Event: 2009 NFAIS Annual Conference, Barbarians at the Gate? The Impact of Digital Natives and Emerging Technologies on the Future of Info Svcs

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM AND ONLINE REGISTRATION NOW AVAILABLE FOR THE 2009 NFAIS ANNUAL CONFERENCE

The 2009 NFAIS Annual Conference, Barbarians at the Gate? The Impact of Digital Natives and Emerging Technologies on the Future of Information Services, will take place February 22 - 24, 2009 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia, PA. The preliminary program, online and fax registration forms, and general information are now available (early bird registration rates are in effect until January 9, 2009 go to:http://www.nfais.org/events/event_details.cfm?id=51).

The conference will take a look at how the born digital generation, with a lifetime of information seeking skills shaped by search engines and the Web, will impact the scholarly, scientific and business information services that they are beginning to use in their professional lives, and will highlight the opportunities for all information providers - publishers, librarians and educators - to adapt their products, services and business practices to the needs and expectations of this new generation of information seekers.

Highlights include:

• A provocative opening keynote by John Palfrey, author of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives and a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, will look at how living digitally is globally transforming how people relate to information and to one another, and how the now ubiquitous and ever-evolving Internet is fundamentally changing information behaviors as we move from generation to generation.

• Key results of two recent studies -- one, by the British Library and Dr. Ian Rowlands of the City University of London, to identify how the researchers of the future, currently in school, are likely to access and interact with digital resources in five to ten years time, and a second, by Dr. Nora Barnes, Director of the Center for Marketing Research, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, that looks at the use of social media by higher education and the 500 fastest growing companies in the U.S. ( Inc. 500).
• A panel of Digital Natives discussing the information tools they use and why and what needs to be changed in order for libraries and traditional information services such as journals and databases to be truly useful to them.
• A look at some transforming technologies that can be used to ensure that your information products and services can be accessed and used by Digital Natives around the world, including delivery to iPhones via Modality and state-of-the art translation technology from IBM.
• Examples of how the information and communication behaviors of Digital Natives are driving new business practices in libraries and in publishing houses, including the use of open source tools and innovative projects such as the University of Michigan's delivery of books on demand.
• A look at how scientific, scholarly, and business communities are embracing social networks, how organizations such as BioInformatics are creating and monetizing such global networks, and insights from the Gilbane Group on the importance of multilingual content and local/regional products and services in today's truly global information economy.

If you want to learn more about the information and search expectations of the Born Digital generation as they enter their professional careers, and the technologies, business practices and innovative projects that are emerging to meet those expectations, join us and find out how your organization can ultimately attract loyal followers and long-term users from among the Barbarians at the Gate!

For more information, contact Jill O'Neill, NFAIS Director of Communication and Planning (jilloneill@nfais.org or 215-893-1561) or visit the NFAIS Web site at http://www.nfais.org/events/event_details.cfm?id=51.

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Technorati tags: Digital Libraries, Social Networking Tools