The Invisible Web Weblog

The International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems ( MEDES 2010 ) will take place in Bangkok, October 26-29, 2010. According the conference announcement: "... digital ecosystems composed of multiple and independent entities such as individuals, organizations, services, software and applications sharing one or several missions and focusing on the interactions and inter-relationships among them. The digital ecosystem exhibits self-organizing environments, thanks to the re-combination and evolution of its "digital components", in which resources provided by each entity are properly conserved, managed and used. The underlying resources mainly comprehend data management, innovative services, computational intelligence and self-organizing platforms. Due to the multi-disciplinary nature of digital ecosystems and their characteristics, they are highly complex to study and design". Topics include: Digital Ecosystem Infrastructure, Web Technologies, Ser...

Recently, I have written a paper entitled “Real Libraries, Real Users and Real Problems”. In this paper, I explained the importance of context and contextual elements in LIS research. The full text is available here .

The Special Interest Group on International Information Issues (SIG-III) of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) announced its competition for papers. The theme for this year’s paper contest is: "Navigating Streams in a Global Information Ecosystem". Topics include the following areas: “(1) Intercultural Information Ethics : Critical reflection on the ethical challenges related to the global and cross-cultural production, storage, and distribution of information, as well as the ethical dimensions of the global development and implementation of information systems, infrastructures, and policies. (2) Information Behaviour : Information needs, information seeking, information gaps and sense-making in various contexts including work, interests or every-day life activities by individuals or groups. (3) Knowledge Organization : Indexing, index construction, indexing languages, thesaurus construction, terminology, classification of informatio...

Sixth International Conference on Webometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics (WIS) and Eleventh COLLNET Meeting will take place 19-22 October, in Mysore, India.

The Library and Information Science Research Coalition conference ‘Evidence, Value and Impact: the LIS Research Landscape in 2010’ takes place on Monday 28th June at the British Library Conference Centre. This event’s topics include: the diversity of LIS research opportunities, research funding sources, potential research collaborators, means of increasing the relevance of research efforts, avenues for publication of research output, research development opportunities for individuals and groups and techniques for integrating research activities into everyday work practice. The conference’s website is accessible here .

Today morning I ran a workshop for a group of students from various disciplines, about the basic hints to write a thesis. The workshop was held as part of the LIS activities in conjunction with the Tehran International Book Fair. Two brief reports of the workshop are accessible on IBNA and LISNA . Moreover, the PowerPoint file and the workshop handout will be freely available on ILISA website soon. However, if you need these files before that time, please email me.

I wrote a column in IBNA about the similarities between sport and study (reading). I think there are at least 20 resemblances between these two activities. To read the note, please follow this link .

7th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects will be held in September 19 - 24, 2010, in Vienna. The topics of interest include: Theoretical, Formal and Conceptual Models of Information and Preservation, Trusted Repositories: Risk Analysis, Planning, Audit and Certification, Scalability and Automation, Metadata Issues for Preservation Processes, Business Models and Cost Estimation, Personal Archiving, Innovation in Digital Preservation: Novel Approaches and Scenarios, Training and Education, Domain-specific Challenges, Governmental & Medical Records, and Case Studies and Best Practice Reports.

The Journal of Education for Library and Information Science (JELIS) published its volume 51, number 2. This issue's Research Articles include: Communities of Practice for Blended Learning: Toward an Integrated Model, Innovative Services Improvised During Disasters: Evidence-Based Education Modules to Prepare Students and Practitioners for Shifts in Community Information Needs, Social Networking Websites: An Exploratory Study of Student Peer Socializing in an Online LIS Program, Job Advertisements for Recent Graduates: Advising, Curriculum, and Job-seeking Implications.

Yesterday I was the co-ordinator of a panel, as part of LIS activities in conjunction with the Tehran International Book Fair. In this panel we talked about “Implications of Mixed Methods in LIS Research”. The transcription of this discussion will be published soon.

“Next Generation Search Engines: Advanced Models for Information Retrieval” is a book which will be written by a group of Information Retrieval experts and aims to explore the fields of advanced computer and information sciences for a better access to the online resources on the Web. According to this Call for Chapter , the topics include: Semantic Web, generation of large-scale search engine index, video, audio and graphics indexing, query user interface: controlled natural languages, natural language query, multilingual search, Index Data Structures, Multi-sources and multi-formats indexation, emergence of new axis in the next generation of search engines: real-time search, local search, GPS sensitive search, mobile search, search in the cloud, and other related topics.