Newsline from EDINA
April 2005: Volume 10, Issue 1
by: Alison Bayley (EDINA)
IASSIST, the International Association of Social Science Information Service & Technology, is the international organisation for professionals working with information technology and data services to support research and teaching in the social sciences. This year it holds its annual conference in the UK.
IASSIST conferences have brought together data professionals, data producers and data analysts from around the world for over thirty years. Every four years the conference meets in Europe. The last time it met in the UK was in 1993 in Edinburgh; it does so again, from 25th to 27th May 2005, hosted by Edinburgh University Data Library with assistance from EDINA.
This year's conference is held jointly with IFDO, the International Federation of Data Organisation. Its theme is Evidence & Enlightenment, and it will be of interest to staff in libraries, data archives, statistical agencies, computing services, academic departments, research centres, government departments and non-profit organisations.
The conference is the forum for discussing both new and persistent issues relating to access to data, documentation of data, and digital preservation, with special (but not exclusive) emphasis on the social sciences. There are clear overlaps with digital curation, data publishing, and e-science and cyberinfrastructure initiatives.
The conference and a preceding workshop run from 24 to 27 May in the Holyrood Hotel, the National eScience Centre, the University of Edinburgh and Dynamic Earth.
Participation from colleagues across the UK would be very welcome; for more information see http://datalib.ed.ac.uk/iassist/.