ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

The 2nd Pacific Conference on New Information Technology

By Augurio Collantes

Catalog Librarian

Hostos Community College Library/CUNY

The 2nd Pacific Conference on New Information Technology, anon-profit forum for library and information professionals, educational media specialists, and technologists, was held on May 29-31, 1989, at the Glass Hotel in Singapore. It was designed to give librarians and information specialists from Asia and the Pacific region an opportunity to see for themselves some of the many information systems and products available in other parts of the world, to make them aware of the trends in information technology and their application to libraries, to enable them to talk about their accomplishments in the field, and to discuss their needs, interests, problems, and requirements with other knowledgeable colleagues.

More than 200participants from the Asia/Pacifìc region and the United States were present. Due to logistical problems the location had to be changed from Bangkok to Singapore. The Library Association of Singapore and the Singapore Convention Bureau were kind and generous to co-sponsor the forum.

Ching-Chih Chen, chief organizer, opened the conference by looking back at the success of the First Pacific Conference held in Bangkok in 1987. The three official program days featured about 24 meetings where at least 74 papers were presented. Most of these were lectures or forums, contributed papers on topics ranging from CD-ROM, information retrieval, microcomputer applications, networks, databases to hypermedia, hypertext, and product reviews. Specific topics included Project ZEN (Zoom Encyclopedic Navigator) and ZGJKJ (Chinese Computer Science and Technology Documentation Database System) were discussed.

Exhibitors conducted informal talks to participants and they showed systems in operation. Companies based in Singapore had optical products, hypermedia applications, equipment, and software on display.

Especially for developing countries, funding to attend such regional conferences as this is a luxury unless you happen to live here. As an incentive the organizers offered free registration to paper presenters from the region and partial fellowships to some participants.

It is gratifying to learn of the efforts that librarians and information professionals in developing countries (particularly in Asia and the Pacific) have made in applying information technology in their respective organizations. Professional librarians in this area have the skills and knowledge; given the proper resources they could produce as much and bring out results that are at least comparable to those from the more developed countries.

A 480-page volume containing the conference papers was made available on opening day. Edited by Ching-chill Chen and David I. Raitt, the volume may be ordered for $57.50 from MicroUse Information, 1400 Commonwealth Ave., West Newton, MA 02165. ISBN 0-931555-06-X.