December 30, 2007
: Welcome to the home page of STC's Scientific Communication Special Interest
Group (SciComSIG). Be sure to check out the latest issue of our quarterly newsletter— the
December 2007 issue of The Exchange. In our newsletter you will find more of the thought-provoking and useful articles we have become accustomed to. You may also visit the
Newsletter section of this site for back issues and the current issue in both
html and
pdf versions.
Stay tuned to upcoming developments
within our group, and the SciComSIG web site! For all of our members and visitors
involved in scientific communications, this site will soon be offering a variety
of additional resources. A few changes to the overall appearance and usability
of the site are also in store. This site is currently undergoing reconstruction and development. We are now at a stage where the vision for the site is in need of your input.
As always, we are continually open to suggestions
as to what you would like to see in this site. Any input is most welcome and
should be directed to our new SIG Manager, Kathie Gorski at kgorski@execpc.com, or our webmaster, C Joel Koeppen at cjoelk@earthlink.net. For submitting
articles to The Exchange, please contact Geoffrey Hart at ghart@videotron.ca. You can help fill this site with resources valuable to you! Check out the new links—many of the resources proposed are in need of contributors. See the Activities and Resources pages for more information about projects underway and proposed. Send in your materials and resources, and enjoy your site!
A new look for the Scientific Communication SIG web site.
This site design presents a simple and user friendly interface with features allowing us to expand into the future. It is adapted from a template design supplied by Macromedia® with the latest release of their flagship web authoring tool. With a few tweaks, we hope it will prove accessible and convenient to all who venture these pages. The use of templates and .css styles, transitional xhtml, and UTF-8 (Unicode) encoding, will allow us to more quickly incorporate new features, change the design, and maintain compatibilities as needed. Again, if you can think of features you would like to see, whether design elements, or resources, do not hesitate to contact our SciComSIG manager, or the webmaster.
The section of the home page you are now reading will contain important news of the activities of our group. Those announcements will include: messages from our SIG Manager; new features and resources added to the web site; events forthcoming; events reviewed; news related to scientific communication; cooperative efforts between our group and others; business offerings to, and from, our members; project requests and updates; a brief overview of the current issue of The Exchange newsletter; and other interesting and valuable tidbits for those visiting our site. In the capsules below, you will find introductory focus segments on the items announced here. These segments will direct you to the locations within this site, and outside, where you will find specific source material.
It is hoped that we can continue to offer valuable resources to our members, and the public at large. In this regard, we look forward to any suggestions and input anyone has to share. This web site will develop with respect to the needs and activities of those members who take advantage of this resource. If there is a resource you would benefit from, and would like to see it incorporated into the site, please feel free to ask if it can be done. Every effort will be made to achieve these developments. As this is a work in progress, some of the links you see are pre-installed to be activated when content is provided. Your help will greatly be appreciated by all. Enjoy your site!
A message from your SIG Manager:
From Kathie Gorski (kgorski@execpc.com)— Greetings fellow SciCom SIG members. I have
volunteered to take over management of the Scientific
Communication SIG, effective January 1, 2006. Do
not panic—Geoff Hart will remain as editor
of the excellent newsletter and will also, at
least temporarily, continue as moderator of the
discussion list. I am joining our intrepid new
Webmaster, Cory Koeppen, in having heeded Geoff’s
recent call for SIG members to become more involved
in managing the SIG.
My involvement started when a headline in the
December 2004 issue of the Exchange caught
my eye: “Keep our SIG alive!” In the article
that followed, Geoff explained that the SciCom
SIG (along with all other STC SIGs, chapters,
and communities) had been asked to recharter,
essentially to justify its existence. He posed
some questions that got me thinking about why
I value the SIG. And then, at the annual STC
conference in Seattle in May, I sat at the SciCom
table during the SIG networking luncheon and
learned from Geoff that he was seeking to hand
over management of the SIG to someone else. After
a few months of off-and-on reflection, I decided
to volunteer for the role.
In a follow-up article in the [February 2006] newsletter,
I will explain why I value this particular SIG
and how I see my role as manager unfolding. In
the meantime, I am looking for several volunteers
to help get the rechartering process started.
If you’d be willing to spend a bit of time, starting
in January, discussing how we might approach
and accomplish the task, please send me an e-mail.
I’d be very grateful if other new volunteers
were also to “come on board”.
