114.2 EUROPEAN SERIALS CONFERENCE, Hazel Woodward
114.3 UNITED KINGDOM SERIALS GROUP 17th ANNUAL CONFERENCE, Ros Doig
Press release dated June 10, 1994, from The Faxon Company, Inc., Westwood MA, and Swets & Zeitlinger, Lisse, The Netherlands.
The Faxon Company of Westwood, MA, USA and Swets & Zeitlinger BV of Lisse, The Netherlands are pleased to announce that they have reached agreement for Swets to acquire all the European offices and subscription business of Faxon. Included in this agreement are the offices of Faxon Europe in Amsterdam, Faxon UK in Coventry, Faxon France in Paris, Kunst und Wissen in Stuttgart, Wennergren-Williams in Stockholm and Faxon International Moscow. Swets & Zeitlinger is one of the foremost subscription agents in the world with offices in The Netherlands, UK, Germany, France, Spain, USA, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, South Africa, Italy and Sweden and is ideally placed to ensure continuity of service and support for Faxon's library customers. Ms. Judy Davis, voting stockholder of the Faxon Company, Inc. said: "We look forward to working with Swets to ensure a very smooth transition of business for our clients." Mr. Adrian Swets and Mr. Cees Schuurman said: "We share that point of view and will make certain the transition will be smooth and that services and support will stay on the level expected from our company." Mr. David Sidebottom, managing director of Faxon Europe on behalf of the European Faxon managers, said: "We have already been proud to serve our customers under the Faxon flag and yet is it without reservation that we look forward to serving them as part of the Swets team based on their long standing reputation for quality service." For further information, please contact the Swets office in The Nether- lands: telephone: 011 31 2521 35111 fax: 011 31 2521 15888114.2 EUROPEAN SERIALS CONFERENCE, 25-27 SEPTEMBER 1995
Hazel M Woodward, Loughborough University of Technology, H.M.Woodward@lut.ac.uk.
Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain The newly formed European Federation of Serials Groups (EFSG) is proud to announce its first major collaborative venture, the third European Serials Conference. The Conference builds on the undoubted success of the first two conferences held in The Netherlands in 1990 and 1992. In adopting a new location it reflects the growing supra-national community of interest in the serials- related industry. Once again the programme will be aimed at librarians, publishers, subscrip- tion agents and information managers, and will concentrate on current is- sues of major importance. A programme of visits to exploit the wealth of local professional and related places of interest will also be included. The Conference will enjoy high-quality accommodation at the Polytechnic University of Valencia as well as the full support of the local authori- ties. Important conference facilities will include in-depth provision for lan- guage interpretation -- the official languages of the conference will be Spanish and English. For further information, please contact: Jill Tolson, UK Serials Group Administrator 114 Woodstock Road Witney OX8 6DY United Kingdom Tel: + 44 993 703466 Fax: + 44 993 778879 E-mail: uksg@bham.ac.uk114.3 UNITED KINGDOM SERIALS GROUP 17th ANNUAL CONFERENCE, UMIST MANCHESTER, APRIL 11-14 1994 Ros Doig, University of Derby.
[Reprinted with permission from _NASIG Newsletter_, vol. 9, no. 3 (June 1994. -mt] Monday, the first day of the conference, turned out to be bright and sunny which was quite in contrast to the dreadful weather of Easter week. By evening it was almost summer. Manchester's red-brick industrial buildings positively glowed under a blue sky broken by an occasional lazy cloud. The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) lies at the heart of the city near the main railway station. A modern cam- pus cut by an impressive brick built viaduct blends with more traditional buildings. The delegates trickled in all afternoon along with exhibition paraphernal- ia. Some concern was caused by the absence of colleagues delayed by a mo- torway accident but they all arrived eventually safe and sound. Soon the exhibition hall was buzzing with people and interest. The opening address was given by Professor NOEL MCAULIFFE from UMIST's Department of Chemistry. He described experiments he'd conducted to turn waste materials into oil and thereby produce energy. It was most interes- ting but didn't quite connect with the conference somehow. I wondered if he might like my unwanted serial back runs for his digestors. The thought of turning them into oil was really quite exciting. Tuesday morning's papers got the main business of the conference off to an excellent start. SHEILA CORRALL from the library at Aston University spoke about balance in collection management indicating the need for wider recog- nition of information services as a core component in libraries and that document acquisition should match more closely to actual demand. IAN SNOWLEY from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food described how he had tackled the difficult task of putting his library supply servic- es out to contract. I was much encouraged by this as he revealed that it was an opportunity for the library to evaluate what they wanted from their suppliers and to monitor the service they received. It wasn't quite the imposition I'd imagined it to be! ALASDAIR PATERSON from the library at the University of Sheffield finished the session with a lively talk entitled "Next to Nellie: people, resources, training and development." He described the changing role of Nellie who trains other library staff. Once upon a time we all looked over Nellie's shoulder but now trainers need to be trained to train others. The process should be continuous, constantly developing and much more active than sim- ply watching someone else! The first session in the afternoon was presented by THOMAS GRAHAM, the Librarian from the University of York. He had been part of the group that produced the _Follett Review_, officially entitled "Joint Funding Councils' Libraries Review Group" and chaired by Professor Sir Brian Follett. This review looks at libraries in higher education and covers such topics as management of the library in the institution, library resources, library provision in support of teaching and research, information technology, and copyright. Among its terms of reference were two clauses: (i) to investi- gate the future national needs for the development of library and informa- tion resources including operational and study space requirements for teaching and research in education institutions, and (ii) to identify ways to meet those needs. Interestingly enough in the light of this conference's papers it was also asked to take into account the current and potential impact of information technology on information provision. DIANA LEITCH