No 16, September 1999
Table of Contents
IASI is a non-profit making organisation whose aim is to stimulate, support and develop activities in the field of international documentation and information for physical education and sport. It brings together a worldwide network of scientists, documentalists, librarians, information experts and managers of sports information and documentation centres.
In order to reflect worldwide developments in sport information the editor of the newsletter welcomes contributions from all countries in all languages.
For contributions to the IASI Newsletter contact:
Nerida Clarke DirectorIASI Secretary now on the Internet contact:
Information Services Australian Sports Commission
PO Box 176
Belconnen ACT
2616 Australia
Email:
Fax (+61) 262141681
Website: iasi.org
IASI is pleased to advise that for the first time the IASI annual meeting will be held in South America. The meeting will be hosted by the Faculty of Physical Education of the University of Playa Ancha in Valparaiso/Vina del Mare, Chile.
The dates for the meeting are Tuesday 11th April to Saturday 15th April 2000.
It is extremely exciting for IASI to be holding its first meeting of the new century in a new continent and we are extremely grateful to Antonio Maurer Furst, Dean of the Faculty of Physical Education at the University for his sponsorship of the meeting.
The IASI website now has its own domain name iasi.org and through the work of Jean-Michel Johnson at SIRC changes are being made to the site and links to other sites are being made.
Recently the IASI web site has become a truly international site with a link to the IASI web site in the French language, which has been prepared by Alain Poncet of INSEP.
This site has a home location at:
www.insep.jeunesse-sports.fr/documentation/iasi/index.html
Links will be made from the IASI site to the Spanish and Italian versions of the IASI web site which have been created by IASI members.
In other developments a link from IASI to the European Network of Sport Sciences in Higher Education (ENSSHE) site has been made. This sort of link will hopefully be useful in promoting understanding, cooperation and collaboration between the two organisations.
As IASI members will be aware the 2001 IASI World Congress on Sport Information will be held in Lausanne from 25-27 April 2001 with the theme Sports Information in the Third Millenium.
The International Olympic Committee and the University of Lausanne will host the Congress.
The second announcement for the Congress is now being prepared and will be distributed in the next few weeks. This announcement will include the Call for Papers form and the preliminary Registration Form.
IASI is also pleased to announce that the IOC Olympic Studies Centre will be organising a Workshop on Olympic Documentation and Archives to be held on 24th April just before the congress. Details of this will be announced in due course.
The Program Committee for the IASI Congress consists of IASI representatives as the Chair (Mr Bruno Rossi-Mori), and for each of the five themes of the Congress; Alain Poncet as the Chair of the previous Congress, and representatives of the IOC, University of Lausanne and Macolin:
Congress Themes:
- Sports Information Management
- New Technology in Sports Information
- Geographic Development of Sports Information
- Legal and Economic Aspects of Sports Information
- Sports Information and Olympism
Copies of the Congress announcement brochure are available from:
Nuria Puig
Olympic Museum and Study Centre Quai d"Ouchy1 1001 Lausanne
Switzerland
Fax 4121 6216512
Email:
IASI members are encouraged to distribute these brochures widely and to provide Nuria with addresses of individuals and organisations that should receive copies of the Congress announcements.
The IASI business meetings will be held from 22-24th April prior to the Congress.
From the 15 to September 1999, the 2nd International Symposium on Computer Science in Sport was held in Vienna (Austria) and was attended by 124 participants from 19 countries including 15 from Europe.
Alain Poncet, IASI Vice-President for Europe, represented IASI and gave a detailed presentation on IASI and its activities.
Of all of the presentations a quarter was devoted to the processing of sport information and related technology. This clearly shows the emergence of the needs in the sport scientific community in relation to sport information.
The IASI presentation concluded the Symposium, and this was an opportune time for IASI to extend an invitation to the symposium participants to become involved in IASI activities and in particular to invite attendance at the next IASI Congress in Lausanne in 2001.
As IASI members will be aware a pre-Olympic Scientific Congress takes place in the week prior to each Olympic Games usually in a city outside the Olympic city. This Congress is organised by ICSSPE with patronage of the IOC.
In 2000 the pre-Olympic Scientific Congress will be held in Brisbane Australia from 7-13 September 2000. IASI as a member of ICSSPE has been invited to take part in the Congress Program as we have done in the past however at the 1999 IASI meeting it was agreed that in 2000 IASI should have a different form of involvement in the Congress to gain more exposure. It was suggested that rather than presenting a single paper to a limited audience that IASI should consider running an Internet café at the Congress. The café would consist of a number of PCs linked to the Internet and be in an open space with appropriate IASI signage.
