Deadline: Thursday, February 21st
Venue: University of Economics in Prague, Czech Republic, May 28th to 30th, 2008.
http://www.inforum.cz/en/

The 14th INFORUM conference, organised by Albertina icome Praha and University of Economics, will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, from May 28-30, 2008.

The three-day conference is focused on variety of aspects concerning the use of electronic information resources in research, development, education and business,

Information specialists from academic, public and special libraries, corporate sector and government agencies can take part in this event, either as authors or as participants. The conference is open to the entire international research community. The conference is the main event in this field in the Czech and Slovak republics and in 2003 we extended it’s focus also to countries of Central and Eastern Europe. There were 56 invited and contributed papers and over 630 participants last year.

If you are interested in taking part in the conference, either as a speaker or as a participant, you can find detailed information at the INFORUM 2008 website http://www.inforum.cz/en/ (which includes main conference topics, paper submission form, etc.). Papers are now being invited for inclusion in the INFORUM 2008 programme. An extended abstract should be submitted on or before February 21, 2008. The abstracts should be informative enough to allow for an evaluation of the scientific value of the paper.

Conference topics http://www.inforum.cz/en/topics/

• Trends and Updates in the Field of Electronic Information Resources
• Digital Libraries - Trends, Technologies, Solutions
• Sharing and Flowing of Information in Business Sector
• Operational Aspects of Using Electronic Information Resources
• Electronic Information Resources in e-learning and e-learning in Electronic Information Resources
• Searching the Web and Heterogeneous Information Resources for Institutions
• Evaluation of Results of Scientific Research with a Help of Electronic Information Resources

The delegate’s registration forms will be available along with the preliminary conference programme by the beginning of March 2008.

For those of you unable to attend the Prague Inforum conference in person, live videobroadcasting of some of the sessions will be available at http://www.inforum.cz/en/videobroadcasting/.

INFORUM 2007 keynote and guest speakers include Peter Jacso, Peter Godwin, Guus van den Brekel and Zinaida Manzuch.

You can choose between the original commentary of the speaker and its simultaneous translation. The official languages of the conference are Czech and English.

These sessions will be video broadcasted:

Conference Opening
New Technologies and Tools for Electronic Information Resources and Services
European Digital Library and Similar Projects Worldwide
Electronic Information -New Solutions for Traditional Approaches
Web Search Update and World 2.0
Managing Effective Access to E-resources
Conference Closing

The conference takes place on May 22nd - 24th.

Forget about Paris in the springtime, Prague is the place to be, and the annual Inforum conference is the perfect excuse to combine business with pleasure. I first attended Inforum in 2005 when I was invited to give a preconference workshop and a conference presentation. I was so impressed with the quality of the papers and enthusiasm and friendliness of all involved that I decided to attend Inforum 2006 under my own steam. The conference takes place over three days - between Tuesday, May 23rd and Thursday, May 25th - which gives ample opportunity to add a few extra days to your stay to see the sites.

Inforum kicks off on the Monday with pre-conference workshops and I opted to attend one given by Adriana Cronin Lukas from the Big Blog Company: Blogs and blogging in the daily life of an information professional. It was a fascinating morning and I could not begin to do Adriana’s session justice by summarising it, but here are a few key phrases that I noted down:

Blogs are:

• a sort of “online underworld” and make your work more effective and fun!
• a key for news management and reputation management
• a more natural way of communicating
• flexible project management with information sharing

Think of blogs as:

• an easy way to publish - you don’t have to be tech savvy
• your own personal printing press instead of a collection of manuscripts (web sites)
• ease of publishing combined with a powerful content management system
• books - there are many genres
• instruments of social change

The conference itself starts today, Tuesday 23rd, at University of Economics in Prague. Last year’s opening address was a show stopper; see the photo gallery for day 1 for some interesting photos of the “presentation”, in particular the jpegs inforum005 to inforum011! They will have to work hard to beat that.

The main programme this morning includes Alan Foster on Scientific Communication: evolution or paradigm shift, Lothar Nunnenmacher on the Creation of an Integrated Local View on Information Diversity, and What is our Future Standing on from Boris Skandera. The afternoon session is on new technologies and tools for electronic information.

The full programme is on the Inforum web site but if you cannot attend in person you can watch the live videobroadcast and online reporting at www.ikaros.cz and www.inforum.cz/inforum2006/english. For the videobroadcast you can choose between the original commentary of the speaker and its simultaneous translation. The official languages of the conference are Czech and English. The online reporting will be published in Czech only.

The organisers of the 12 Inforum Conference on Professional Information Resources, to be held on May 23 - 25, 2006 in Prague have issued a final call for papers.

If you are interested in presenting a paper, the topics are:

• The Future of Scientific and Technical Information Searching
• Trends & News in the Field of Electronic Information Resources
• Current Trends and Technologies of Digital Libraries
• Web Search News, Wikis, Blogs and RSS
• Open Access - a New Way for the Distribution of Scientific Information?
• Management of Information and Knowledge in the Business Environment
• E-learning and the New Information Technologies in Medical Libraries

Participation of both, researchers and practitioners is strongly encouraged. The first author of the accepted paper will be entitled to free registration.

Submissions in the form of abstracts should meet the following requirements and include:

1. Major theme of the paper should be in line with the conference topics and the content should be strictly non-commercial
2. Paper title
3. Abstract of 200 words, in English.
4. Author(s) and/or co-author(s) with names, addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses.

Abstracts should be submitted using via the form on the conference web site http://www.inforum.cz/inforum2006/english/papers3.php

Deadlines

February 13th, 2006: Submission of abstracts
March 8th, 2006: Acceptance notifications will be sent out
April 24th, 2006: Submission of full text’s electronic versions

Accepted papers will be published by means of electronic proceedings on the Inforum website.

It is obviously the time of year when calls for conference papers are issued. First the ILI call dropped into my inbox and then the invitation from Inforum.

The 12th Inforum conference will take place in Prague, Czech Republic, May 23-25 2006. The three-day conference focuses on a variety of issues concerning the use of electronic information resources in research, development, education and business. It is attended by information specialists from public and special libraries, corporate sector and government agencies. I attended last year as a speaker and workshop presenter and was so impressed by the quality, variety and enthusiasm of the conference that I shall be attending this year as a delegate. One of the great things about this event is that you do not see the same faces giving the same talks every year: it is always fresh and vibrant and takes place in a wonderful city that should be on your must-visit list.

If you are interested in taking part at the conference, either as a speaker or as a participant, you can find detailed information at the Inforum 2006 website http://www.inforum.cz/inforum2006/english/ (which includes main conference topics, paper submission form, etc.). The delegate registration forms will be available along with the preliminary conference programme by the beginning of March 2006.

Inforum 2005�-�homepage

This week I am in Prague at the Inforum conference. This is a live demo to show everyone how easy blogging is!