Skip to content

Dear SIG-SI members,

Welcome to 2020, the year of the rat and the beginning of a new decade! Your leadership team is looking forward to planning engaging events and facilitating exciting opportunities for SIG-SI in this new year. 

As the current SIG-SI chair, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and the rest of the SIG officers:

Chair: Rachel Simons, Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman’s University (in Denton, Texas). I’ve been working with SIG-SI officers for the past two years–first as Communications Co-Chair and then as Chair Elect.  

Co-Chair-Elect: Kolina Koltai, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Texas at Austin (in Austin, TX), School of Information. I’ve been a SIG-SI officer for a year, previously as the Communications Chair. 

Co-Chair-Elect: Colin Rhinesmith, Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University (in Boston, Massachusetts). Formerly an officer with SIG-IEP, this year is my first year as an officer with SIG-SI.

Treasurer: Xiaohua (Awa) Zhu, Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee. I’m the past chair of SIG-SI. 

Co-Communications Officer: Ana Roeschley, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of North Texas (in Denton, Texas). This is my first year as an officer with SIG-SI. 

Co-Communications Officer: Nishad Thalhath, Ph.D. Student at the University of Tsukuba (in Tsukuba, Japan). This year is my first time as an officer with SIG-SI. 

Social Chair: Catherine Dumas, Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University (in Boston, Massachusetts). I have served as a Communications Officer for several years and last year I took over the role of Social Chair. 

Awards Coordinator: Adam Worrall, Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta (in Edmonton, Canada). I’ve been working with the SIG for many years, including as Secretary, Communications Officer, and Social Chair. My current role administers our SIG-SI best paper awards.

Secretary: Lingzi Hong, Assistant Professor in the College of Information at the University of North Texas (in Denton, TX). This is my first year to serve as Secretary in SIG-SI. 

As you likely already know, submissions have officially opened for the 2020 ASIS&T Annual meeting in Pittsburgh, with the deadlines for most submissions on April 10. As you begin drafting your submissions–particularly, but not only, for panels and alternative events–we encourage you to consider how SIG-SI might be able to support you. We plan to send out a formal call at the end of February for submission proposals that SIG-SI might officially endorse, so start brainstorming now!

This year, we will be sponsoring our 16th annual Social Informatics Research Symposium at the 2020 Annual Meeting. The SIG-SI officers are currently planning our symposium in line with the Annual Meeting theme of “Information for a Sustainable World: Society’s Grand Challenges.” You can look forward to more information about the Symposium and our annual call for submissions in the coming months.

Finally, your SIG-SI officers are considering how to incorporate more diverse activities into our SIG throughout the year to benefit our members, such as webinars and other research and professional development opportunities. We would love to hear your suggestions, so please feel free to contact us through social media or the ASIS&T Member Community. For more urgent ideas, you can email me directly at rsimons@twu.edu

Thank you all for your valuable contributions to SIG Social Informatics over the past years. I look forward to working with you as we move into an exciting new year for ASIS&T and our SIG!

Website [https://www.asist.org/sig/sigsi/]
Twitter [https://twitter.com/asistsigsi]
FaceBook [https://www.facebook.com/groups/134354579994052/]