By hosting the café IASI would:
- Gain exposure to all delegates attending the Congress
- Have the opportunity to show general sport information resources on the Internet
- Have an opportunity to conduct timetabled sessions to demonstrate and explain the SPORT data base
- Provide a communication service for delegates allowing them to read their email during the Congress.
The Congress Organising Committee accepted the suggestion of the Internet café and planning has started for the café. As a first step the IASI President has negotiated with a company Choice Connections Brisbane who have agreed to supply 12 Apple computers for the Internet café for the duration of the Congress at no charge. IASI will now look for a telecommunications company who will sponsor the Internet connections for the Internet café during the Congress.
It is with great sadness that we advise IASI members of the tragic death of Mosese Latu in a recent aircraft crash in Fiji.
Moses Latu was working with Albert Miller in the development of the Oceania Sport Information Centre at the University of the South Pacific and was in fact on his way to Australia to undertake training in sport information services when the accident occurred.
Whilst Mosese was not personally known to IASI members the work of the Oceania Centre was becoming well known interna
tionally as a model sport information service.
IASI has passed condolences to the family and work colleagues of Mosese. Mosese will be sadly missed.
As announced in the last IASI Newsletter the European Network of Sport Sciences in Higher Education (ENSSHE) organized its 5th Biennial Forum, from 3 to 6 September in Jyvaskyla Finland.
At this Forum a specific workshop was set up to gather together people from IASI and ENSSHE networks this was a great success with a gathering of 30 people. The workshop was co-led by Alain Poncet and Alberto Madella, with the collaboration of Anitta Palvimaki as a technical expert.
The goal of the ENSSHE-IASI workshop was to make some proposals for improving the effectiveness of the communication resources of the network, since information and communication are the heart of the network and the real added value for the members.
On this respect, during the discussion some technical and strategic key issues were identified manly concerning the development of the ENSSHE web communication.
A small panel of consultants, from ENSSHE and IASI, has been set up, thus maintaining the ongoing co-operation between IASI-ENSSHE.
The tasks of this new pilot group are to:
- Provide systematic feedback and strategic advice on the ENSSHE web site
- Suggest examples of best practice
- Promote and market the ENSSHE web site in their organization
- Analyse the needs of information of their internal clients (teaching staff, students, administrators) and connect them to the operation of the web site
- Cooperate in managing and improving the links between the ENSSHE and individiual organizations' web sites...
This pilot group will interact mainly electronically and meet once a year to evaluate the steps and recommend future initiatives and criteria for the web site assessment. A final suggestion can be made to the co-ordinating group to set up rapidly this pilot group, with a specific meeting and initiate immediately the operation of the new web strategy.
In the future the links between IASI and ENSSHE will be enhanced because it is in the common interest of both organizations. On the one hand, ENSSHE needs IASI expertise to create and develop its information tools. On the other hand, IASI centres need ENSSHE because this group represents the users of sport information.
Report by Alain Poncet (IASI Vice President Europe)
Lesley Gunter
SPRIG Chair
SPRIG, the UK sports information network has recently changed its remit, so we thought you'd be interested to know more about what we do:
What is SPRIG? SPRIG is an organisation, which promotes information sources in leisure, tourism and sport.
What does SPRIG do? SPRIG has a number of aims:
- To act as a special interest group for those involved in disseminating and managing information in leisure, tourism and sport.
- To disseminate information to users with an interest in leisure, tourism and sport.
- To lobby information providers (such as government organisations, publishers and specialist libraries) in leisure, tourism and sport for better coordination in provision and to identify gaps in that provision
- To improve awareness of leisure, tourism and sport information sources, particularly to those outside the library and information profession.
Who joins SPRIG? SPRIG represents all those who have an interest in information relating to leisure, tourism, sport, recreation and hospitality management in the UK.
SPRIG is relevant not only to those who work in libraries and information services but also to publishers, academics, students and to practitioners in the field who use information sources and materials.
How is SPRIG managed? SPRIG is managed by an executive committee, which is elected by the members of SPRIG.
How is SPRIG financed? SPRIG is financed by an annual membership fee payable by all members.
What does SPRIG do to achieve its aims? SPRIG engages in a number of activities in which members are encouraged to become involved.
- Seminars are organised at least once per year. Recent seminar themes have been the link between sport and tourism and funding for sport.
- Visits are organised to various organisations. Recent visits include the Yorkshire office of Sport England
- There is an active publications list. SPRIG produces a number of free guides to information sources for its members. It also publishes the proceedings of its seminars and a directory of periodical holdings in sport and recreation.
