IASSIST Annual General Meeting 1997
Chair: Libbie Stephenson
Approximately 64 persons present.
1. Call to order
The meeting was called to order at 13:40.
2. 1997 Conference
The Chair thanked all those who worked to put the 1997 conference, and recognized especially:
- Local arrangements:Karsten Rasmussen, Kirsten Pagh and Jan Nielsen
- Program chair: Karsten Rasmussen and Ann Green
- Plenary organization: Judith Rowe and Vigdis Kvalheim
- Workshops: Dianne Geraci
- Also Peggy Adams and Bridget Winstanley
3. Future conferences - Libbie Stephenson
3.1 1998 Conference to be held at Yale University, New Haven, Conn.. Ann Green, convenor of the 1998 conference.
3.2 1999 Conference will be held in Toronto, Ontario.
3.3 2000 Conference - any location interested in hosting the year 2000 conference should submit a proposal to the IASSIST Administrative Committee. Three proposal have been received thus far.
4. Regional secretariates - Libbie Stephenson
The Chair explained that new data archives are being created in countries in which they have not traditionally existed before. A reorganization of the current structure of the regional secretariates is being evaluated.
5. Publications - Libbie Stephenson
It has been decided to conduct further testing of the WWW-based IASSIST Quarterly publishing initiative. The next three issues will be made available via the WWW as PDF files. These issues will also be produced in print.
6. Election results - Libbie Stephenson and Peter Burnhill
The Chair briefly thanked all those who have served with her during her presidency of IASSIST. She announced that the new president of IASSIST is Peter Burnhill, and vice-president Ann Green.
Peter Burnhill assumed the Chair, and thanked Libbie Stephenson for her leadership over the past two years. He spoke briefly about emerging trends:
- the increasing diversity of backgrounds of the membership,
- growth in membership size as well as diversity: this conference had 130 attendees, of which 85 are Europeans, and attendance from 17 countries
- three strong regions: Europe, Canada, and the United States, however the remaining membership comes from the rest of the world,
- the commonalities of international flavour yet dealing with social sciences use of data
- the profession is attracting interest of others in fields such as global change, biodiversity, and ISO (International Organization for Standardization).
P Burnhill introduced the newly elected officers:
- Ann Green: Vice President
- Vance Merrill: Regional Secretariat: Australia
- Wendy Watkins: Regional Secretariat: Canada
- Bridget Winstanley: Regional Secretariat: Europe
- Laura Guy: Regional Secretariat: United States
7. Future directions
P Burnhill announced some of the tasks facing the Administrative Committee in the coming year:
- the need to confirm/appoint persons to the positions of treasurer, secretary, archivist, and IASSIST Quarterly editor.
- the role of treasurer needs to be clarified,
- Peggy Adams had taken on the role of coordinator of the Publications Committee
- Vigdis Kvalheim and Chuck Humphrey are to assess whether or not we need a secretariate structure.
- a history of the Association to be written for the 25th anniversary (1999).