, Tony Oettinger and John Seely Brown, will bring that added level of analysis of information trends to better prepare every attendee for the new, information millennium.

The program for the meeting is available online at www.asis.org/Conferences/AMOO/index.html

JASIS On-Line

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., the publisher of JASIS, has anpounced a new service, EarlyView. EarlyView articles will be posted on the Wiley/JASIS Website five to ten days after the receipt of authors' corrected proofs for their accepted articles. This drastically cuts the time from acceptance to online publication.

JASIS is the first journal in the division of Wiley that publishes JASIS to offer subscribers this feature. The first issue for which EarlyView will be available is Volume 51, Issue 10, 2000.

EarlyView plus CrossRef initiatives really do underscore the publisher's responsiveness to the marketplace. CrossRef is the new service being planned by a publisher consortium that will enable readers to link to full text from citations found in JASIS and other journals.

To utilize these capabilities members are urged to consider the electronic option for JASIS. Regular members can select either print or electronic access at no additional cost (all students receive electronic access). For those who also wish to continue with print, adding this electronic option is only $25 additional per year.

ARIST

About 15 authors have been lined up for Volume 36, which will be published in the fall of 2001. In addition, Blaise Cronin and Debra Shaw have established a new 14-member advisory board to identify contributors for Volume 37.

Finances

It appears that for the first time ever, we will exceed one million in revenue this year. Compared to last year, our revenues are up by $230,000 and expenses are down by $42,000.

On the revenue side, increases were due to the Annual and the Mid-Year/Summit meetings - a total of $205,000; membership revenues were up by $38,000.

On the expense side, the biggest change is in overhead, which is down by $82,000.

SIGs

I have asked the SIG Cabinet Chair Mike Stallings to prepare a separate report on SIG activities that will be posted on our website (www.asis.org).

The SIG/History and Foundations of Information Science will be presenting two sessions at the ASIS Annual Meeting in Chicago: Ideology of Encyclopedism (Tuesday 10:30 am); and Historiography and History of Information Science (Wednesday 2:30 pm).

Following on the success of the 1998 conference on the history of information science (proceedings available from the ASIS website), preparation has begun for a further conference. A planning meeting was held in Philadelphia at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in June. A conference on the history and historiography of information systems is to be held in 2002 in Philadelphia, linked to the ASIS Annual Meeting.

Election and Bylaws Ballot

By now you should have cast your ballot for the election of a president-elect and two directors-at-large as well as an important bylaws amendment. The bylaws change for which we requested approval will remove the two-year limitation on student membership status. This change is important for the long-term future of ASIS&T. Most students today, but especially Ph.D. candidates, need ASIS benefits for longer than two years. We need to attract and keep students throughout their academic careers if we are going to retain them as regular members of the society once they start work. Students are the future lifeblood of ASIS&T. This change in the bylaws, which passed the board unanimously, was made economically possible by our renegotiated agreement with John Wiley regarding JASIS.

The election of new board members is arguably one of the most important decisions you can make for ASIS&T's future. The board sets directions and helps implement decisions about what we will do and how. Through them, you are setting the directions for ASIS&T's future. It is a hard-working, dediGated group of people with whom I have found it most gratifying to be involved in moving ASIS&T forward.

Please exercise your franchise and vote.

I look forward to seeing you at the Annual Meeting in November.

Eugene Garfield is chairman emeritus of ISI(R) and publisher of The Scientist. He can be reached at 3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104; telephone: 215/243-2205; fax: 215/387-12606; or e-mail: garfield@codex.cis.upenn.edu; www EugeneGarfield. org

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