- The SPRIG Bulletin is published twice yearly and is sent to all members. It contains articles of interest to members as well as information about the current activities of SPRIG.
Who can I contact for more information?
Lesley Gunter
SPRIG Chair
The Sports Library
Central Library Surry Street
Sheffield S1 1XZ
Tel 0114 2735929
Email:
or Martin Scarrott, Publicity Officer
Martin Scarrott
Subject Librarian for Leisure & Tourism
The Learning Centre
University of North London
236-250 Holloway Road
London N7 6PP
Email:
The world's most comprehensive French language database for sport and physical activities is now available on the Internet at: www.sportdoc.unicaen.fr/heracles/
This means that Sportdoc Heracles with its 80 000 documentary references supplemented by the supply of new services is positioned as the principal operator in the field of French-speaking professional information concerning sport and physical activities.
The presence on the Net imposes an international dimension on the database and this is why the Heracles site is presented with an English version so that the international community can reach French-speaking sport documentation.
Searches can be carried out in the two languages and two modes of searching are proposed: a « guided » search for the beginners and a « advanced » one for the professional users.
Heracles, of course, is still remaining on SportDiscus, the sport international information carrier.
Human Kinetics the world's largest sports publisher has agreed to assist sport information centres in developing countries by supplying these centres with books from their "Hurt" book store. This means that Human Kinetics will send copies of slightly damaged books to institutions in need, which do not have the finances to purchase these books.
IASI has decided that it will operate the scheme through the Vice Presidents for each Region. IASI members wishing to receive donations through this Program should approach the Vice President in their Region (in the case of Africa, which currently does not have a Vice President through the IASI President,) and a list of institutions will be collated.
Once this is done IASI will advise Human Kinetics of the institutions which require assistance and a process will be put in place for these institutions to choose the categories of books they require and for IASI to assess the cost of freighting the books to the countries requiring them. Depending on the response it may not be possible for IASI to fund the freight of all books but this is something which will be assessed once the requests for assistance are received.
Institutions should approach their IASI Vice President if they wish to participate in the Program. At the same time Vice Presidents should make recommendations to the IASI Secretariat of institutions which might benefit from the Program.
Human Kinetics has initiated a similar program with ICSSPE. This Program will provide tremendous benefits to developing countries - already we have seen this with the donation Human Kinetics made to the Oceania Centre in Fiji.
The Triumph of the Human Spirit - the Official Commemorative Book of the 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games This book is available from:
DT Publishing
132 Main St. East, Suite 1
Grimsby Ontario L3M 1P1
CANADA
$29.95 CDN (taxes included) Shipping and handling in North America $5.00 CDN Other countries $10.00 CDN
Training for Top Performance By Dr. Yitshak Ben-Melech This is a book on the theory of training and competition, written from the perspective of training for elite athletic performance written by Dr. Ben-Melech who was Director of the Elite Sports Department in Israel for 13 years, he is a well-known figure in the elite sport world.
Colin Bauer
Gariep Publishing Company
P.O.Box 26605
Hout Bay 7872 Zimbabwe
Tel: 27-21-5323052
Singapore Sports Council
The Singapore Sports Council Website - http://www.ssc.gov.sg has a link to a virtual sports museum site on their Intranet
Council of Europe Publications Two 1999 Council of Europe publications may be of interest to IASI members
Study of National Sports Legislation in Europe (ISBN 92-871-3833-8) US$25.00
Dying to Win - doping in sport and the development of anti-doping policy
Barrie Houlihan
(ISBN 92-871-3589-4) US$30.00
Available from:
Council of Europe Publishing
F-67075 Strasbourg France
Fax +33 0 3 88 41 27 80
Email:
Website: http://book.coe.fr
Gretchen Ghent IASI Vice President for North America has undertaken a mammoth task to create a subject directory to scholarly sport sites on the Internet which is now available at: http://www.ucalgary.ca/library/ssportsite And ready for use by the sport community of scholars, information specialists and researchers.
The website contains most of the references Gretchen has been tracking and recording for the past year, some of which have appeared in issues of NASLINE or have been tabled as IASI annual meeting documents. It is hoped that this website will meet some sport information needs as expressed at IASI meetings.
The SSS website is organized by subjects and/or document type (e.g. Serials). The Index of Sports Subjects on the home/index page is hotlinked to the appropriate place in each file section. Many sections have Notes at the top of the first page, which outline the subject scope of the page. A simple keyword search engine is available on the site. This search engine will guide the user to the appropriate section of the website where the word can be found. For many listings, organization names are in English with the name repeated in the language of origin. In addition, the acronym is included to provide more search capabilities. More work needs to be done on this aspect, however.
