The Third Southern African Online Information Meeting
| Date | 01 April 1995 |
| Pages | 259-260 |
| Published date | 01 April 1995 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045371 |
| Author | Neville Spicer |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Guest Editorial
The
Third Southern African Online
Information Meeting
Neville Spicer
Chairman:
Southern African Online User
Group,
PO Box
8059,
Pretoria
0001,
South Africa
In setting the scene, in my editorial for the Proceedings of
the
Second Southern
African
Online
Information Meeting (The Electronic Library,
11(4/5),
August/Oc-
tober 1993), I considered attendance in relation to the 'interesting and difficult
times'
in which we then found ourselves as the country teetered towards the first
democratic election. Much has changed since that miracle play acted out by mil-
lions
of ordinary people
in
April 1994,
and much
continues
to
change
as the
rainbow
nation
struggles to
take again its
place
in the
international community.
In spite
of—
maybe even because of—the euphoria following the election, the
times
are no less
difficult
and
interesting.
It was
against
this
colourful backdrop that
the
Third South-
ern African Online Information Meeting was held on 6-9 June
1995.
The effect of
another
colourful production, the Rugby World Cup, was another unsettling factor.
I was delighted, therefore, by the
response to our programme of events.
The most immediately obvious change
was the increase in the number of ex-
hibitors — double the number that
supported the previous online meeting
— especially those representing over-
seas organisations. But the delegate
statistics were also encouraging:
Online
Information Meeting
Workshops and training courses
CDROM
tutorial and seminar
Marketing
skills
seminar
New information technology
seminar
Inmagic for Windows seminar
247
67
59
47
38
24
In addition to the 458 delegates
who attended these events, a further
136 registered for the product reviews
and workshops organised by exhibi-
tors.
Forty-one proposals were received
in
response
to
our
call
for papers. Short
(a maximum of twenty minutes) and
concise papers, based on practical ex-
perience or applications of informa-
tion technology, were selected on the
following
topics:
electronic communi-
cation; networking; online searching
and software; user interfaces; elec-
tronic document publishing and distri-
bution; CDROM; multimedia; infor-
mation management; and electronic
document management
systems.
In se-
lecting the papers we tried to strike a
balance between those describing the
latest developments in information
technology and those which illustrate
the applications of
these
technologies
to regional (Southern Africa) prob-
lems.
We were delighted to welcome
once again David Raitt, Chairman of
the International Online Information
Meeting, to open the Meeting with a
keynote address. In a departure from
his usual information technology re-
view, David paints a rather gloomy
picture of the problems faced by the
world — and in particular the devel-
oping countries — as a result of so-
ciocultural trends such as population
growth, increased life expectancy and
education (or
the
lack of
it).
The larger number of papers of-
fered resulted in the extension of the
formal sessions to cover two full days.
The CDROM session in the morning
of the second day reflects the continu-
ing growth and acceptance of this in-
formation distribution medium. In his
keynote paper for this session, Peter
Jacsó reviews, in his inimitable and
pragmatic style, the fight between
CDROM and online systems. The
theme for the afternoon session on the
second day results from the recent
emergence of the Internet in South Af-
rica. Anriette Esterhuysen, in her key-
note
address,
notes that
the
political re-
incorporation of South Africa into the
international community has perhaps
encouraged the use of the Internet to
link to the global community, to the
detriment of regional linkages.
A varied programme of satellite
events was arranged on the third and
fourth days, in cooperation with both
local and overseas organisations.
These events included training courses
on overseas online systems (DATA-
STAR, DIALOG and Questel-Orbit);
on the local Worldnet Gateway; on in-
dexing and abstracting; and on search
strategy design. A new information
technology seminar (presented by
David Raitt); a CDROM tutorial: how
to choose a CDROM database for li-
brary technical services and a
CDROM software, dataware and
hardware seminar (both presented by
Péter Jacsó); an introductory work-
shop on the Internet (presented twice);
and seminars on Inmagic for Windows
and basic marketing skills for informa-
tion professionals, were also offered.
The exhibition, which also attracted
exhibitors from Europe and the USA,
ran for four days. Several exhibitors
also presented workshops and product
reviews.
Of the comments received from
delegates the following extracts from
an unsolicited letter seem best to sum-
marise the general consensus: '. . . a
The Electronic Library, Vol. 13, No. 4, August 1995 259
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