By Dr. Vivian Howard (Associate Professor & President of CAIS/ACSI)

The annual conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS/ACSI) was held from June 1-3 2016 at the University of Calgary, as part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.  This year’s conference theme was “Information Science in our Communities: Reflections on our Work and the People, Places, and Institutions Around Us.”  The opening keynote speaker, Dr. Jennifer Preece of the University of Maryland, gave a very engaging and provocative discussion of “Citizen Science: New Challenges for Information Studies.”  The closing plenary session was an excellent presentation by the deputy-CEO of Calgary Public Library, Ellen Humphrey, who discussed the the development of plans for an exciting new central branch due to open in the East Village neighbourhood of the city in 2018, with an architectural design which may have almost as much WOW value as Halifax’s own fabulous new Central Library.

Throughout the conference, SIM was very well represented with presentations by Dr. Keith Lawson, Professor Ryan Whalen, Dr. Marina Pluzhenskaya, and myself.  SIM alumna and University of Alberta doctoral candidate Deborah Hicks (MLIS 2007) won the Student to CAIS Award for best student paper, and Deb is also co-chair of the 2017 CAIS/ACSI conference, which will be taking place next June at Ryerson University, in Toronto. I’m also very pleased to report that I was elected President of CAIS/ACSI at the Annual General Meeting.

The annual Conference is always an excellent opportunity to share research and forge connections with a supportive and interested audience of graduate students, LIS faculty, and practitioners from Canada and beyond.  This year’s conference included participants from across Canada, the United States, and New Zealand. Conference abstracts are published in the proceedings, available at http://www.cais-acsi.ca/ojs/index.php/cais/issue/view/32 and participants have the option of submitting their full papers for publication in the Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science. 

If you’d like to know more about CAIS/ACSI, visit our website at http://cais-acsi.ca/ or talk to me anytime.