Users should also note the section entitled, National Sport Structures and Organizations. As this topic is of great concern to many IASI members, Gretchen thought it would be useful to see if this format could be used to begin the updating of the two documents edited by Albert Remans (1989 and 1990). One country's entry is quite complete - Australia. The key elements of the sport structure are referred to by the SSS website and descriptions in fulltext are found on the Australian government department and ASC websites. Australia is fortunate that their federal statutes are available in fulltext also.
The US listing in this same section is an example of how a country without a federal department for sport could be listed. More work needs to be done here to give the researcher additional sources of information. The Bibliography at the end of this section should help researchers.
Another principle followed is that of referring to another website which already has a comprehensive listing. A case in point is the College/University departments on the Sport Information Resouce Centre's SportQuest website. Note that this section has recently been expanded to include many more countries with university sport sciences departments.
Gretchen has asked that users of the service let her know what is missing or needs updating. Email:
Ma Tie
IASI Member China
The 1999 annual national sports libraries meeting was held in Guangzhou, China from May 5 to 7. 22 Representatives from fifteen libraries of physical education colleges and university, including the Beijing PE University, PE colleges of Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenyang, Chengdu and Xi'an, participated the meeting.
Prof. Ma Tie, vice director of the China sports Information Institute (CSII) was also invited at the meeting. A working report was made which reviewed the development of sports libraries in the past year. The meeting then laid focus on discussing the project of establishing a nation-wide sports libraries network on the Internet, especially a national combined sports books catalogue database, which could help clients to search sports books from any part of China. A working group headed by the library of Beijing PE University and supported by the Science and Education Dept. of the State Sports General Administration and CSII was set up to complete the project within one year. A survey was also made during the meeting on computers and Internet used in each sports library of PE colleges. Results showed that the development of modern technology in sports libraries in China is still lacking, but compared with the situation two years ago, things have greatly improved.
From May 24-29 1999 a training course was held for librarians and indexers of sports libraries all over China who will contribute to the establishment of a National Internet Sports Documents Catalogue.
The training course was attended by 50 people from sports libraries of Physical Education, University Colleges and national and provincial sports information centres and aimed to improve the participant's indexing skills and unify the indexing standards for establishing a nation-wide Internet sport documents catalogue.
The national combined sports documents catalogue on the Internet will help clients to search sports documents from any part of China. This is a project set up by the State Sport General Administration (the formal State Sports Commission) and undertaken by the China Sports Information Institute (CSII). The project is planned to be completed in two and a half years in two stages. The first stage is for sports books catalogue to be administered by the National Sports Library Working Committee headed by the library of Beijing University of Physical Education. The second stage is for sports journals, audio-visual materials and other sports documents and is to be administered by CSII.
The catalogue database will include nearly all the sports books and journals published in China since the founding of the People's Republic 50 years ago. This project will be an important step for automation of Chinese sports documents retrieval and service and will be of great benefit to the sharing of sports information in China and among Chinese speaking people all over the world.
North America
From 27-30 October 1999 there will be a Joint Conference of the North American Sport Library Network and the International Association of Sports Museums and Halls of Fame in Lake Placid New York.
The conference focuses on the technological aspects of sports information delivery, museum organization, promotion and education.
Australia
In November members of the Australian Sport Information Network will meet at the South Australian Sports Institute in Adelaide South Australia. High on the agenda for this meeting will be the finalisation of the national sport information strategy.
IASI Member Jose Antonio Aquesolo Vegas has contributed an excellent article on the Latin-American Sports Information Association - Sportcom to the ICSSPE Bulletin No.27 Fall 1999 p.48-49. The article outlines the history, goals and recent work of the Association and is worth reading to see the excellent work in sport information being done in Latin America.
More and more IASI members are gaining access to the Internet and are finding the IASI Listserv as an excellent means of sharing sport information. Ayala Maharik from the Wingate Institute who administers the listserv reports that the list now has 144 members from 37 countries.
If you are a list member and wish to write a letter to the list, all you have to do is send an email to the following address: IASI-L@VM.TAU.AC.IL
If you are NOT a list member and wish to become one, then please email to: LISTSERV@VM.TAU.AC.IL Leave the "Subject" line empty. Write "subscribe iasi-l" at the message area If you have any difficulty with the list then please contact: Ayala Maharik at
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Website content updates: Gretchen Ghent,
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