President’s Message November 2024

Hello everyone

I would like to start by saying how grateful I am to be able to work with you all. ASIS&T is a very special organisation, and I look forward to helping you develop it in fruitful and interesting new directions over the next year.  I particularly would like to thank Crystal, Lydia and the ASIS&T Board for all their efforts; they are all very committed people who give their time and talents to the benefit of us all. They are your Board and your ASIS&T leadership; please do interact with the Board. They are great colleagues, and we want to hear from you about what you wish to see happening in ASIS&T.

It’s wonderful that we have so many people attending this meeting, either at the start of their career or for the first time. If you are new to the ASIS&T community, or this is your first meeting, please feel very welcome and be confident about introducing yourself to others – or asking others to introduce you to people with whom you wish to speak. ASIS&T is full of good people: make contacts, make friends. ASIS&T is the place you can find interesting research and interesting people. Discussions that happen here in this meeting will change the field so agree to lots of collaborative papers and projects and change the field of Information Science!

If we look at the content of the papers, posters and panels being presented here, we see big new challenges such as the role of Gen-AI, decolonisation, deepfakes and misinformation, immersive technology and empathetic topics such as queer data, mental health help-seeking, and cultural heritage conservation. Wider society looks to researchers, both academic and practice professionals, to engage in debates, to offer solutions and insights, and to raise important questions. We can be very proud of the powerful, diverse and often brave research that is being presented over the new few days and of the dialogues that arise around this research that will develop our shared goals of helping humanity through information. ASIS&T is the voice of information science; make that voice loud and proud.

We are leading into the next strategic plan for ASIS&T. Our previous strategic plan has been very successful, and stimulating, in creating new ventures for ASIS&T and developing ASIS&T as the leading voice for research and impact in the Information Sciences. Maria Bonn, our President-Elect, will be leading on the development of the new plan and I urge you all to contribute where you can to this.

To help in these plans, what I would like to see in this coming year is a Year of Conversations; a year when we reflect on where we have been and think about where we wish to go as a community. Before coming here, I looked at the list of people – colleagues and students – with whom I have had the privilege of publishing with. They are a mixture of ages, expertise, and personalities. Together, they come from 31 different countries. That was certainly my privilege to be able to share conversations and learn about so many areas of the world. What is common is the red thread of information, but that thread can create very different tapestries in different contexts. Good conversations are about sharing; it’s easier for some to share than others and we will be thinking about ways that all can share in our joint conversations.

We are a truly global organization – and in 2026 we will see our Annual Meeting being held in Asia, a first for ASIS&T – and we are hosting more content in languages other than English, including in Information Matters and for the first time we are able to listen to the presentations in languages other than English. It is also exciting to see research, including at this meeting, that challenges long-standing research models and theories developed in some parts of the world by creating new research findings in different contexts. This enriches everyone.

But a question for all of us is what does it mean now to be global or even to be international? Coming together here at the AM opens valuable spaces to share and learn but we can’t all travel or always travel to meetings. Being global doesn’t mean all doing things the same way or at the same time. We need to value our different voices, experiences, and traditions - all deepen the global impact of ASIS&T and the Information Sciences - but we also need to find common goals and ways of working together. That will be a strong part of the conversation for the next year.

A particular focus for these conversations will be our shared values. The previous strategic plan, led by Brian Detlor, uncovered many areas valued by ASIS&T members including interdisciplinarity, knowledge sharing, lifelong learning, and equity. What I would like to focus on though is our core values as an organisation – an organisation that reflects its members’ own values – what are the shared beliefs, attributes and principles that underly what we do and what will pervade the ways we work together. Most of the people that I know in this community are here because of their strong personal values; let’s surface these and make them meaningful.

Conversations are about voices but also stories; stories about ourselves and others. We have many of these powerful and evocative stories and we need to ensure that others hear them and realise the great work we do as a discipline.

ASIS&T is a membership organisation. It doesn’t make sense without the active involvement of its members, so I really urge everyone to consider participating in ASIS&T, through working with the SIGS and Chapters, taking part in discussions around the new strategy, or volunteering for the committees and task forces. Don’t be modest. We are all busy these days and many of us need help in learning how to say no. But I also encourage you to say yes – yes to something new, a new area of activity in ASIS&T – you will meet new people, learn a new aspect of professional life, and hopefully have some fun. Take a leap and try something new!

When talking about my own research area of Information Behaviour, you cannot shut me up. But conversations also involve listening and I am a good listener and if you have something to say, I will listen. We can’t know what the next year brings but, whatever, it does, I will try my best to help all of you and Lydia, do all our best to develop ASIS&T as our research home. Thank you for all you are doing for the ASIS&T community and the privilege of working with you all.