from the University of Manchester's Information Services gave an informative talk on current alerting services, raising such issues as "who are the users, what do they want, what is cost effective, what is the role of the librarian, and how do you do it." From this point on the conference developed the theme of information in the form of electronic communication, starting where last year's conference left off. We were regaled with a mind-stretching array of electronic devel- opments. HERMAN PABBRUWE from Kluwer Academic Publishers in the Netherlands gave the other talk on Tuesday afternoon about EDI [electronic data inter- change] and the work of ICEDIS (International Committee on EDI for Seri- als). I start getting quite mesmerized when the speakers turn to electronic themes and can be seen with hypnotic gaze following tentatively in the gurus' footsteps!! EDI fascinates me as it cuts out the need for mountains of paper and repetition in the recording of information. The potential of electronic communication is quite extraordinary and sometimes seems to dwell in the realm of science fiction for us more 'down to earth' types. I suspect a good number of us still don't have access to the equipment to be in the avant-garde of this movement. Wednesday morning gave us four papers. The first on publishing via the network by DAVID PULLINGER of the Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd. was wonderfully set against the second by STEVAN HARNAD, editor of _Behavioral & Brain Sciences_ USA. Pullinger spoke about the difficulties of publishing electronically and trying to set up the same controls as exist with the printed versions. Harnad on the other hand perhaps played the devil's advocate by making the point that enthusiasts of the medium are innocents abroad in the field of scholarly publication but not in the field of elec- tronic communication. Anyone can do it and therefore the need for peer reviewing/quality control is ignored and indeed is seen as a kind of cen- sorship. My understanding of what he was saying could be summed up as "All users of a network are equal but some are more equal than others especially in the field of electronic publishing." The other two papers also dealt with the theme of communication via the network. ANN RAMSDEN from the Information Centre at De Montfort University Leicester's site at Milton Keynes described her involvement in creating an electronic library (one of the first in Britain), based on client server architecture and commercial document image processing technologies. Access is via desktop workstations distributed across the various campuses of the university in different parts of the country. TONY ADDYMAN from the Department of Maths and Computer Science at the Uni- versity of Salford followed this up by explaining how to find information via the Internet using tools like Gopher and World Wide Web to provide access to all kinds of databases. The theme of CWIS or community/campus wide information services was fol- lowed up on Thursday morning with two speakers specifically talking about this subject. MICHELE SHOEBRIDGE from the University of Birmingham de- scribed how the library had set up and now maintains the university CWIS. She also spoke of the need for control, consistency and a corporate image to safeguard information which is official against that which is not. MARY DAVIES from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund then gave a description of the electronic current awareness service she provides via a CWIS-like network to the many ICRF bases around the country using tools like Gopher to access internal and external information resources. After all this our penultimate speaker suggested that "academics can do it by themselves." This paper by JOHN LINDSAY was given on his behalf by BOB ROBERTS, a fellow colleague from Kingston University, Surrey. He looked at serials publication from the academics' point of view and suggested that with the availability of electronic networking, academics could bypass publishers and libraries altogether! However, each has a role to play because as our other speakers indicated, much control is needed in finan- cial matters, quality management and information access. The final paper brought us out of the ether with an amusing, well-illustra- ted talk by ALAN MARCHBANK of the National Library of Scotland. He de- scribed a touring exhibition he had organized on a history of popular maga- zines which enabled him to bring out of storage some of the more interes- ting items in the NLS. A fascinating insight into the social history of yesteryear! The papers were well-supported by a number of workshops relating directly to the papers given by our speakers. Delegates could attend three workshops during the conference: two on Tuesday, one on Wednesday. I attended work- shops on ICEDIS -- EDI between agents, journal publishers and customers; the exploitation and marketing of serials; and exploring campus-wide in- formation services (CWIS's). They were all useful and informative. The latter was of special interest being a hands-on, do-it-yourself session using the micro-computer room in UMIST's Joule Library. The less serious business of the conference was conducted in the evenings and on Wednesday afternoon. On Monday evening we were entertained by a tuba quartet playing a variety of music from Bach to the Beatles. On Tuesday evening after dinner a group of clog dancers enthralled us with a dazzling display of nimble footwork. On Wednesday afternoon various visits were arranged to places of interest, including famous Manchester libraries, an old cotton mill which is now a working museum, and the Granada TV Studios. The same evening we were given a civic reception by the Lord Mayor of Man- chester at the Town Hall, a truly magnificent example of Victorian Gothic architecture. This was followed by the Conference Dinner and dance though I doubt whether the worthy citizens of the past would have endorsed the choice of dance music ringing through its hallowed halls! All in all I found the conference to be excellent both in calibre of speak- er and in what they had to say. The supporting workshops, exhibition and entertainment were also of a high standard. The potential of electronic communication in particular excites me and I found my mind darting off on tracks of its own as prompted by remarks from the speakers. However, I would reiterate my comments of last year. Until we are all suitably equipped, some of this electronic wizardry is only a dream. If I have a criticism it is simply to say that some of our speakers assumed that we all had the technical know-how to understand what they were talking about. Nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed the conference this year, not least be- cause I spent quite a time in the pleasant company of my American col- leagues!
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