Letters to the Editor

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D-Lib Magazine
January 2002

Volume 8 Number 1

ISSN 1082-9873

To the Editor

The letter below was received in response to Sally Jo Cunningham's report on the ASIST Conference in the December 2001 issue of the magazine

To the Editor:

We greatly appreciate the review of the ASIST Annual Meeting in the December 2001 edition of D-Lib. Sally Jo Cunningham did a great job of giving a feel for the meeting.

I do want to correct the sentence about our arrangement with DigiScript to digitally capture the meeting, "It was noted in one of the sessions that the restriction of these documents to paying attendees illustrates the difficulties of balancing the demands of commercial publishing and the desire of many Internet collection builders to provide free, open access to information..."

We are providing, at no additional cost, access to those who registered for the entire conference, in either CD or e-access as they choose. But the digital capture is available to anyone else, in either format, for $75 (ASIST members) or $100 (non-ASIST members). That is the only difference; it’s not free, but it is open. Since this includes sight, sound, overheads, an index and a transcript, we think that cost is reasonable. The URL for more info and a demo of the service from last year (John Seely Brown) is at <http://www.asis.org/digiscript.html>.

ASIST has partnered with DigiScript for the last two years because no one can attend (or remember) every session. So two complete ASIST Annual Meetings are or soon will be in the ASIST DigiScript library by subscription or on CD. But the complete DigiScript Library (not just ASIST) includes over 80 medical, scientific and engineering partners and over 4000 hours. Their website is <http://library.digiscript.com/>.

We think this digital capturing is an excellent supplement to printed proceedings for researchers. There is room for improvement — questioners don’t always use microphones and speakers don’t always repeat questions. But this service is a very useful enhancement, both for those at the meeting and those unable to attend.

Sincerely,

Dick Hill
Executive Director, ASIST


D-Lib Magazine welcomes letters related to digital library research and electronic publishing issues. Also welcome are letters with questions or comments about the magazine in general, or about stories appearing in the magazine. Please do not send those that are primarily commercial, promotional, or advertising in nature.

Letters concerning articles selected for possible publication as Letters to the Editor will be forwarded to the article authors for response. If published, the Letter to the Editor will appear with the article authors' responses whenever possible. D-Lib Magazine reserves the right to edit or shorten letters. If you prefer, you may request that your letter not be published.

Please send your Letters to the Editor to dlib@cnri.reston.va.us.

Copyright © 2002 Corporation for National Research Initiatives

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DOI: 10.1045/january2002-letters