24 October 2000

National conference attracts international speakers

Highlights for Wednesday 25 October

The foremost conference of the information profession in Australia, the ALIA2000 biennial conference, has attracted key international speakers. Dr Brian Hawkins, president of EDUCAUSE and Dr José-Marie Griffiths, University of Michigan's chief information officer, are both speaking on Wednesday.

Dr Hawkins is president of EDUCAUSE, a professional association of more than 1600 colleges and universities, dedicated to transforming higher education through information technologies.

Dr Hawkins has served as a consultant to over 350 organisations, combining his academic and business experience. He has written extensively in the area of information resources, academic planning, and the use of technology in higher education. He has been a higher education adviser to Apple, IBM, NeXT, Sun and Microsoft.

His paper, 'Libraries, knowledge management, and higher education in an electronic environment' discusses the challenges that libraries face as the transition from print-on-paper to digital environments unfolds.

Dr José-Marie Griffiths is also executive director of the Information Technology Division and a full professor in the School of Information. She has overall responsibility for all aspects of information technology at the University of Michigan, including telecommunications, networking, computing and infrastructure.

In her keynote paper 'The information professions: serving information creators and users', José-Marie will examine information technology, particularly the internet and world wide web, which have given the individual the opportunity to be both creator and user of information content.

The conference is hosted by the Australian Library and Information Association. Full details of the conference and its speakers can be found on the conference website at http://conferences.alia.org.au/alia2000/.