Annual Meeting News

2021 Annual Meeting Recap

ASIS&T wants to thank everyone who attended or presented either in person or virtually at the 2021 Annual Meeting held in October.

This year because travel restrictions for many were still in place and there were ongoing health concerns with COVID-19, we decided to offer a virtual option for presenters and attendees. The hotel contract was signed in 2019 prior to the pandemic and while the hotel reduced some of our potential penalties, they would not let us cancel the meeting without significant financial implications, so we decided to also hold a face-to-face meeting as well as a virtual one. Overall attendance was 619 (318 were presenters) – 110 in person and 509 virtual. This compares with to 653 individual registrants for the 100% virtual meeting in 2020 (324 of those being presenters) and 351 registrants in 2019.

This year’s conference had terrific attendance, with 110 in person and 509 virtual attendees hailing from 43 different countries participating. The theme for this year’s conference was “Information: Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, and Relevance ”. The strength of the technical presentations at this year’s meeting is a testament to the ASIS&T mission to advance the information sciences and related applications of information technology by providing focus, opportunity, and support to information professionals and organizations. We hope you all agree that this Annual Meeting no different.

We thank each of our over 325 presenters recognizing that the meeting would not exist without their excellent presentations. Attendees enjoyed 7 pre-conference workshops, 76 posters, 76 papers, and 27 panels which were selected through a rigorous peer review process, conducted by over 350 reviewers.

Attendees enjoyed the opening plenary which was live streamed and featured Professor Luciano Floridi as the keynote speaker. His presentation was entitled, “Semantic Capital: What it is and Why it Matters”. He is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford, where he is Director of the OII Digital Ethics Lab. He is a world-renowned expert on digital ethics, the ethics of AI, the philosophy of information, and the philosophy of technology. He has published more than 300 works, translated into many languages.

The closing plenary featured keynote speaker Dr. Maia Hightower, MD, MPH, MBA. Her presentation was entitled, “Healthcare IT Equity Model: A Framework for Digital Equity.” She is Chief Medical Information Officer and Sr. Director Health Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for The University of Utah Health. She joined the UUH team in March of 2019.

The Annual Business Meeting provided members with an overview of the past year’s activities as well as a glimpse into the agenda for the coming year. The full Business Meeting video can be found HERE.

This year’s award winners were:

Long Paper:

1st place: Not Quite ‘Ask a Librarian’: AI on the Nature, Value, and Future of LIS by Jesse Dinneen and Helen Bubinger

2nd place: The Library/Surveillance Interface by Diana Floegel and Philip Doty

3rd place: Social and Digital Inequality as Factors in K-12 Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning in the Pandemic of 2020: Educator Perspectives by Rebecca Reynolds, Julie Aromi, Catherine McGowan, and Britt Paris

Short Paper:

1st place: “Meaning in the Present”: Understanding Sustainability for Digital Community Collections by Katrina Fenlon, Jessica Grimmer, Alia Fatima Reza, and Courtnie Thurston

2nd place: Building a Taxonomy of Trustworthy Digital Repository Impacts by Devan Ray Donaldson and Samuel Russell

Best Student Paper:

Archivists’ Information Work Lines: Affective, Information Management, and Hybrid Onsite-Remote Work Performance by Deborah Garwood and Alex Poole

Best Reviewer Awards were presented to:

Best Paper Reviewers: Luanne Freund, Adam Worrall, and Beth St. Jean

Best Panel Reviewers: Isabelle Dorsch, Andrea Scharnhorst, and Rachel Ivy Clarke

Best Poster Reviewers: Dagobert Soergel, Qinghua Zhu, and Jia Tina Du

Thank you to our Program Committee, Volunteers & Sponsors

We can’t give enough thanks to the members of the AM2021 Organizing Committee. First and foremost, we would like to thank Conference Program Chair, Bernard “Jim” Jansen, QCRI, Qatar, for his hard work and contributions which resulted in an outstanding meeting. He was instrumental in keeping our focus on both the conference theme and mission. The success of ASIST21 is a result of the tireless work and dedication of the Program Committee:

Paper Co-Chairs: Annie Chen, University of Washington School of Medicine, USA and Lu Xiao, Syracuse University, USA; Panel Co-Chairs: Jiangen He, University of Tennessee, USA and Wen Lou, East China Normal University, China; Poster Co-Chairs: Md. Anwarul Islam, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and Tingting Jiang, Wuhan University, China; Doctoral Colloquium Co-Chairs: Pnina Fichman, Indiana University, USA and Howard Rosenbaum, Indiana University, USA; Industry Series Co-Chairs: Sandra Hirsh, San José State University, USA and Don Turnbull, Aqua M&A, USA; Conference Chair Assistants: Aaron Bowen-Ziecheck, McGill University, Canada and Han Zheng, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Communications Co-Chairs: Lisa Hussey, Simmons University, USA and Brenton Stewart, Louisiana State University, USA.

Thank you to all who attended this year’s conference! We also want to say thank you for the generous contributions from our many sponsors. Your continued support of the ASIS&T allows us to deliver on new and existing initiatives at the core of our mission.

The meeting would not be possible without the generosity of our sponsors and exhibitors. We thank you for your support and commitment to the profession.